Profoundly weird, in a good way. Annihilation is equal parts beautiful and terrifying. Jeff VanderMeer manages to render Area X seriously alien, which is quite the feat on its own, but he then engages with the concept of alienness at every turn. The biologist, devoted to understanding animal behavior, able to become enamored with the smallest puddle as she sees it for the biome with a million living things it is, realizing that her understanding fails at a crown-of-thorns starfish, which is so profoundly alien to her that her whole being becomes unmoored. The biologist and her husband both remaining alienated from each other. Maybe "uncanny" might be more fitting to describe the setting than "alien", because ultimately Annihilation posits that Area X is our natural world and our natural world is Area X, that humans are not separate from animals and nature, that we are them and yet cannot ever fully understand them, and that is both a terrifying and beautiful revelation. In the end, Area X is a puddle where the fantastic and horrifying lives, breathes, thrives. A puddle that refuses to be confined to its borders, a biotope filled with the sublime. How scary to realize we cannot make sense of something, that our observation of tiny creatures in a tidal pool does not set us apart from them, and that the only constant in nature is relentless, ruthless change. Change is both terrifying and inevitable. Where is the point when you are no longer human? Where is the point where you still are, just enough? Does it even matter? Does "human" denote good? Peaceful? Wise? Evidently not. Does it denote a unique way of loving and feeling through language and time? Maybe. But maybe not in a way that matters.