Authority by Jeff VanderMeer

 

Authority

by Jeff VanderMeer

Authority is a better book than Annihilation. At least this one has character names and descriptions, which helped to invest me more in the characters.

However, something about the writing of these books isn't to my taste. I can only really pinpoint a couple reasons for why that is: the author never uses contractions, which is unnatural in regular speech patterns; far too many unnecessary asides in the sentences; I didn't like the characters; and there's just something about the construction of the prose that bothers me and is hard to read.

All that said, the second half of the book is better than the first. The biologist from the first book in the trilogy is a side character in this book, which is fine because I didn't have any sort of attachment to her. Control, the main character in this book and the director of this organization (whatever it is, that's how lost I was), is a more interesting and better-developed character. What these books do well is action and mystery, but I wanted more action and less mystery, I guess. All of the characters are unlikable, but Control becomes more interesting in the second half of Authority.

This book is barely 3.5 stars for me, only because it's better than the first book. I'll read the third book, which will probably take us back into Area X with Control and the biologist. I hope there's some sort of satisfying conclusion, and I hope VanderMeer gives me more of what worked in Authority. I can say that sci-fi is probably not the genre for me.