Acceptance: A Novel (The Southern Reach Trilogy)

Such an upset. Minor spoilers ahead.

The first book was brilliant. Regardless of the douchey negativity Vandermeer expresses toward H.P. Lovecraft he quite obviously took cues from his writing and ideas of cosmic terror which made Annihilation so wonderfully scary and mysterious. Authority, the second book in the series, slowed the pace down but was still great in its own way, playing out more like a spy novel with the scares and mystery peppered in. But this third entry is a disaster from start to finish. More than half of the book is flashbacks that really don’t move the story along at all. It honestly feels as though Vandermeer became bored with his own story. The dialogue is rough and unrealistic with many characters straight up ignoring questions they are asked as if that is how people actually interact, not to mention the words “leviathans” and “cormorants” are way over used adding to the sense of the authors boredom with the story. On a side note; we get it, you like nature and global warming is a thing... now move the story along please. Overall if you read the first two books you won’t find anything new in this third entry.

I had preordered Borne but canceled after reading this and will not be pursueing anymore of Vandermeer work. Unlike many movies that ruin books I’m hoping that the movie stray far enough away from the third book that they might actually tell a good story with the final entry.

Don’t bother buying, if you must read it find a way to read it online or borrow it from the library or a friend. Not worth the money.

A satisfying, if not immediately gripping ending to the Southern Reach trilogy. The threads of the story that could possibly be tied up are tied up. There are some great character moments from characters you wouldn't expect from reading the first two books. My only real critique is that it lacks the driving energy of the first book and the creeping horror of the second. Read it.

I really, really enjoyed this trilogy. An intriguing mixture of Lost, Lovecraft, and (Robert) Ludlum. The whole series was very well-written, with great attention to detail. Perhaps my favorite part of the third book was the development of a key character that had really only been alluded to in books 1 and 2. The third book left me wanting more stories from this world. I'll definitely read more by Jeff VanderMeer.

Same as everyone else, the first two books were ok but this one was hard to read, and answered very little questions I had. I was not a fan at all, I may see the movies to see if the film brings any closure.

Chaotic. Baffling. Got to the end of the trilogy and still didn’t know what had transpired. But I’m sure that was by design. Biology tends to defy our best attempts to understand it. Maybe that’s the point? Or maybe these books were written for people more clever than I am.

I think every writer has words and images that they return to. I thought it spoke to the heart of this series that the words and concepts that seem to return repeatedly are compost, colonizing, and stitching. They all work themselves neatly into the secret heart of the madness that seethes within every inch of Area X. I’m frankly surprised to see a story such as this trilogy that can maintain that Lovecraftian sense of madness and horror while also providing just enough explanation to satisfy a modern audience.

I found Saul’s story particularly interesting. Even though it’s largely a means to an end for a fascinating reveal, Vandermeer gives Saul plenty of personality and layers, as well as a connection to the modern-day story through the Director/the Psychologist.

The original Annihilation is still my favorite of the trilogy, but the story as a whole is fantastic. There’s enough detail that I think it will reward re-reading a time or two as well.

The combination of Thoreau and apocalypse is unusually jarring, especially when taken wit's the idea of the world softly evolving without us and it being the same non-event to the rest of the world that most extinctions are to us. Welcome to our possible relative insignificance. As for the thoughts and writing, they will be with me for a very, very long time.

Want a story that goes nowhere, explains nothing and everything all at once, uses big words to repeatedly tell you to be amazed at non-events? Then read Acceptance! Otherwise, await it like you’d avoid Area X.

While the premise, writing style, characters, and descriptions of the inexplicable in the Southern Reach Trilogy all make for page-turners, I look forward to the day when someone can explain to me what the heck I just read! Maybe they'll dumb it down for people like me in the movie version. :)

Jeff V is a very talented writer, able to conjure up the emotional feel of an extraordinary environment and characters. Fabulous descriptions. The trilogy is great - except the ending. Huh? That's it? I do hope there is a second trilogy...

I bought all three books based on good reviews. They must have read other books. Since I had already bought them I struggled my way through.
Totally pointless. It was like an exercise in descriptive writing with almost no plot and certainly no explanation. To create a mystery with no explanation is just irritating.

Not much happens in this trilogy, but an unfurling of lives and how they intertwine, with a sci-fi twist that keeps you guessing until the end. this is deep character study, in the face of unknowns and terrior.

1st book was interesting. Tolerated the 2nd. Don't waste your time on the 3rd. I quit 3/4 of the way through. The author jumps around way to much and never gets to a point. The author is overly descriptive of insignificant items.

I am uncertain where to start with this review. The writing style Vandermeer uses is great, but the style is also hard to pin down with so many influences in there and yet a great deal more of originality. Is this a mystery? Fantasy? Sci-fi? Southern Gothic? Biblical? Political commentary? All of the above is possibly the best insight I can give, but effectively blended. I read the book in just a couple of sittings, so the story definitely held my attention. I am working on the third book of the trilogy now.

Bringing together characters from previous books, Acceptance answers many questions but still raises some more. Big things happen. More action this time around. Scary, trippy, and amazing minimalistic and poetic writing.

This was one of the best and most beautifully written series of books I've ever read. A lot of people will be annoyed at the ambiguity and remaining questions. It's not about the answers, it's about the lack of our ability to understand the answers. That's the whole point of the series. Things we just can't comprehend. Accept it (see what I did there) and embrace the ambiguity while enjoying the writing.

The series are ok... the first book the best. The only reason i read the the second and third is because I had to finish the series because I started the series. In my opinion Jeff has some way better books.

A fitting ending to a dense, unique story. The author does a nice job of tying multiple stories, character arcs, time periods, and perspectives together into an engaging, thought-provoking story with a rich mythology and history.

You have to understand that, at this point, a clear explanation of Area X is not forthcoming. That being said, this third installment does not disappoint. A weirdly beautiful, strangely terrifying, and satisfyingly enigmatic conclusion to a series of books that will not soon recede from memory.

After reading books 1 and 2, looking forward to a great ending I was so disappointed. No real conclusion, explanation of mysterious happenings or anything satisfying about the trilogy. Way too bad, the first book was great.

All throughout this novel I stopped and thought, "wait, what?" and not in a good way. Plot holes abound. I believe the author intended to be mysterious with certain characters but they end up rather undeveloped and confusing. No questions are answered, more questions are raised.

Anyone hoping for answers or clarity in Acceptance, the final entry in the Southern Reach series, was probably frustrated and irritated to no small degree. Instead, Acceptance moves around in time, following the mysterious lighthouse keeper in his final days before the "arrival" of Area X, catching up with Control and his companion after the end of Authority, and filling in some of the gaps that we've discovered along the way in the series. And as anyone who read the opening book in the series might expect, Acceptance ends as enigmatically as it all began, giving us hints, clues, and ripples moving away from events that we're never quite clear on and never fully comprehending. It's an ending that could be frustrating and infuriating for so many reasons, but it seems appropriate for the Southern Reach series, a trilogy which has always been about confronting the unknown and realizing that some things will ultimately be incomprehensible to us, no matter how much we think we know. It's a Lovecraftian idea, really, and at Acceptance's finest moments, it channels that vibe perfectly, whether it's the way he handles the arrival of Area X (in what becomes one of the most disturbing and nightmarish scenes of the series), the enigmatic climax, or the eerie, inexplicable touches that he peppers the book with but never pushes too far. As a trilogy, the Southern Reach is hard to explain; it's obvious that the first book is the best, and in some ways, the series never really needed a second or third volume. But taken as a whole, they create a fascinating mosaic effect, giving us a slew of pieces that add up to something incomprehensible and unsettling - and maybe all the more so because it feels so close to understandable, and yet so far. In some ways, it's a series I admire more than I truly like, Annihilation excepted, and yet I can't deny that as Acceptance picked up steam, I was entranced by its utterly alien world and its uncanny way of burrowing under my skin and never leaving. It's not a series that's for all tastes, and if you're looking for answers, you'll hate it. But for those who admire the atmosphere and unease of truly weird fiction, Acceptance is a perfect final chapter in this strange, unsettling series.

I just finished "Acceptance" by Jeff Vandermeer, the concluding volume in his Southern Reach trilogy.
All in all a satisfying conclusion from this remarkable series, one of the few weird stories that are a true success in (long) novel length, and this one is even crafted like a literary novel.
Different from the previous 2 volumes are the multiple viewpoints, including the difficult to do well 2nd person form. But it is all well done, even if sometimes there is some vagueness -which I also noticed in volume 1, and not in the crisp volume 2. This occasional feeling of vagueness precludes in my opinion the trilogy to be a true masterpiece (I also always felt it being overhyped), but it is very very good indeed. I found it truly atmospheric as well.
It is also a conclusion, we have a better idea about the underlying mystery, even while everything is not explained or even inferred - I don't mind that residual mystery. Though part of the residual mystery is because of the occasional vagueness that I mentioned above. In a way the story structure is reminding me of the Lost tv series (crossed with Lovecraft's "The colour out of space"): multiple viewpoints, and a mystery that spirals further and further out of control, yet at the end enough is understood. I must say that the conclusion of Acceptance is a lot more satisfying than that of Lost though !
I understood that the movie rights have been bought by Ridley Scott's company. Now if it ever gets adapted, I rather hope it will be done as a good compact TV series like True Detective. That could work well. Reducing the story to one movie would only give a superficial feel.
In short: a recommended read for amateurs of weird fiction, esp. if you do not want to start reading unfinished series, that is not an issue anymore.

Jeff Vandermeer’s Acceptance completes the Southern Reach Trilogy with detailed descriptions and complex sentences, sucking us into a world that’s changing. Here is where we expect answers, demand resolutions to the why those changes occur and what will happen to the major characters: the Biologist, Control, the Lighthouse Keeper, the Psychologist, and her assistant, Grace. Yet here is where we find true changes; changes in perspective on the landscapes of Area X, and changes in point of view.

The first book, Annihilation, is written from the first-person point of view of the Biologist on the twelfth expedition into Area X. Authority, the second book, is written from the limited third-person point of view of Control as he struggles in his new position as Director of Southern Reach. As changes have occurred within Area X, the border expanding, the wildlife being absorbed and mutated, so do changes in perspective occur within the book. Acceptance includes multiple points of view: the Biologist’s first-person perspective AND the third-person limited from Control’s eyes. Acceptance adds the third-person point of view through the Lighthouse Keeper and we see the Psychologist’s childhood in ground zero of Area X and learn about the strange Science and Séance Brigade through his eyes. But the changes don’t stop there. A second-person point of view is added which observes the Psychologist prior to the twelfth expedition. The unknown voice speaks directly to the Psychologist and we have to wonder who this new speaker is? We can only assume it is the voice of Area X’s creator, but this is never confirmed. This whole jumping back and forth between different types of viewpoints creates a feeling of unease in the reader and pulls you into the chaos and confusion of those expedition members who came back from Area X different, changed, damage psychologically and physically so that they died in less than a year. All accept for Lowry, who continues his deranged pursuit of conquering Area X from the safe distance of Central…or is it a controlled lab so his own changes can be easily observed?

The affect is unnerving as we scramble over these changes in point of view, changes in Area X and changes in us, because of the answers we are compelled to seek. Like Control, who clutches Whitby’s terroir report, we seek answers to our questions: Who or what is behind the changes in Area X? What does it mean for humanity? But like the Lighthouse Keeper’s father told him, “Once the questions snuck in, whatever had been certain became uncertain. Questions opened the way for doubt.” So we follow the Lighthouse Keeper into the cryptic world of Area X as it impregnates Earth with – we know not what - and are only partially satisfied with the answers.

Answers, like candy, often leave us with more questions, and though this is true in the world of Jeff Vandermeer’s Acceptance, it is perhaps the most original dystopian I have read in a long time. The writing style, the characters and the plot are compelling and definitely worth the read!

Rhodes FitzWilliam

Bringing almost to grip, almost into full coherency, almost into the confines of logic, science or plain belief, a complex, inherently open-ended landscape of reality; one that humanity is probably incapable of gripping, cohering, confining, that is, without being transposed in the process.

(this is really more of an overview of the trilogy, i don't want to get spoilery but i loved it all)

Annihilation is a first-person story by an unnamed biologist- nobody in the story has names, they are simply biologist, anthropologist, surveyor, and psychologist- in an expedition to a poorly understood place somewhere called Area X on the forgotten coast.

It has a hallucinatory intensity that allows moments of lovecraftian horror to have an almost unbearable quiet beauty at the same time.

Authority is the story of the man brought in to run the government agency that sends the expeditions into Area X as he struggles to decipher the work of his predecessors and how his own past may connect him to Area X after the return of the biologist from the prior expedition. It is a strangely intimate tale of an increasingly neglected bureaucracy trying to process unknowable horrors.

Acceptance lives up to its name and offers few answers for any of the mysteries that came before and instead pulls back in time and place to find the characters from the other novels across various times and places and becomes a series of stories of the importance of quiet diligence, loving care and self-sacrifice for those around you in the face of any kind of unknown, from the mundane to the monstrous.

Please read these, oh my god.

Bottom line, I had every intention to read VanderMeer's most recent book after finishing this trilogy because I liked the first two Southern Reach books so much... but now after this... I'll be moving on to something else.

As a general rule, I don't like flashbacks as a literary device. I gave all the flashbacks in the first two books a pass because they were helping with character development. But, wow, at least two thirds of Acceptance was flashbacks. It took so much away from progressing the story forward. I constantly felt like I was being taken out of the action.

And yikes, the awkward "first person talking to yourself" voice of the psychologist chapters... such a wrecking ball for the flow of the book. It just kept reminding me... "oh right, I'm reading a book, and now the author is trying to do something clever".

Also, I guess, good try on all the perspective switching and attempting something new for the third book? But, Acceptance is not like the movie, Snatch, where many characters' story lines converge to a big climax all at once. The perspectives in this book were just jumping from timeframe to timeframe, and it really ruined the momentum. I loved so much how, in the first two books, the characters were figuring things out as they went.... in the third book, however, it was just like author talking to reader "oh and btw, you should know this other stuff because it's important." Main characters just fell to the wayside.

Such a let down in story telling after the first two.

Only saving grace: definitely not predictable.