This is a hard book for me to figure out how to write about! That will be (part of) my excuse for why it took me so long to actually write this post.
Authority is the second book in the Southern Reach trilogy that begins with Annihilation. I went into the second book having been slightly sort of spoiled for something because of a plot point that a book club member had seen on wikipedia and repeated before I said that I was planning to read the whole trilogy and so didn't want spoilers, but honestly I feel like having had any expectation for what the rest of the trilogy would be made the second book even more disorienting. After spending the entire first book with the biologist as our narrator, Authority is told from the perspective of a complete new character. John Rodriguez, who is identified as Control in much the same way that the biologist is simply the biologist, is the new director at Southern Reach, and he's been sent there in order to find out what happened during the biologist's expedition. Similarly to the first book, there are layers after layers of disorientation and unreliable narratives that slowly peel back, but unlike the first book one of the main (and most frustrating) obstacles is that of bureaucracy. I constantly wanted to just get to the part where I knew what was going on in a very different way than I did with the first book, because the mystery of the first book is inherent and the mystery of the second book felt man-made in a way that was infinitely more infuriating, to me.
It was fascinating to feel how defensive I was of the biologist whenever Control would attempt to speak with her; she was mine, even though the first book is careful to maintain a distance, and I felt like I knew the truth of her experience and Control never would, even though every narrator in these books, both internally and externally, has been the definition of unreliable. By the end of the book, however, it made me desperate to know what would be happening to and with both of them. I don't know if the final book of the trilogy will reframe how I see this book in the same way that this book changed how I think of the first one, but I'm definitely anxious to finally get to the front of the line of my library's hold list.
Grade: B
Authority is the second book in the Southern Reach trilogy that begins with Annihilation. I went into the second book having been slightly sort of spoiled for something because of a plot point that a book club member had seen on wikipedia and repeated before I said that I was planning to read the whole trilogy and so didn't want spoilers, but honestly I feel like having had any expectation for what the rest of the trilogy would be made the second book even more disorienting. After spending the entire first book with the biologist as our narrator, Authority is told from the perspective of a complete new character. John Rodriguez, who is identified as Control in much the same way that the biologist is simply the biologist, is the new director at Southern Reach, and he's been sent there in order to find out what happened during the biologist's expedition. Similarly to the first book, there are layers after layers of disorientation and unreliable narratives that slowly peel back, but unlike the first book one of the main (and most frustrating) obstacles is that of bureaucracy. I constantly wanted to just get to the part where I knew what was going on in a very different way than I did with the first book, because the mystery of the first book is inherent and the mystery of the second book felt man-made in a way that was infinitely more infuriating, to me.
It was fascinating to feel how defensive I was of the biologist whenever Control would attempt to speak with her; she was mine, even though the first book is careful to maintain a distance, and I felt like I knew the truth of her experience and Control never would, even though every narrator in these books, both internally and externally, has been the definition of unreliable. By the end of the book, however, it made me desperate to know what would be happening to and with both of them. I don't know if the final book of the trilogy will reframe how I see this book in the same way that this book changed how I think of the first one, but I'm definitely anxious to finally get to the front of the line of my library's hold list.
Grade: B
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