Annihilation
Jeff VanderMeer
Terror done right
Four women, a biologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor, and a psychologist, enter Area X to investigate it. Names are never used. The story is told in the first person by the biologist. What is Area X? We don't know, exactly. You get there by crossing a border, whose nature we never learn -- the biologist has no memories of it. Aside from the members of this expedition, Area X is deserted. There have been 12 previous expeditions -- this is number thirteen. They have maps and guidelines about how to behave once inside.
Things get weird very soon. I'm not going to be any more specific than that. Even if I were not worried about spoiling, I'm not sure I could explain. The weird stuff never becomes clear. Although there is no ending cliff-hanger, we don't get closure. We learn some things, sure, but at the end we have more questions than we had at the start.
Steven King defines "terror" thus:
Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...
Terror ought to be at the heart of every suspense/horror novel. It is not, because most authors are not good at it. Most authors can't resist the urge to raise the curtain a little too high, to reveal too much. Annihilation and Jeff VanderMeer get it right.
I picked up Annihilation because it's the first novel in the Southern Reach trilogy (which now consists of four novels, with the addition of the prequel Absolution). Southern Reach is a finalist for the 2025 Best Series Hugo, newly eligible because the prequel was published in 2024. I am glad that WSFS brought it to my attention. I intend to continue with the series.