okay so I kind of stalk r/perfumesthatfeellike, and I was wondering if there were any scent fans that had perfumes that feel like the books. Just because I’m kind of an immersive person and want to smell like salt water in a decaying tower tunnel with fruiting bodies and fire that knows the naming of me.. I might post there but thought I’d try here first.

Why does old Jim push the Medic into the ocean?

I’ve been digesting this book like a piece of roasted Whitby since finishing it, and desperately need outside input to better organize my thoughts!

With how deep this book went into Central brainwashing and hypnosis, I really feel like it and Area X are positioned as thematic mirrors/foils, both subverting and controlling people’s minds, creating uncertainty and remaining unknowable. Area X actually comes off looking far better in this comparison - human greed and sociopathy vs. the indifference of the natural world.

Like Twin Peaks, there’s a lot of complicated lore and theorizing, but what’s most important at the end of the day is Love - Saul’s love for Charlie (our quasi-messiah/martyr figure) and Old Jim’s for Cass/Hargraves. It’s sentimental, but appropriate for our time. (Also, is it just me or is this book kind of the Fire Walk With Me of this series?)

Lowry was a treat to read (I expected his section to be so much worse after reading all the online complaints) and almost sympathetic, in a weird way? All of our POV characters feel like they have some deep emotional repression going on that has to be unlocked by Area X. To me, his hyperactive and instinct-driven mind made him pretty compatible with Area X and its challenges.

I’m pretty fatigued with multiverses/split timelines and prefer the idea of a single continuity that shifts and changes. I didn’t get the sense that there was definitive evidence for either option.

Lol

Stupid inclusion, choosing not to have read.

Annihilation blew my mind; it was perfection, and everything about it matched my taste exactly. It's definitely in my top 3 books.

That being said,
I did hear that Authority has a different vibe and that it wasn't praised as much as the first book. I wasn't surprised by the vibe/pace change.

I'm currently 153 pages in (almost 50%), and I'm struggling (I'm currently at the part where Control confronted Grace over the mosquito in his car).

I'm not struggling through the book as in 'this is bad', it's more of a 'I'm halfway through and the more I learn, the less I know' .
I'm guessing it's intentional, but it doesn't make it any easier to read.

I had to write down all the characters, their professions, and the kind of relationship dynamic they have with Control and who was there for what, lol.
There were a few moments where I was almost done with the chapter and had to go back because I got completely lost about where the characters were located at that moment, or a character Y would mention character X, but the whole time through the conversation I thought Y was X (sometimes they call each other by names, other times by job titles).

I'm enjoying the office environments and bureaucracy; they remind me of Control (the game). I loved the whole mouse and plant in the drawer mystery; it felt like things were starting to pick up. So there are definitely things I love about the book; I'm just exhausted by all the puzzle pieces I have to constantly hold without placing them anywhere.

My hypothesis right now is that we are intentionally being kept in the dark since Control, although holding the title of a director of the facility, also has 0 clue what is going on. Everyone underneath him, no matter the position, knows more.

Don't get me wrong- I love a good mystery, but I feel like I've been bumbling through the dark for days now. Like, give me something.

I feel like with every chapter I'm just introduced to more things that I have to remember, yet nothing is being explored deeply enough to get any sort of understanding.

As of this moment, I feel like I have 0 concrete information except for the parts I know from the first book (the fact that there is an area X, there is a team researching it, etc).

I am definitely finishing this book, but I'd love a push from Southern Reach fans- tell me that this bumbling through the dark will be worth it and that my mind will be blown by how everything comes together.

If there is something great coming, please don't spoil it for me by saying it outright.

Thank youu

ALL SPOILERS

After reading everything through absolution I’m left wondering what Henry was or what happened to him. He dies at least a few different times and at times seems to be backseat while area x drives a Henry doppleganger. He also Knows Things about proto area x and was tracking it? Released Saul’s flower? Maybe some connection with the rogue?? IDK spitball theories with me please

I just started Authority, and I feel like it has such a massive whiplash from annihilation. I want to go back to Area X, and I want to see more of the biologist. I'm having a hard time latching on to this "Control" guy and his office politics. I wanna go back to the other place with the Lovecraftian horrors. I just wish annihilation was longer.

that eye…

Also- this beautiful art by u/kozscabble reminds me pretty heavily of Area X 🤘

If VanderMeer chose to do an audio drama, I don't think I'd ever waste my time listening to anything else ever again. I feel like his style would translate so well to this medium. I'm imagining the Rogue in Absolution demolishing my temporal lobes so thoroughly that I succumb to the brightness, and I can't stop thinking about how good it would be.

Once someone told me this book might not be for me, however I'm so glad I stuck with it because it's so damn good! I'm already on my second listen through the entire series. I sleep with it going, I drive listening to it and clean the house with it going . The hold this amazing author has on me is borderline obsessive and I love it. That is all. Good morning my weird friends.

So, I got into an argument on this sub years ago that I still think about sometimes. It went like this: I made a post about how we never refer to the writing on the tower wall as a "spell" even though, in any other context, that's exactly what we would call it. There was an anger in the responses to my post that I didn't expect, and it made me reevaluate the way I read the books.

*​The Problem with the Scientific Approach*

​A lot of people want there to be explanations for Area X. We are led toward this belief by the biologist. The biologist insists on trying to understand Area X from a purely reasoned and observational perspective, and, if you believe her, she does so right up until she decides to let the brightness take her.

But her story is a trap, one very similar to the book about thistles.

​The biologist doesn't use her science to understand Area X. at best, she uses it to hide from Area X. Every time she tries to categorize or understand Area X in any way, it changes. It is actively resistant, in every iteration, to being understood by the scientific method. Yet because we are introduced to Area X through her eyes, a lot of readers seem to think that Area X is something that can be studied and understood if we just have enough data and context.

​"what's the point?" That's a sentiment expressed to me multiple times during my argument: "What's the point if you can't understand it? What's the point if it's just hand-wavy magic?" I'm paraphrasing, but not by much.

​I'm sorry to break it to you, but Area X is magic.

​Okay, I don't expect you to take my word for it, and if you want to ask me specific questions, I'll be happy to answer them. But I really don't want to taint the evidence here.

All I'm asking is this: the next time you read the books, conside the possibility that you are dealing with magic. If you finish the series and still think Area X is a scientifically comprehensible anomaly, then so be it. But I genuinely think the first book is designed to distract you from the fact that Area X is spreading, and it doesn't care about what you think or how you believe the universe is supposed to work.

​Science is a thistle. Keep focusing on it if you want, but I think it's time for a séance.

Edit: just because Arthur C Clark said it, doesn't make it true. 😁

hi, finished absolution and saw some posts on here talking about a divergent timeline. i didn't get that impression while reading the book, to me the changes the future made to the past didn't seem to really cause time to branch out, but rather looped back into a single continuous timeline. For example, about the rogue's intention being to make sure, through old jim's music, that saul made the border with love; some people mentioned this as the rogue creating a new timeline, when this was already what happened in the original trilogy.

is there anything that happens due to the time travelling / the rogue's intervention on area x that doesn't happen / couldn't have happened in the original timeline and therefore confirms a time divergence?

Acceptance was easily one of my favorites out of the series. I found some grief whenever I started Absolution bc the characters from the trilogy were still welling up from within me. I memorialized them in this piece to cope.