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    Acceptance
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    Acceptance
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    Acceptance
    Ebook338 pages5 hours

    Acceptance

    By Jeff VanderMeer

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    ’A contemporary masterpiece’ Guardian

    THE THIRD VOLUME OF THE EXTRAORDINARY SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY – NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ALEX GARLAND (EX MACHINA) AND STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN, OSCAR ISAAC, GINA RODRIGUEZ AND TESSA THOMPSON

    It is winter in Area X. A new team embarks across the border, on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition who may have been left behind. As they press deeper into the unknown – navigating new terrain and new challenges – the threat to the outside world becomes only more daunting. In this last instalment of the Southern Reach Trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may have been solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound – or terrifying.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateSep 2, 2014
    ISBN9780007553549
    Unavailable
    Acceptance
    Author

    Jeff VanderMeer

    Jeff VanderMeer is an award-winning novelist and editor. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in the Library of America’s American Fantastic Tales and in multiple year’s-best anthologies. He writes non-fiction for the Washington Post, the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, and the Guardian, among others. He grew up in the Fiji Islands and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife.

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    Reviews for Acceptance

    3.5/5

    50 ratings58 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Acceptance is the final book in the Southern Reach trilogy, which starts with Annihilation. You definitely need to have read the prior books before picking up Acceptance. This review will also contain some inevitable spoilers for the previous two books.Acceptance switches between four different POVs. The ongoing narrative is continued by Ghost Bird and Control, who are traveling within Area X. The other two POV sections are flashbacks, focusing on the former Director and the lighthouse keeper, Saul Evans.As the final book in the trilogy, Acceptance had a lot riding on it. Would there be any answers as to Area X? Would there be an actual conclusion. The answer is both yes and no. Some more information is revealed, but the end itself is very vague whereas I would have liked it to be more concrete. The fates of the characters were left unresolved, and questions still linger. For instance, what is the relationship between Area X and names? This last book doesn’t feel like it’s the end of a trilogy – there’s just not enough resolution for that.Or maybe Vandermeer is saying that Area X is ultimately unknowable, beyond the influence of humankind and that the only logical path is to accept the change being wrought on the world. However, if that’s the case I still would have liked some resolutions for the characters themselves. I also think that there hints at the end that something may have changed, but results were never shown.Possibly one of the problems was that the few answers that were provided were mostly given through the flashbacks. Until the very end, Control and Ghost Bird honestly don’t do a whole lot.While Acceptance had less of the sense of creeping unease I’d felt with the prior books, it was still very well written. The prose may have ended up being the highlight of this series.Acceptance wasn’t wholly satisfying, but I still enjoyed this trilogy. However, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone looking for concrete answers to the many mysteries this trilogy raises.Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
    • 2/5
      The same frustrations I experienced in Authority are seen here; a disjointed story, a narrative style that doesn't match as well as in the 1st book and a pace that is slow as paint drying. The atmosphere is incredible, VanderMeer is very good at invoking a sense of confusion, dread and paranoia. But at this point, I wanted more structure in the plot and instead I got 3 different stories, all happening at different times. With how little answers there already are (which I'm fine with in theory), I felt this was a poor choice. A disappointing conclusion, but I'm glad I read the trilogy overall. The movie is, by far, the best thing to come out of it, and the 1st book (Annihilation) was terrific. I definitely would consider VanderMeer's other books, but for now, relieved that I can move onto something else.
    • 4/5
      What a ride! I feel like my brain is about to explode, but in the best possible way.
    • 4/5
      A fantastic end to an unsettling but rewarding trilogy. I'm not sure that I ever really understood what was going on, but this was grounded enough to make it worthwhile. It's a meditation on identity and man's relationship to nature and it's both comforting and highly disturbing. I love these gorgeous editions that I bought and I'm sure this series will haunt me for a while.
    • 3/5
      Wait.. What? This book was supposed to finish the series but it left me with more questions:
      Did the S&SB really start this all? And HOW? Was Jack and Severance the root of it all? What happened with Control when he went through? Does Grace and Ghostbird make it back? Is Lowerey working for area X? Is the earth still there? Come on!!
    • 3/5
      I lost momentum in this one compared to the first two in the series - didn't have as much of page-turner feel for me - some of the language, imagery and characterization is not to be missed but you may need to give yourself more time w this one than you predict
    • 1/5
      I've been putting off reading the final volume in this series for a while, and I was hoping that seeing the movie adaptation of the first book would jumpstart my desire to finish this trilogy. Alas, I found the movie to be a dull mess. It took someone putting a hold on my library copy to finally make me power through Acceptance. Or suffer through, rather.

      As with the second book, I found my biggest obstacle to finishing was be the immediate and unstoppable need to fall asleep whenever I read the book while sitting or lying down. I usually have problems napping in the afternoon, but Acceptance worked wonders there.

      Having sidelined the biologist and her 2.0 version in much of the second novel, I was hoping the author would bring her back in force for the conclusion. But, no, two thirds of the book are two different flashback sequences filling in the past of the psychologist when she was a child and when she was running the Southern Reach before the 12th expedition. Boring as dirt, the both of them.

      And the present day sequences are filled with nothing but pointless meandering. The looming dread of the first volume is gone. The mythology has no payoff, tied up with a whimper after the explosive bang that ended the second volume. I invoked the TV series Lost when I reviewed volume one. Unfortunately, this book ends as poorly as that series.

      Huge disappointment.
    • 5/5
      'Acceptance', the final part of Jeff Vandermeer's 'Southern Reach' trilogy, brings the events of the previous two volumes to a conclusion of sorts; yet there are no clear answers. There are five protagonists; two, Control and Ghost Bird are shown in the present; two more, the Director we encountered in the first volume and Grace, the Deputy Director have their stories related both in flashback and (in the case of Grace) in the present day; and we are shown events from the origin of Area X through the viewpoint of the lighthouse keeper, Saul. The coastal village shown in the lighthouse keeper's flashback sections seems typical of the makeshift communities common to shorelands, the sort of communities where strange things can happen and are a part of the life and lore of the sea.Throughout, there are revelations, but these throw little light on the what and the why of events. The Kafkaesque quotient is maintained; relationships between past and present, here and there emerge and the reader is liable to exclaim "Oh! So THAT'S why...." at various times. Yet there are no definitive answers, or rather no one definitive answer. I increasingly feel that Area X and Central are not located in a geographical location we are familiar with. It feels like coastal America, but there are clues to the geography and they give the wrong answers. Perhaps this is all part of the process of dislocation, of putting the reader off balance. The echoes of other works by other hands remain: Kafka (as I said), Algis Budrys' 'Rogue Moon' and the Strugatsky Brothers' 'Roadside Picnic' spring to mind at different times, as do William Hope Hodgson's uncanny tales of nautical weirdness; and of course his tour de force 'The Night Land'.At the end of the story, we have seen how different individuals have reacted to Area X, and vice versa. The experienced reader would never have expected definitive answers anyway; that much should have been obvious from the first two books. Whilst reading this trilogy, I have been re-watching the surreal 1960s television show 'The Prisoner' (starring Patrick McGoohan), and the more one looks at that, the more obvious it becomes that the answer to that show's central question - "Who is Number One?" - could never have been a villain in an underground lair, or some agency that was plonked down in The Village as a sort of 'Satanas ex machina' to be revealed out of nowhere as the answer to all the questions. Equally, just saying that Area X was a time-slip, or an alien incursion, or an ecological disaster, would be short-changing the reader precisely because a clear-cut answer will not do, will not explain why the various characters reacted as they did. This is not a simple adventure tale with a simple, single answer at the end of it, and any attempt to read it as such will fail. Rather, it is a study of bureaucracies and the people who have to work in them and with them, and how inadequate they may be when faced with the unknown. And so, I suspect it will be necessary to read the whole trilogy a second time to reflect on what we have learnt.
    • 2/5
      Unfortunately this is a serious let down for a third and final book in the trilogy. Book One could have stood on its own but book three, Acceptance, feels like the tle end of a trilogy dragged out of the author. I like narratives witch switch from person to person but Acceptance not only does that but flips from past to present without any segues. If you haven't rad books 1 & 2 you will be completely lost and if you have read them, you may still be completely lost. This book solves no riddles nor answers any questions I culd read pages and not care what I read. I feel like the author had to pull this one out long and slow. Book One is fantastic and highly recommended. I can't say don't read the whole trilogy but after book 2 it's all downhill. My favourite current author disappoints.
    • 3/5
      I'd be willing to consider the first volume further, but reluctant to include either of the other two
    • 4/5
      Acceptance is the last part of the Southern Reach trilogy. It serves both as coda and as overture; in chapters covering Area X's advent, we learn about Saul Evans, who will become the Crawler of Annihilation, and Gloria, eventually to be the Southern Reach's director, but just an adolescent girl at the beginning.But the majority of the story concerns Control, who briefly supervised the Reach after Gloria's departure, and Ghost Bird, the doppelganger of Annihilation's biologist. They returned to Area X at the end of the middle book, and are now exploring parts of it we haven't seen before. They don't learn what may have happened to the outside world: <>perhaps Area X has swallowed it up<>. They do learn what became of the biologist. They find her journal, which tells of her decades of solitary existence in Area X after the events of Annihilation - which were only weeks ago to Control and Ghost Bird, time being yet another of the Earthly things that go haywire in the Area. This chapter is self-contained and moving, and seems to round off the biologist's tale. But no stories are really ending here. The mystery of Area X won't allow that. Each character goes off to an unknown fate. Weird fiction generally withholds simple resolution; mere humans probably wouldn't understand the intrusion from beyond anyway. What we do understand are the feelings and drives of VanderMeer's vividly imagined protagonists. Like the previous books, not an easy story, but one that's well done.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the first two books in this series a LOT more than this one. At first, I appreciated the fact that this book was sort of tying up loose ends.... but it took SO FREAKING LONG to do it!!! It just went on and on, and I found myself, about 1/2 way through, wishing it was done already. I think there were parts, too, that got a little too sciency on me. That's always my fear with sci-fi books... the first two were pretty good about keeping that to a minimum, but this last one was a bit out of control. Also, it presented so many people's points of view, it was a little hard to follow. Usually I'm okay with that, but this time, it was just a little too scattered. I almost wished there hadn't been this third novel.
    • 4/5
      Rating: 4* of fiveIt's a frustrating thing to wait for a book, a series, an idea to cohere. When it fails to happen, the result is usually a sense of letdown at the very least, and not infrequently outrage and betrayal. And here I am rating this incoherent (in the nice and accurate sense) final volume as the best of the lot.Wonders will never cease.The Big Reveal of this series doesn't need to be coherent (again used in the nice and accurate sense). It is big enough, titanic in fact, that any attempt to fit it into a pleasantly proportioned package would merely be absurd. This is a rare case of a resolution needing enough room to encompass the beginning all over again, since there is no conceivable way the results of Area X's existence for the reasons it exists will stop reverberating in each and every iteration of each and every possible future that flows from it.Was that vague enough for you? See, there's nothing I can be specific about except at the certainty of spoilering every development in each book. That being the modern era's Worst Imaginable Sin, I'm avoiding the lynch mobs that roam freely over the internet. Let me give you a clue that won't be a clue unless you've read the series: The parable that seemed tantalizingly just beyond reach is here full-blown at last. What Area X represents in all its strangeness and its inscrutability can't be made any clearer than it is in the book, even though as you're turning the last few pages you're going to have a raft more questions than you started the book with. And that's a good thing.Philosophically VanderMeer's point, well one of his points anyway, could not possibly be more timely than it is right now on the cusp of the Arctic's final descent into deglaciation. A piece of the planet is in reality changing before our (appalled) gaze into something that isn't quite set yet. The reasons aren't mysterious, in the case of the Arctic, but the consequences are equally bizarre, unpredictable, random. The planet isn't going to remain the same. The consequences for some, even many, individuals are going to be as condign as they are in the book. The authorities are as nugatory in the face of out planetary changes as they are in the book. The public is as...oblivious? unconcerned? flip?...as is the shadowy, gesturally indicated public of the book.This series of books isn't a Rubik's cube of a story. It's a Seurat painting of lore. Enjoy that? This is a series for you.
    • 4/5
      Acceptance is an especially apt name for this final volume in the trilogy. Because in the end, it seems, that there are no final answers, no clear explanations, no real way to fight against Area X. No matter how it started, no matter what you do, Area X will win. As inexorable as death, evolution, entropy.

      This book features four POVs, the new one being the lighthouse keeper. It is impossible not to like the lighthouse keeper, to not want to throttle the obnoxious Science and Seance people. His story is one of slow creeping horror, piling on infinitesimally until the dam breaks into a deluge of epic proportions - to my mind the most horrifying scene of the entire series.

      There are definitely a lot of unanswered questions at the end of this volume, the kind of thing that can drive readers crazy. But to my mind, it's clear that none of those questions matter. There is only Area X, and there is only one thing to do -- accept it, and live on its terms. There are no other real options.
    • 1/5
      Falls completely flat. My hopes that it would make up for book 2 of the trilogy being awful were cruelly dashed. I still love the ideas introduced in book 1, but it's too bad that the author wasn't able to do something with the great premise.
    • 4/5
      The final installment in the Southern Reach Trilogy. Storylines from past and present come together to reveal the secrets of how Area X was formed and what will become of it and those who explore it. In the end, I found the story mildly interesting, but not overly compelling. I listened to most of it on audio and found my mind wandering fairly often. Perhaps it would have been better in print.
    • 2/5
      I had a really hard time getting through this book. I like the first two books in the series, but found myself no longer caring about the characters from the previous stories. The two stars are for the Lighthouse Keeper and the addition of his storyline. If I wasn't listening to the audiobook I probably would have just stopped reading. Too many weird characters going in too many directions. Audio-Overdrive
    • 3/5
      Area X remains a mystery to the end. Like the ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey, this trilogy will leave you with a lot of questions at the end. I am sort of on the fence as to whether I liked it or not. Glad I read it at least.
    • 4/5
      Those looking for tidy conclusions or meaningful revelations as to the setting, look elsewhere. Each of these books asks the same questions or sets of questions, examines them from different perspectives, and in the absence of external facts, simply moves the goalposts further out, mirroring the existential human experience and our part in it as we explore the space we find ourselves in.
    • 5/5
      This book, and the first two which bring us to it, delighted and disturbed me in the best ways.
    • 4/5
      4,4 stars

      this is a series i'm sure i'll re-read some day, and i'll take my time with it properly. this is also a series i have a really hard time describing or reviewing, so i'm just going to leave it at "i loved it, and i finished reading it while crying and not really knowing why i was doing so."
    • 4/5
      This is a strong conclusion to the series. I definitely had questions, but I appreciated the symmetry of the narrative. I liked reading all three books fairly close together, as this kept the narrative fresh in my mind. It was smart of VanderMeer to change up his narrative style for each book.
    • 5/5
      I've never been more confused nor more in love. The writing in this book is gorgeous and challenging. Fantastic end to an amazing trilogy.
    • 4/5
      So I finally finished this book after reading the first two in the trilogy.Perhaps I just don't have the appreciation for fiction yet or perhaps the story just wasn't right for me but I can't say I feel very satisfied in the end. This book was definitely better than the second but did drag on a bit. I will say that it wasn't unpleasant to read the writing style was enjoyable and there was a good pace with this book. It's more of a dissatisfactory ending that kinda ruined it for me.Overall, if you made it through the second book and weren't too upset. Why not finish off with this one. But don't feel like you're missing out on too much if you only read the first one.
    • 4/5
      This is a satisfying conclusion the Southern Reach Trilogy. The novel is told from the perspective of four characters, The Lighthouse Keeper, The Director, Ghost Bird, and Control. The Lighthouse Keeper’s story is about the very beginning of the strange phenomena known as Area X. The Director of the Southern Reach research facility has a connection to Area X and the Lighthouse Keeper that makes her job personal. Ghost Bird is a double of the Biologist from the twelfth expedition and understands Area X better than anyone. Control is a pawn who has been used by others throughout his life and is drawn to helping Ghost Bird. The Southern Reach series is like one long novel that has been broken into three books. The first book gives you a glimpse of Area X. The second story is about the people researching Area X. The last book gives you more of an idea of how Area X came into being, but keeps it mysterious, as everything truly alien should be.
    • 3/5
      I don't like loose ends and unexplained stuff. Ultimately, you are left with no answers as to what this was all about.
    • 3/5
      The final book in the Southern Reach Trilogy follows all the main POVs introduced in the previous books. The book goes into more of how the characters feel in relation to Area X, while unlocking some of the mysteries. It is definitely mystifying, but I feel like the 2nd and 3rd book didn't catch the magic of the 1st book. This book jumps around a lot more, from character to character, past to present. Covered a lot of interesting ideas. Not a horror series, but contains horror elements.
    • 4/5
      The only reason this is getting 4 stars instead of 5 is that I prefer an ending where (almost) everything is wrapped up and I understand (most) of what happened and what I just read. This is definitely not the case with this last book in the Southern Reach trilogy. What follows is a review of the entire trilogy. You can read my other reviews on ouroborosfreelance.com

      The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer is beautifully written. And, well, weird.

      I very rarely buy books at full retail price anymore. But after multiple recommendations from people I trust, I decided to buy Annihilation and give it a try. (Plus, those covers - hard to resist!)



      Annihilation follows a group of “explorers” as they go into an area in the southern United States called Area X. No one knows what Area X is exactly, even though it has been part of the landscape for over 30 years. Sometimes people come back from their expeditions, sometimes not. There’s a lighthouse, lots of suspicious behavior and loads of crazy developments. The book could be read as a stand alone, but there is also a cliff-hanger, so...

      Immediately upon finishing Annihilation, I bought Authority and then Acceptance. Full price, at my local bookstore. Each book is written in a different style and from different character points of view. I can only say that reading these books is like an intense and beautiful fever dream. (I know I’m not giving you much of an idea about plot, but I’m not sure I could do it justice or that I fully understand what happened yet. So unhelpful.)

      If you enjoy experimental fiction, alternate realities, strange events, science fiction, mysteries, really excellent writing, conspiracy theories, monsters and/or unexplained phenomena, and if you are totally okay with stories with no definitive ending or an absolute explanation of what has happened, you will enjoy this trilogy! And even if you don’t currently like these things, you should still try this out - just for fun!

      When you are done, you can go join the conversation online about what really happened and what you actually read. Also, look for the movie when it is released later this year.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this series but I wished the final book gave me more answers. Sometimes I’ll read books again that leave me still needing answers. I feel that this series will be one of them.
    • 4/5
      Acceptance, book three in the Southern Reach Trilogy, tie together the stand alone novels that were Authority (book one) and Annihilation (book two). Control and the Biologist(or her clone), the Director and her expedition into Area X and the early history of the Area as well as the tale of the Lighthouse and its Keeper are brought to their final conclusion in Acceptance.Expedition after expedition has been sent into Area X, only to return lost. Their memories of the interior of the wilderness vague and uncertain. But what is known is that the Area is growing and encroaching further into the surrounding lands. But after thirty years, The Southern Reach project is no closer to understanding exactly what has taken place. Desperately, Control decides to crossover into Area X accompanied by the Biologist who escaped from the wilderness on the expedition that entered it before. Only he knows that she is not the biologist that entered Area X. Instead she is a clone of some type, created in Area X to be the Biologist on the outside. Can he trust her? There is also the missing Assistant Director Grace and what role will she play in the secrets of Area X. Her dislike of Control constantly creating a riff between what they can accomplish in Area X. What will Control find as he ventures into the rapidly expanding wilderness? A wilderness; that has the power to create its own replicas of those who enter it and has the ability to mutate whatever it comes in contact with.The first two novels in this trilogy are very much stand alone stories. The Biologist and her expedition the main characters of the first novel, Authority. Control the main character of the second novel, Annihilation. Both novels are written quite differently though they carry forward the story that is the Southern Reach Trilogy. The first more adventurous as a scientific expedition is sent into Area X to investigate the mutations on the environment and the elusive tunnel and Lighthouse of the island. The second deals with the repercussions of that expedition and the politics within the secret government agency known as the Southern Reach Project and its study of Area X. Acceptance picks up right where book two left off with the added storyline of the Lighthouse Keeper and the original Director and her history of Area X. How both she and the Lighthouse Keeper were on the island that became Area X before it changed. How they may hold the secrets of what brought about the change itself.VanderMeer does an excellent job with the pacing as he flows from one narrative to the next. At one portion of the book even balancing the narrative of three different characters at three different times in the evolution of Area X. Not an easy feat yet he does it very well. The theme and storyline also flow well and there is never a time in this story that you stop and say, "Okay I'm lost now". But yet there is also never a time when you really say, "Okay I get it now" either. And that is the weakness with Acceptance. What exactly created Area X is left somewhat vague and where it goes from here isn't really addressed either. Was it something supernatural, something alien, something man made that got out of control or has nature herself finally said enough and created an environment as hostile as it is beautiful.Area X is not just a setting in this trilogy but a central character as well and throughout the story she is mysterious and shifting. In the final book one would expect there to be a clearer resolution but there is not. It is just there and its growing. Like the B movie Blob, a shapeless but intelligent force on the move. But the Why and How are not answered. And after three books and some really good storytelling, I really would like to know the why and how.But don't let this dissuade you. The Southern Reach Trilogy is an excellent science fiction novel, a throwback to the days when technology couldn't solve everything and some things are just beyond our comprehension.A very good read.