Acceptance is the third and final novel in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy. The trilogy is reminiscent of a novelized version of the TV show LOST, complete with a strange land called “Area X” that’s fallen out of time and a covert agency that’s been setup to study it. Unlike LOST, all of the people who venture into the “anomaly” are volunteers; mundane people — aside from those trapped there when the anomaly first appeared — never go there, even by accident.
It’s a strange series of books that scratches that “novel of the weird” itch I had this summer. I’m 80% of the way through Acceptance, and it’s been the toughest of the three to read. That’s mostly because of how it flits between perspectives, jumping between two of the main characters as they navigate Area X then occasionally ricocheting to the past to look at two individuals who were directly connected to the emergency of the anomaly. One of those flashbacks is told in second person, present tense, which complements the book’s oddball nature, but is a bit disconcerting.