Review: Annihilation

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sufficiently creepy, fairly bizarre and totally unique. Great short read.

This was a nice thin book I took overseas with me. I remember reading it in bed one night and having to put it down because it was creeping me out too much! Considering there's no real big bad monster that was pretty impressive.

I really appreciated the slow, random suspense. I basically had no clue what was going on but was super curious. But like, curious in a, 'I want to investigate from safely behind bars' kind of way. Like when you wanna see a deadly shark up close but you're quite happy doing so from like inside an aquarium as opposed to in one of those tiny cages that every horror movie shark can chomp through.

Anyway.

It's written 'journal style' and the narrator is completely unreliable. She tells us only what she wants, and openly admits that she doesn't drop facts. So there's another whole element of suspense in the question of how much we're actually being told of the truth.

It's unlike anything I've ever read, which was a real highlight for me. I was expecting a 'mysterious evil slaughtering characters one by one' typical plot and this was not that so very refreshing! Took a little bit longer for the brain to adjust to the bizarreness of it all, but at least it does have some solidity to grip on to.

I really enjoyed it, and it was the creepy book I was expecting so thumbs up! Highly recommend if you're looking for something creepy and unique.


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