“We live in a universe driven by chance, but the bullshit artists all want causality.”

Authority, the second volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, pushes readers even further into the unbounded paranoia that defined Annihilation. But where the first book often felt like a giddy stack-up of cosmic horrors cataloged by a detached narrator,¹ the second one is character-driven and rich in flavor.

Marked by signs and codes, the book centers on a “fixer” known as Control, who finds the menacing organization known as Central, and the faceless handler assigned to him, known only as The Voice, to be just as existentially threatening as the ecological anomalies emanating from the cordoned-off swath of coastline known as Area X. Sent to the government agency known as the Southern Reach to set things back on course after numerous failed expeditions beyond the shimmering veil, Control finds an insular, conspiracy-minded culture that disdains his intruding presence, most frequently encountering friction from the assistant director. If they don’t exactly thrive off of the weirdness, the obsessive, psychologically afflicted personnel of the Southern Reach seem to draw their restless energy from the unexplained phenomena occurring in their proximity.

How many invisible abstract incantations ruled the world beyond the Southern Reach?

Control, who presents himself as highly capable but is basically inept, tries to approach his situation logically, to impose order upon chaos. But he soon begins to discover evidence and witness events that defy logic—dead animals locked in desk drawers, disturbing videos of deceased expedition members, a flattened husk of a mosquito on the inside of his windshield that he has no memory of squashing, an intensely unsettling encounter with a scientist in a secluded maintenance closet. Even interviewing the Biologist (the narrator of Annihilation) raises more questions than it answers, and Control’s grasp on the situation rapidly deteriorates as his own past starts to encroach on his impromptu autopsy of the Southern Reach.

All of this tightens up into a solid slow-burn horror story that convolutes the mystery of Area X and leaves the reader with a creeping sense of dread, their unease heightened by haunting prior knowledge that the characters do not possess, as well as VanderMeer’s vivid prose.

1. I didn’t think too highly of the first book, but in hindsight its mood and manner fit into the overall story brilliantly, which only reinforces the notion that these books shouldn’t have been separated.