Annihilation

“There were four of us: a biologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor, and a psychologist. I was the biologist.” 

This sentence captures the compact, direct style of writing VanderMeer employs. Essential information is frequently delivered in simple and  terse, but often elegant, sentences.

“The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.” 

These lines capture the mood of the novel well; beauty and desolation often intertwine.

“I saw this in vast and intricate detail as we all stood there, and looking back, I mark it as the first irrational thought I had once we had reached our destination.” 

The narrator’s concern for whether her thoughts are rational or irrational speaks both to her conditioning and to the heightened level of watchfulness with which she must conduct herself while around the other expedition members. It also speaks to a certain level of distrust between them, which will ultimately erupt in violence.