There is value to this, because while some readers claim to want SF to be only about “entertainment,” they often forget that all-night chat sessions are, for many of us, entertaining as hell, and it’s to VanderMeer’s eternal credit that he’s got the will and creative energy to provide those fans with that kind of story. But VanderMeer, if he has succeeded wildly at anything, directed his goals towards producing a story seen too rarely in spec-fic: the kind that keeps entire subreddits thriving and friends staying up until the wee hours of the morning engrossed in conversation. Was it an alien ark, sent by a dying race? Was there even an intention it would find our own world to settle on? Some of these answers are forthcoming. It is unpredictably benign, or hostile, can be both at once, and it moves with a purpose whose origins remain obscure. It has drawn hundreds into its mutated depths. On its own terms, Acceptance, the final volume, solves many mysteries, but suffers structurally from its division into three narrative threads that create a choppy sense of pacing and present readers with the inevitable choice of favoring one or more of the storylines over the others.Īrea X is the transformed, alien landscape somewhere along the American coast. Now complete and collected into a single volume, it will perhaps benefit from being read as a whole work, rather than a trilogy. The universe, when it comes knocking, will be stranger than you ever imagined, and for everything you believe you’ve figured out, a door has simply been opened to another excursion into the unknown and unfathomable.Īs a body of work, there has been very little like the Southern Reach Trilogy in spec-fic’s history. Jeff VanderMeer ends his weird fiction masterpiece on a note much like that on which it began. Tweets by piled on enigmas wrapped in puzzles. Book cover artwork is copyrighted by its respective artist and/or publisher.

Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer