There was a tower, there were pine forests, a salt marsh and a lighthouse, but I slid nonetheless. VanderMeer, though, did it without any Ha'Panthro Roads or Lords of Gargan-Mlxyplyx. You know what it was like? It was like one of those bad fantasy novels from the 1970s that always seemed to open with a line like "Malchior Hunsnuffle, the 7th Lord of Gargan-Mlxyplyx, traveled down the lonely Ha'Panthro Road through the land of Volgor toward the castle of Zalcathrazor." You read something like that and you're on ice from the very start, fishtailing wildly through someone else's freaked-up daydream. The words were like oil sliding around in my brain. There was something about it - something in the tone or voice or pacing of the first sentence, the first handful of paragraphs - that was off-putting. I sat down with Jeff VanderMeer's new book, Annihilation, on a snowy afternoon, cracked it open, and hated it from word one. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Annihilation Author Jeff Vandermeer
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