Authority & Acceptance

Sort of morbid curiosity led me to read the rest of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy -- and apparently a fourth book, Absolution, is already forthcoming. It puzzles me quite a bit that there's demand for this kind of unrewarding literature that offers mystery without answers. I didn't find the books compelling at all; everything is so meaningless when anything can happen, consequences don't matter.

Authority

The second novel features a new protagonist: John Rodriguez is the new director of the Southern Reach, the government agency trying to investigate Area X. They haven't been very successful so far with it, gotten about as far in understanding it as they were in the beginning.

I think even to the reader John is introduced first by his "nickname" Control. With how the first book was, you just know he's anything but in control. The agency's assistant director Grace Stevenson is having none of it; she's instantly at odds with Control. Grace also believes the former director is still alive -- and uses the director title for her instead of Control.

Control turns out to be a rather unreliable narrator -- to the absolute surprise of no one. About halfway point he seems to completely lose it, although there's an explanation for that. Things don't become much easier after he has dealt with his crisis.

The director turns out to have been the psychologist of the previous book's team. Odd that they sent the director into the Area but as Control's investigations reveal, the agency hasn't been functioning in a very regular manner -- probably due to them getting desperate to get some results.

An annoying detail for the novel's translation is Control being initially confused by the French word terroir that one of the agency's workers uses in their theory about the Area. There's just no elegant way of putting it in Finnish or other language that doesn't have the word terror to explain Control's confusion. The Finnish translations (by Einari Aaltonen) keep using 'terroir' henceforth -- I guess because there's no word for it in Finnish either.

The director is also the only one of the team who hasn't returned from the expedition. Although, if the others really returned either is questionable. Seems more likely they're just the Area's creations. Of the others, Control deems only the biologist -- later taking the name Ghost Bird -- important to keep at the Southern Reach for interviews.

Acceptance

The third novel mixes up things, featuring more than one viewpoint. In addition to Control and Ghost Bird, there's Grace, the director, and lighthouse keeper Saul Evans. The last viewpoint sheds light on how the Area X came to be -- for what's it worth.

Eventually everyone ends up inside the Area. The characters are either ambivalent about the state of things and/or completely lack the means to do anything. The whole story is almost infuriating in its whatever attitude.