Authority - Jeff VanderMeer

If you didn't already know how dangerous a place Area X is from Annihilation, the first of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, by the time you start reading Authority and get the first glimpse of the world outside that is trying to explore and contain it, the full horror of the phenomenon starts to become apparent. By the end of the Authority too, the mystery, the danger and the scope of the trilogy's concept takes a leap to another level, but in-between it has to be said, there's a lot of confusion and inconsistency in this middle section of the work as a whole.

Annihilation took us straight into Area X with an expedition exploring a section of costal landscape that exhibits strange and dangerous phenomena, posing a threat to the Southern Reach. Previous expeditions have been unsuccessful and have resulted in deaths, disappearances and damage to individuals who have been part of the exploration teams. In Authority, a new director called Control, has been assigned to investigate and interrogate members of the expedition covered in Annihilation, an expedition that resulted in the death of the team leader, who it turns out was the previous director. It's the strange behaviour of the biologist that intrigues Control, the woman - who calls now calls herself Ghost Bird - having evidently experienced and being capable of recalling more than previous visitors to Area X.

If the first book in the trilogy was an intriguing opening that left many questions enticingly unanswered, Authority gives a little more background and history into the appearance of Area X, the nature of the region, and the fates of previous expeditions and attempts to understand and contain the region, but it doesn't really provide many answers. While Area X remains the centre of interest, Authority tends to work around it, and doesn't at this stage go where you might expect the middle part of the trilogy might take you. Much of the book deals with Control's ambiguous mission, part of it a spying operation, part of it a battle of wits with the assistant director, and much of it connected to Control's personal and family background, particularly with his mother, who is also an important official for the Southern Reach.

VanderMeer's focus (or lack of focus) and his writing style in Authority don't allow answers to be easily found. It's still difficult to establish any concrete impression of the world that this is all taking place in, what exactly the Southern Reach is, and how the government and its agents operate, particularly as hypnosis, psychosis, espionage and inter-factional rivalry complicates matters considerably. As for Area X, ...well, by the times the mists start clearing at the end of this second part, the alien phenomenon reasserts itself and extends its significance quite dramatically. Where this takes things is anyone's guess, so despite the middle section being far from satisfactory, the intrigue to see this through to the conclusion remains. I suspect however that we're just being strung along, and are unlikely to see any meaningful resolution here.