Published Feb. 14, 2001 by Fourth Estate Ltd.
For thirty years, a secret agency called the Southern Reach has monitored expeditions into Area X, a remote and lush terrain mysteriously sequestered from civilization. After the twelfth expedition, the Southern Reach is in disarray, and John Rodriguez is the team's newly appointed head. From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and more than two hundred hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the secrets of Area X begin to reveal themselves.
This book really pulled me in. It's not just horror, it's not just mystery, it's weird and eerie. There's a tension and unease that makes this book hard to put down, sucking you in, making you want to know more about what's going on, but never quite delivering any a real answer to the eerie agency of Area X...
Wow. This book has a very different mood from the first in the trilogy, but just like it it sucked me in from a slow and uncertain start to completely taking over head for a few days after I finished it. I love the simultaneous vividness and vagueness of the thing that looms over this trilogy's world, and the endless ambiguity of who "should" prevail through the whole story. Looking forward to the final book.
