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It’s the End of the World as The Alien Fungus Monsters Know It – And Nobody Feels Fine

Author: Iain Rob Wright

It’s the end now, for better or worse. Aaron and his intrepid cadre of friends have lost everything, recuperating with found family while also fighting depression. Is the world worth saving? After having experienced so much devastation, so much loss, do they really want to survive? Should humanity survive, when it has proven to be just as much of a monster as the Takers who have landed?

Annihilation is darker in tone than some of its predecessors, and at the beginning hope is soon demolished as the survivors discover just how evil mankind can be. They are also beleaguered, exhausted. Every dead Taker is just replaced by ten others, and it seems that the battle is both endless and pointless. But then, Aarron’s evolving abilities connect him to a Taker, and he finds out they are desperate. The war is turning . . . but the Takers are willing to take drastic measures that will kill many Takers too, but some will still survive. Mankind and the Blues, however, will not.

With a new goal in mind, the group returns to Manchester. Along the way, there are reunions and losses, moments of love and moments of treachery.

Annihilation is a suiting end to an epic series. Wright has created a world here of empathetic and believable people, flawed and struggling, yet connected. To see their desperation at this point is heartbreaking, but oddly realistic, although I would have appreciated if the religion/God slams had not been included, especially since the characters’ survival and their finding each other is nothing short of a miracle. The hopeless nihilism now being experienced, however, tracks with the sheer exhaustion of the characters and the seemingly endless round of bad news – slugs progressing to Greens progressing to Takers progressing to . . . well, you’ll see. Suffice it to say that it is an onslaught of cataclysmically bad luck, and this post-apocalyptic hellscape is only being made worse by man turning on man.

Image by Roger Casco from Pixabay

At the end of previous book, Turning Point, we also get the shocking return of Ryan, who makes a very appreciated and yet predictably deus-ex-machina appearance here. It’s imperfect, especially because the idea of Ryan surviving a shotgun to the stomach for days before a Blue wanders onto the scene makes very little sense, even in a world where we accept mutant zombie fungus people and alien invaders who can blast people into obliteration with arm pulses. Still . . . I never liked that Ryan was killed, and so I accepted his return. It fits nicely with Aaron’s evolution from a kid to a man to a hero.

Annihilation is less tight and targeted than Turning Point. The first part of the book is on-the-road wondering and despair with unnecessary vignettes about a group of feral people called The Natives and the introduction of two new characters. It’s a little too late to be adding more to the mixture, although Aaron’s interactions with Morgan help to paint his empathetic character even further and guide him away from despair back into a desire to live and fight.

The conclusion throws absolutely everything at the reader. We lose even more central people – people even more devastating to lose than Ryan. The author throws a few happy moments in there too, even admitted that they were consolation prizes in the conclusion, an apology for killing off (brutally!) a favorite.

Things go from bad to worse, and there for a while it looks like Wright is going to go full Shakespeare with an ending stacked with bodies and hopelessness. The series has just enough of that fatalism to make it entirely possible that humanity will not win. . . and maybe it doesn’t. You’ll have to read to find out.

In conclusion, I was so satisfied. I’ve enjoyed reading this series, engaging with Wright’s creativity and powerful writing, his ability to weave horror and action and sentimentally and even the occasional comedy into a sweeping story. The middle of the series lags a bit, but even then the characterization is strong, and we’re compelled to return, again and again, to this desperate world at war, to these people who despite everything still manage to maintain their humanity, find family, express love, and fight for what is right, even if they know that it is too late for themselves to ever enjoy it.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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