[Discussion] Second Place Book Club Selection - Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
Annihilation is our second place selection for November. We decided to choose a second book for people who want to have a little more variety and want to do more than one book in a month. I am looking forward to the discussion on this one. I saw the movie when it came out but am really interested to experience the story in book form.
Really enjoyed the first book. Started questioning things in the second. By the third, I was hate reading it to get to the end.
Without spoiling it, the ending completely failed to land for me. Just a hodgepodge of incomplete ideas and loose ends... If it was just the first book they could've told other stories and built a Lovecraftian mythos around it, but instead they had to go for the 3 book deal and by the end it was just too much toast and not enough butter for me.
I actually read about 50% of it, but something about the writing style was not working for me and I was focused more on how it was written than what was written. Stopped reading it. I actually like the movie and wanted the details only a book can provide.
Anyway maybe not relevant to you but if I don't like it, I don't read it. Too many other things to enjoy rather than trudging through something I don't.
Nice, literally finished it yesterday. Surprised at how different the second book is so far.
I love how fuzzy and surreal everything is in annihilation.
I'm kind of interested in watching the film again, but I want to let the book settle in first, since the story and setting felt so different to me then what I remember from the film.
An initial scene with a boar basically had me reliving princess mononoke while reading, it was very surprising and wonderful.
I loved these books. and actually I wasn't turned off by the movie. For just 90 minutes they did a good job of touching on most of the key aspects. The visuals were pretty close to how I had imagined it from the reading, anyway. I was hoping they would make a sequel to touch on the rest of the series but I'll take what I can get these days.
I haven't read this, mostly because when I saw the trailer for the movie I started screaming with joy in the theater because I thought Chaga (Evolution's Shore - oddly enough, by the author of the other November selection, Ian McDonald) had gotten a movie adaptation.
I did see and like the Annihilation movie OK.
So even if the book is not like the movie, I can't go in without prejudice. I was just so disappointed.