Name: Acceptance
ISBN: 9780374104115

Jeff VanderMeer

In the cold winter of Area X, a new team embarks across the border on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition; and as they press deeper into the unknown the threat to the outside world becomes even more daunting.

A Novel

Acceptance

nawid

darby

“Because I’m alive,” she’d replied. “Because I’m walking through wilderness in a beautiful day.”

As a result, pain does not much bother me anymore; it gives me evidence of my ongoing existence, has saved me from those times when, otherwise, I might have stared so long at wind and rain and sea as to become nothing, to just disappear. 

Sabrina D. 

As a preacher he thought he had known a kind of peace, a kind of calling, but only after his self-exile, giving all of that up, had Saul truly found what he was looking for. It had taken more than a year for him to understand why: Preaching had been projecting out, imposing himself on the world, with the world projecting onto him. But tending to the lighthouse—that was a way of looking inward and it felt less arrogant. 

"Nothing.” Everything. Once the questions snuck in, whatever had been certain became uncertain. Questions opened the way for doubt. His father had told him that. "Don't let them ask questions. You're already giving them the answers, even if they don't know it."

But to you it’s deadly serious, especially a list of “conditions required for Area X to exist” that include

• an element of luck or chance in how the trigger was deployed 

• an attitude toward energy that we do not understand 

• an approach to language that we do not understand

Bodies could be beacons, too, Saul knew. A lighthouse was a fixed beacon for a fixed purpose; a person was a moving one. But people still emanated light in their way, still shone across the miles as a warning, an invitation, or even just a static signal. People opened up so they became a brightness, or they went dark. They turned their light inward sometimes, so you couldn’t see it, because they had no other choice.

Sometimes, too, other people gave you their light, and could seem to flicker, to be hardly visible at all, if no one took care of them. Because they’d given you too much and had nothing left for themselves. At the end, with his church, he’d felt like a beacon that had been drained of light, except for some guttering glimmer in the heart of him—the way the words shone out from his mouth, and it almost didn’t matter what light they created, not to his congregation, because they were looking at him, not listening.

Except it was. And from the wash and churn, the thrashing around him, a familiar hand grasped his drifting wrist and yanked him upward. So that he was not just a swirl of confused memory, a bruised body, a cipher, but apparently something worth saving, someone in the process of being saved.

You take a deep breath and relax into the landscape, walk along the shore of this lower heaven rejuvenated by its perfect stillness. Your legs are for a time no longer tired and you are afraid of nothing, not even Area X, and you have no room for memory or thought or anything except this moment, and this one, and the next.

“There is the sea, vast and spacious, and there the ships go to and fro.”

Sometimes Saul did miss the sermons, the cadence of them, the way he could raise the words up from within him and send them out, never severing the deep connection between them. Could name a thing and in naming it enter so many minds. But there had come a day during his ministry when he had no words left, when he knew he was enjoying the cadence of the sentences he spoke more than the meaning—and then he was lost for a time, swimming across an endless sea of doubt, certain he had failed. Because he had failed. Hellfire and apocalyptic visions, the coming destruction of the world by demons, could not sustain a man for long without robbing him of something, too. At the end, he did not know what he meant or what he believed, and so he had given it up in one prolonged shudder that cast off an entire life and fled as far south as he could, as far remote as well. Fleeing, too, his father, who had fed off that growing cult of personality, had been at once manipulative and envious, and that had been too much to bear for long: that a man so distant, who had projected so little light, should now reveal to Saul only those emotions he did not want.

“If you took away the insane people, no one would be left.” “Except me,” Charlie said. “Except me and, maybe, you.” “Except the birds and the deer and the otters.” “Except the hills and the lakes.” “Except the snakes and the ladders.”

The sun above was a huge gob of runny yellow. The waves were a rushing vibration in his awareness, but muffled.

Henry’s trudging across the sand toward the lighthouse had been a kind of travesty of progress, as he sagged and lurched and fought for purchase. Henry squinting against the glare, the wind half ripping his shirt from him—so big on him that the back of it surged right and left off his shoulders like a sail, as if mad to get free. It obscured the lagging Suzanne, whom Saul hadn’t even noticed at first. The sandpipers had hardly bothered with the usual nervous pitter-patter-glide away from Henry, choosing instead to poke around in the sand until the last moment and then take wing to escape the clumsy monster. Henry had looked in that moment like an awkward supplicant, a pilgrim come to worship.

As he searched for something he knew he probably wouldn’t recognize, he was reflecting that a man could fall apart from any number of ailments, and a bit of maintenance couldn’t hurt.

But that just hid the thought that came now in little surges of panic: that something was wrong, that he was more and more a stranger in his own skin, that perhaps something was beginning to look out through his eyes. Infestation was a thought that crept in at moments between wakefulness and sleep, sleep and wakefulness, drifting down the passageway between the two. There was the sense of something sliding more completely into place, and the feeling confused and frightened him.

At his back, the moon had filled utterly with blood and was plummeting to the Earth, descending in the midst of a flame so hot he could feel it at his back. The dead and the dying had taken up the cry of approaching oblivion.

No light came from the lighthouse, but raucous clusters of birds settling in for the night on the trees competed with the waves, their rude cries coming to her now over the wind. The trajectories of bats in the sky above seemed like something planned by a drunk navigator, their bodies obliterating stars in haphazard and unpredictable fashion.

But, in truth, standing there with Lowry, looking out across his domain through a long plate of tinted glass, you feel more as if you’re staring at a movie set: a collection of objects that without the animation of Lowry’s paranoia and fear, his projection of a story upon them, are inert and pathetic. No, not even a movie set, you realize. More like a seaside carnival in the winter, in the off-season, when even the beach is a poem about loneliness. How lonely is Lowry out here, surrounded by all of this?

’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

Acceptance (The Southern Reach Trilogy, Book 3)

My favorite of the initial Area X trilogy and a somewhat satisfying end to this whole thing (though there is a fourth prequel book).

Everyone loves "Annihilation" but I wasn't a huge fan; I liked elements but found Vandermeer's writing a bit bland. I had enough of a good time with that brief book to press on to the second.

"Authority" was largely a lot of the same, both the good and bad, though now largely removed was the draw of Area X as it doesn't take place in it. I felt the same at the end of book two, perhaps slightly worse, as I did when I finished book one.

I figured why not press onto the third book? I already owned it.

The third book has five narrators, albeit one is brief, which is quite the departure from the established solo narrator. Vadermeer has said that he wanted no single character to know Area X's mysteries, but that we readers could grasp it through bits from everyone we see. Well, we're as close to that info-gathering tempo as possible in this book.

Not only is there more information, the way it is told to us is Vandermeer's best. His prose and word choice feels the most inspired here, the most frantic, stressing, and dreadful. This is a conclusion and he really made it 

 like one. Despite reading that all three books were done simultaneously, this one must have been written last and after some writing exercises. If Vandermeer's other works can feel like this book's highs, then consider me onboard to check out more of him.

You know by a certain point that it won't end in some narrative dump about how Area X came to be and what its plan is. By the end, if you really want to figure out a "true" narrative for the alien place, you likely need to go back, reread, piece things together, and perhaps use your intuition. I don't think I will reread them, but from what I can gather from just my single time through, I had a good time on this ride and found it rewarding in the end. I will read the fourth book as well.

I recommend "Acceptance", though this is a hard recommendation because I wasn't a huge fan of the first two books. This is an interesting sci-fi world to explore, and if you're a fan of the genre, I'd say it's worth checking out after all.

Evan

My favorite of the initial Area X trilogy and a somewhat satisfying end to this whole thing (though there is a fourth prequel book).

  

Everyone loves "Annihilation" but I wasn't a huge fan; I liked elements but found Vandermeer's writing a bit bland. I had enough of a good time with that brief book to press on to the second.

"Authority" was largely a lot of the same, both the good and bad, though now largely removed was the draw of Area X as it doesn't take place in it. I felt the same at the end of book two, perhaps slightly worse, as I did when I finished book one.

I figured why not press onto the third book? I already owned it.

  

The third book has five narrators, albeit one is brief, which is quite the departure from the established solo narrator. Vadermeer has said that he wanted no single character to know Area X's mysteries, but that we readers could grasp it through bits from everyone we see. Well, we're as close to that info-gathering tempo as possible in this book.

Not only is there more information, the way it is told to us is Vandermeer's best. His prose and word choice feels the most inspired here, the most frantic, stressing, and dreadful. This is a conclusion and he really made it feel like one. Despite reading that all three books were done simultaneously, this one must have been written last and after some writing exercises. If Vandermeer's other works can feel like this book's highs, then consider me onboard to check out more of him.

  

You know by a certain point that it won't end in some narrative dump about how Area X came to be and what its plan is. By the end, if you really want to figure out a "true" narrative for the alien place, you likely need to go back, reread, piece things together, and perhaps use your intuition. I don't think I will reread them, but from what I can gather from just my single time through, I had a good time on this ride and found it rewarding in the end. I will read the fourth book as well.

  

I recommend "Acceptance", though this is a hard recommendation because I wasn't a huge fan of the first two books. This is an interesting sci-fi world to explore, and if you're a fan of the genre, I'd say it's worth checking out after all.

I loved the first two books of the series, but this one lost me a bit, maybe because of the mixed narratives. Again, more questions than answers, but this time in a more frustrating way 😆

Karolina

Unexpectedly my favorite of the trilogy. I felt this one was surprisingly poetic…not fluffy pretty prose, but straightforward and simple, yet beautiful nonetheless. 

The story still holds true to the main characters’ emotions or lack thereof, which is something I really admire about this series and the way the author writes intellectual female characters. 

Even though much of the mystery of Area X came to light, it somehow led to more questions and hypotheses 😵‍💫🤔

Laura Walden

Unexpectedly my favorite of the trilogy. I felt this one was surprisingly poetic…not fluffy pretty prose, but straightforward and simple, yet beautiful nonetheless. 

The story still holds true to the main characters’ emotions or lack thereof, which is something I really admire about this series and the way the author writes intellectual female characters. 

Even though much of the mystery of Area X came to light, it somehow led to more questions and hypotheses 😵‍💫🤔

My favorite of the SR series so far. Combines the cosmic with the mundane, the surreal with sensory realism. I love the characters, the setting, and the presentation. 

Chloe 

i know this book no longer concludes the southern reach series, but i am happy enough for it to be the end. no rush to absolution. the lighthouse keeper and the director sections are the more compelling ones, while i had no investment in control. not sure how to rate this, really. 

aisha

Anna 

** spoiler alert **
           závěrečný díl trilogie jižní zóna byl naštěstí milým překvapením. po druhém díle, který se odehrával ve své podstatě jen v kanceláři a v hospodě a já musela 300 stran poslouchat stížnosti vyhořelého detektiva, jsem se - docela pochopitelně - bála, že třetí díl bude stejně nudný, ne-li horší. díky bohu se ale hlavní postavy vrátily zpět do oblasti x a já jsem zas cítila stejnou hororovou atmosféru jako v prvním díle, který jsem si tak užila.
knížka byla vyprávěná z pohledu více hlavních postav, novinkou byl třeba strážce majáku. jakoby, ta atmosféra byla určitě úžasná a tajemná, celé to bylo takové zamotané a napínavé a člověk chtěl strašně moc zjistit, jak to vlastně bylo, ale... ve své podstatě jste se tam nic nového nedozvěděli. kniha skončila s poměrně otevřeným koncem a celé ty kapitoly z různých pohledů sice vyprávěly příběh, ale ten příběh nikam nesměřoval a skončil někde... uprostřed, nebo jak to říct.
nejzajímavější částí byl asi deník bioložky, to jsem si strašně užila a její zápisky mi hezky celou oblast x dokreslily, ale jinak.. no v podstatě mám pořád hodně otázek. 
knížce jsem nechala takto vysoký počet hlavně protože ten svět je prostě úžasně vymyšlený a originální a já to přečetla jedním dechem, ale jak jsem říkala, příběh skončil rozpracovaný a ponechaný svému osudu. 
vlastně jsem si teď vzpomněla, že měla vyjít čtvrtá kniha do série, ale autor ji ani nenapsal. tak to bude asi kvůli tomu a já se holt smířím s tím, že si oblast x nějak vysvětlím sama.
.
nechávám 4*/5*, série se mi vryla do paměti a myslím na ní ještě týdny po dočtení, kdy píšu tuhle recenzi. postavy byly dobře vykreslené a každá z nich ve mně něco zanechala. 
jen škoda, že se to pořádně neuzavřelo.

Ryan Mateyk

I want to keep this short but I'll start by saying this was a satisfying conclusion to this one-of-a-kind trilogy. I really did enjoy reading these novels, though they could be a bit tedious at times. I found this true with this book, especially Ghost Bird's narration. Vandermeer uses commas a bit excessively and it convoluted the narration for me. 

I really enjoyed the varying narrative perspectives in this book, especially the use of second person narration. I also really enjoyed the Lightkeeper's sections. There are still many unanswered questions, and even some new ideas that were introduced in this book were left as mysteries, but after three books, I've warmed to the fact that there is always going to mystery associated with Area X, for the characters and for the reader.

Last thing: I think I enjoyed this one of the most (or tied for first with Authority) of the trilogy because it seemed so much more human than the other books. We discovered traits and personalities that made the characters seem more real, versus the abstracts we'd been given previously.

Barış Yarsel

VanderMeer üretken bir yazar editör. hery yerde görünür olanlardan değil de, sürekli bir şeyler üreten cinsten. gençler için bilimkurgu fantezi edebiyat kampı da yapıyor birkaç yıldır.

bu üçlemesi, çorba gibi birçok konuyu gayet başarılı biçimde derli toplu, heyecanlı biçimde sunuyor. ekolojik felaketler, insanın doğayla, hayvanlarla ilişkisi, dünyadan soyutlanmış Bölge ile gizemli odalar, biyolojik fenomenler vs.

Dört kadından oluşan bir keşif ekibi, ki isimleri yerine mesleklerini biliriz, x bölgesi denilen ve tuhaf bir çevresel durumun olduğu bölgeyi araştırmaya gider. İlk kitapta bu keşif görevinin notlarını okuruz.

Ben üçlemeden çok ikincisini sevdim, Authority. Burada Kontrol isimli karakterin etrafında oldukça başarılı psikolojik gerilim örülmüş. keşfin yıllar sonrasına gidiyoruz. Anlatımdaki üslup tamamen değişiyor, bunu ayrıca sevdim.

Üçüncü kitap Acceptance’da üslup yine değişiyor. Üç farklı karakterin gözünden, anomaliyi bilimsel metotlarla çözmeye çalışan kurumu, bürokrasinin anlamlandıramadığı bir olay karşısında nasıl felce uğradığını okuyoruz.

Aynı zamanda bölgenin geçmişine gidiyor ve anomali öncesinde yaşananları öğreniyoruz. Kitap başarılı biçimde (ya da başarısız ?) bazı cevaplar verirken, havada bıraktığı konularla bölgeye bizim de kendimizce anlam katmamıza çalışmış gibi.

Lakin böylesi hikayelerde insan cevap istiyor, üzerime çözülmüş gizem at diyor. Ştrugatski biraderleri hatırlatan detaylar ve Lem benzerliği ise tuhaf, yazar bunları hiç okumadığını söylüyor. Bu da tuhaf:) Yazar anomalinin bir gün öncesini anlatan bir novella yazacak sanırım.

bir ekleme: bu üçleme Alfa Yayıncılık tarafından hızlıca çevrilip yayımlandı. Göz attığım kadarıyla da gayet iyi bir çeviri. Bu şartlarda hemen her kitabı yakalayıp çeviren yayıncılara da tebrikler. Mine Sarucan çevirisi.

I felt like a whole lot of nothing happened here. I'm no closer to necessarily understanding Area X as I was before; everyone just walked around or thought of something and then talked about what they thought about. It felt a little underwhelming in comparison to what I felt in the first and second books in this series.

Holly

Eitan Hershkovitz

Not as good as the second or first books. Very slow and boring. A lot of questions left unanswered. A lot of unnecessary background information that gives no additional supplement to the main story. The ending was kind of cool.

I could never expect the way it ended, I only wish there was more. 

Kimber Severance 

What a fun conclusion to this trilogy! I finished this yesterday and I have been sitting and thinking about it for the past 24 hours. 

Acceptance is an eerie and cerebral final act, we find out through multiple pov’s the birth of area x, the reason for area x and what happens within it. 

Overall this trilogy was such a fun read and left me still with questions and theories. I thoroughly enjoyed immersing into this atmospheric world and will still be thinking about it in the years to come. 

jaz ☁️

What a fun conclusion to this trilogy! I finished this yesterday and I have been sitting and thinking about it for the past 24 hours. 

Acceptance is an eerie and cerebral final act, we find out through multiple pov’s the birth of area x, the reason for area x and what happens within it. 

Overall this trilogy was such a fun read and left me still with questions and theories. I thoroughly enjoyed immersing into this atmospheric world and will still be thinking about it in the years to come. 

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.

The Southern Reach Trilogy #3

Ed Kay

Have rated all four books in this trilogy as 4 stars, though I'm still quite unsure about what I just experienced. Initially frustrated by the fact that there were never any easy answers, I've read a few reviews that point out that this isn't a straight science fiction text, but more of a "weird" fiction, a genre I'm not all that familiar with, but which apparently has less of a reliance on tying things up.

There's a lot to enjoy in here, particularly the writing style which is very hypnotic. It washes over you with a kind of steady, wave-like rhythm, appropriately, given the strong presence of the sea in the book - and hypnosis, of course.

This is a terrible review, partly because I feel this trilogy has put me in a kind of fugue state. As if I have been colonised by Area X and am not sure where my own interpretations and impressions end, and Area X itself begins.

It's very haunting, and I think will stay with me for a while. Not so that I can try to solve the mystery (I don't think that is possible) - rather, so that I can revel in it.

Dave | Storyphoria

I’ll save my thoughts on the series overall for their own discussion, but as a stand-alone I enjoyed Acceptance. It’s a thought provoking science fiction read that bucks the trend of having everything wrapped up with a nice little bow. VanderMeer makes you work for it some and I found myself going back to re-read sections not only for the story itself, but because I really enjoyed his choice of words at times. I can absolutely understand people feeling wholly unsatisfied with this book as the ending to the Southern Reach trilogy, however I appreciate a book(and a series) that leaves some meat on the bone for us to chew on after the final pages have been consumed.

If I had to boil this book down to just a few words or thoughts, it would be this. Acceptance was a chilling, low-fi/sci-fi full of atmospheric vibes and a world that is at once beautiful and brutally deadly. Nothing is given freely and you’ll feel like you earned those final pages by the time it’s over. It won’t be for everybody, it answers some, but not all, of your questions, but in the end it’s a beautiful look into a world where nature(of some variety) is simply trying to reclaim what has been lost to the tinkering of human-kind.

Hana 

Stephanie Highfield 

I was over this quite early on, but I had to finish it because the first 2 in the trilogy were so good! Was it worth it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

James Eaton

I read all 3 back to back to back. 

Ultimately it felt like one larger story. Each book has an interesting take on the area, the organization, the history, etc. 

So much more that could have been unearthed,
But it was a rewarding read.

Alfredo santos

This is the craziest trilogy I've ever read. 

This is because of several important points:

- The story is very superfluos and full of symbols, hidden meanings and a lot of semiotic stuff. 
- The prose is elegant, eloquent and absent. It's such a different way of writing, knowing that every word you read, is not going to mean anything, or going to mean a lot. Depends on your preference. This is so hard to describe so I recommend you go and read a bit for yourselves. 
- The overall meaning is to have an uncomprehended story. If that makes any sense. Words are not words, sometimes they are vessels, sometimes they mean something else entirely. 

So, either it's a master piece of uncomprehensible prose which fulfills it's exact purpose. And also leaves an open conclusion for suggestion mixed with perpetual entanglement, or it can be a crap story with a nice writing. Both opinions and conclusions are right for this trilogy.

nonchi

Na real é 3.5 🌟 mas os últimos 4 capítulos foram muito bons então fica 4, mesmo sendo anticlimatico pra caramba. 

Valeu como o primeiro livro de ficção estranha que eu li, mas não gostei de quase nenhum backstory apresentado pelos personagens. Só gostei mesmo foi o da Bióloga e o resto é sem graça e repetitivo. Todos vem de família problemática com pais charlatões, ninguém tem relacionamentos sólidos, Grace era a única que tava fazendo sentido do meio pro final... E eu nem gosto dela! 
Ninguém queria entender, tava todo mundo aceitando mesmo, e é isso que tem pra hoje. E tudo bem, é ficção estranha. 

Sobre o que a bióloga se tornou no final, fiquei triste. Ela não merecia isso não. E na minha cabeça o Controle virou o cervo de galho florido que apareceu na versão do filme, vlw flw.

It is winter in Area X, the mysterious wilderness that has defied explanation for thirty years, rebuffing expedition after expedition, refusing to reveal its secrets. As Area X expands, the agency tasked with investigating and overseeing it--the Southern Reach--has collapsed on itself in confusion. Now one last, desperate team crosses the border, determined to reach a remote island that may hold the answers they've been seeking. If they fail, the outer world is in peril. Meanwhile, Acceptance tunnels ever deeper into the circumstances surrounding the creation of Area X--what initiated this unnatural upheaval? Among the many who have tried, who has gotten close to understanding Area X--and who may have been corrupted by it? In this last installment of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may be solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound--or terrifying.

Fraser Simons

A pretty satisfying finale, less horrific than the others in that the answers demystify things such that it strips away what was scary. I actually would have maybe even liked more mystery. It’s still somewhat unknowable but what is given hampers what works so well. But as usual there is a couple bends in the road and cool stuff going on. My favourite is still by far and away the first book, though. 

It would have been much more effective to me if the chapter switching between different character perspectives didn’t tread over old ground. Especially in the case of the psychiatrist. Been waiting to learn about her for the entire time but 3/4 of the story lands with a thud because all the really twisty stuff was revealed previously, plus it’s done from a perspective I hate: where the author addresses the reader as though they’re a character. It takes me out of the fiction, it doesn’t embed me further.

Emmett

More conundrum than conclusion, but given that the expanse of the world VanderMeer has created defies even linguistic categorisation, one can only happily accept this brilliant, puzzling, answer-less end to the trilogy. It is the only ending this series can serve up that completes itself and sustains a reader's expectations.

jiaqi kang

** spoiler alert **
           i really did miss the biologist's voice and was so happy when she came back for a while

Sheila

WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Maxie Froelicher

It takes a lot to make me cry, but this book did. This whole trilogy is gorgeous, the visuals stunning and (even though I still have so many questions!) I couldn’t ask for a better ending.

Acceptance A Novel

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