Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer

\nSPECIAL TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION \n \n The Southern Reach Trilogy begins with Annihilation, the Nebula Award-winning novel that reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world (Kim Stanley Robinson). \n \nArea X has been cut off from the rest of the world for years. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. Expeditions into Area X have ended in disaster or death. \n \nIn Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the latest expedition. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and the narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself. \n \nThey arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers--they discover lifeforms that surpass understanding. But it's the secrets they carried across the border with them that change everything.\n