Bruna's Many Books

I have finally finished reading Authority, by Jeff VanderMeer. According to my email receipts, I bought it on Kindle back in 2018, in a single very discounted purchase that included Alana Collen’s 10% Human: How Your Body’s Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness and Dan Lepard’s The Handmade Loaf – a book which I have never cooked from (hmm maybe I need a Bruna’s Many Cookbooks blog). 

In case it doesn’t sound familiar, Authority is the second book in the Southern Reach series, formerly known at the time of purchase as The Southern Reach Trilogy. Yes, my dear reader, in the time it took me to actually pick it up and finally read it, Jeff VanderMeer was able to write a fourth novel within the series! I have now atoned by reading it in full. The second novel, I mean, not the full series. But we’ll get there in time. 

I read the first book of the series last year while I sat, utterly bored, on a plane headed to São Paulo. I was immediately hooked. The beautiful prose, the incredibly vivid descriptions of impossible structures, the breathtaking natural landscapes presented by the novel… I had watched the film on Netflix when it came out some years ago and I really liked it, especially the ending. I love weird and that film was weird. The book was even better than the film. I devoured it like my cat devours the pieces of chicken we hand-feed him when he’s good. 

The plot: a controlled descent into madness

The novel starts immediately after the events of the first book. The Biologist has returned from Area X and is being held at the Southern Reach, the government agency that sent her and all previous expeditions. The story is told from the perspective of the new Director of the Southern Reach, John ‘Control’ Rodriguez whose background as an experienced secret agent adds dimension to the otherwise uninspiring organisational challenge that his mother (a high ranking operative) has pulled strings to push him into. Uninspiring only on the surface – the deeper he digs the more he uncovers the Southern Reach’s true purpose and why his mother would ever consider him for this strange and enigmatic assignment. Control soon learns that the Psychologist who led Annihilation’s expedition was in fact the previous Director.

I found the small group of characters in Authority reasonably likeable within the confines of their individual madness. Make no mistake: there is no sanity here. Nothing is as it seems, nobody is to be trusted. Whilst keeping his distance from his peers and reports, Control is absorbed into his new task like the remote landscape slowly consumes the Southern Reach. We get the impression that a once modern, functioning government agency is now on its last legs, fighting to justify its own existence in the face of secrecy and ever shrinking funding. There is a sense of remoteness, of vast empty space waiting to be filled with meaning. The Southern Reach is at the edge of the safe side of the border beyond which lies the mysterious, perhaps dangerous Area X we saw in the first novel of the series. The setting is as much the buildings and the town of Hedley, its little houses, the river, as it is Control’s own mind and memories, interspersed haphazardly with his experiences in his new role. This way madness lies. And how!

Pacing? What pacing?

I began Authority as soon as I finished Annihilation, but I quickly forgot about it and moved on with my life. It is only recently that I picked it up again, read a bit, forgot about it, picked it up again and so on. In the last few days I was suddenly hooked again and read it in one go all the way to the end. Thus is my main niggle with this novel: the pace. After the masterpiece that is Annihilation, I had a lot of trust in Jeff VanderMeer’s ability to take me on an unusual but ultimately compelling journey. The novel starts slowly, drip-feeding the reader with information just as the main character receives it in bits and drabs from unreliable, at times incompetent or even hostile people around him. I fully expected it to be slow in the beginning. But it also felt slow in the middle and it was only toward the end that it seemed to pick up the pace.

I suspect much of the problem was with my own mindset while reading rather than any objective problems with VanderMeer’s narrative style. This is a book of scenes and details, not of fast moving plot. The inner thoughts of an intrinsically logical man faced with an impenetrable challenge.

Final thoughts on Authority

Did I enjoy it? Yes, yes I did. Especially toward the end. I actually can’t wait to get the other two books in the series (Acceptance and Absolution) to find out more about what is even happening in this novel and the first. Although I suspect that the story is the journey, not the end point. I will enjoy the ride all the same! There is something about Jeff VanderMeer’s writing that I find fascinating. A mixture of imagination, clear description and something else… I find it hard to classify his novels into a specific genre. They feel like horror to me but they’re probably considered sci-fi. Or fantasy? Who knows.

This presents a little challenge in terms of my pledge. I want to read through my book list, but I don’t want to wait until I exhaust the whole list before I can finish the Southern Reach series. That’s why I am allowing myself to buy books that are related to the list.