Annihilation

Kind of tedious.

I like the premise, and I like the idea of modern takes on what's essentially a Lovecraft story. I like that the book has a predominantly female cast with only two male characters of note. I like the idea of an unreliable narrator, and I like the subtle way that the nature of her unreliability was handled.

There were only a couple of instances of her being outright deceptive, but ultimately the unreliability comes by virtue of her realizing that she's not as introspective/self-aware as she'd always let on. It's a really interesting and mature idea that a lifetime coming across as terse or guarded isn't a result of being in complete control, but just the opposite.

Basically I wanted to like everything, but the narrator is SO flat that everything just falls flat as a result. Even at 200 pages, it feels overlong. I honestly think 1990s Stephen King could've covered all this material in about 30 pages and it would've been just as satisfying. Things that I think should've been major bombshells were underplayed, and minor revelations were stretched out as if to oversell their significance. All the questions left unanswered don't feel like intriguing ambiguity so much as threads left dangling.

It feels like this should've been one book instead of a trilogy, although I doubt I would've finished the book if this had been the end of Part One.