Great, but unfortunately only a third of the story

Area X, closed decades ago after a "Event" from the outside world and left to themselves, harbors a dangerous secret. From time to time expeditions into sent to this to get on the track, without success: participants disappear without a trace, and if they make it back, they are no longer, as they had left

What we get to read the report of a participant of the twelfth expedition, a biologist. It is purely a women's team; Included are besides her an anthropologist and a Landvermesserin, to a team leader, a psychologist.

Doubts as to the meaning and purpose of the company coming soon on. The information you gave them on the way, prove to be incomplete, if not wrong. The equipment is astonishingly inappropriate in view of the dangers that seem to exist. And the psychologist turns out to be manipulative and in no way capable of or willing to hold together her team and lead it to success, on the contrary.

The discovery of a huge, hidden in the earth tower, which is not marked on any map, triggers a development in which the great outdoors, which applies to explore it, the command seems to take over the operation, something the biologist as first gets to feel. A battle to the death begins.

"Annihilation" is the first part of the "Southern Reach Trilogy". Jeff Vandermeer draws the reader into a fascinating world where reality and illusion, inside and outside, good and evil, past, present and future flow together. The more you seem to understand the purpose of the expedition, the more puzzles to do, that remain unresolved until the very end, and yet the book is fairly solid on their own feet.

However, I have wondered if the reader would not have been served with it, putting aside the profit optimization and bring out three volumes of the trilogy together; Although parts 2 and 3 are considerably longer, but certainly not too long. I was there anyway so hooked that I had to order the other two volumes, immediately after I had collapsed the book. Mission accomplished, but then but one star less.