This has been the quickest read of the year so far, so it's safe to say that I loved it. I first watched the film around 6 years ago and adored it, and wanted to read the book every since. It is very different from the film and in a lot of ways they aren't comparable. They tell two different stories, and the horror is very different between the two. The film gives me a sense of wonder, almost an optimism in the midst of the horror. Whereas the book created such a sense of dread. It's short and only has 5 chapters so very easy to fly through. At first I thought I didn't like the writing style, it's quite simplistic(?) and told from a first person persepctive which gets very engorssing. I really liked how flashbacks/exposition about the main character's past was worked in, it really built out the biologist and made me hopefully about her inevitable end.

I LOVED the reveals about the Southern Reach organisation, they are so much more benign and inconsequential in the film (that's american military propoganda for you) and it was cool to set up many questions that I hope will be answered later in the series. The series was initially a trilogy, so I'm exited to see why VanderMeer wrote Absolution a decade after the original 8-month span release in 2014. I'm glad the biologist is the perspective that introduces us to Area X, as she sees in such a way that makes it beautiful. I hope the third book in the series, which is about another expidition, sees it in a different way, or reveals it? As it seems like the biologists senses can't really be trusted at any point in the book.