Did you like authority?

I did actually, though not at first. I thought the stuff with Whitby's terriour (spelling?) and the airvent cave were interesting/spooky. I like the weird familial dynamics of the spy family and though I certainly didn't find the person of Control likeable in a literal way I enjoyed reading about this befuddled paranoid guilty failson. fumbling his way through stuff he doesn't understand did get repetitive but was interesting in the way the Southern Reach responded to him

what confused you?

I definitely did not fully follow the hypnosis (which I think was partly intended--hypnosis and it's limits are almost as confusing as Area X but the characters regard one as much not alien and the other as a technical tool so they get built in asymetry

what did you compare it to?

both books remind me of Philip K Dick, especially the dreamy ones In a Scanner Darkly, Three Stigmata, A Maze of Death, and also to Blindsight, which is a very heady hard-science-coded psi-fi novel. in the later, humans encountered an extra solar object with hostile architecture and there's a lot of hypnosis involved and overwriting personalities and superhuman managerial excellence in the case of Sartari and the Psychologist/The Director, the former being a secular vampire who is adept at reading and torturing humans. I like that Sartari and all vampires have a debilitating phobia of right angles which makes them fear crosses and how they weild the hypnotic triggers like charms.

which did you prefer?

book 1 was definitely more enjoyable, the subject of the Biologist made for a more compelling character study and Area X is more interesting close up while the Southern Reach is better at a distance for that length. so far any way. I'm curious to see how Anhilation will change in light of these new revelations. 12 expeditions did seem like too few.

other thoughts?

both the philosopher and schizophrenic believe there is a conspiracy in the text