Authority: A Novel

The second novel in the Southern Reach trilogy, Authority picks up after the events of the first novel, Annihilation. Annihilation follows an unnamed biologist as she sets out on the 12th expedition into Area X, which is a bizarre, ecologically mysterious area of land with a shimmering border. She volunteered for the mission after her husband returned from the 11th expedition, a secretive military mission, one year after leaving. Most of the other people who had explored Area X never returned; many experienced hallucinations while there or killed each other. The biologist’s husband remembered little of Area X. He died of cancer soon after his return, which spurred the biologist to explore Area X.

Expeditions into Area X are led by a government agency known as the Southern Reach. The Reach trains the biologist and three other women, a psychologist, an anthropologist, and a surveyor. The all-women team enters the eerie border of Area X. After days of hiking through the wilderness, they find The Tower, an underground tunnel. The Tower’s walls have strange writing in bioluminescent plant material, and they also notice tracks. While studying the tunnel, the biologist inhales spores from the plants on the walls. These spores later transform her into a part of Area X, making her glow, giving her immunity to hypnosis, heightening her senses, and allowing her to heal quickly. The women observe odd ecological phenomena, such as mutated plants, animals, and doppelganger plants. The biologist studies her samples and finds human cells in everything.

One morning, the anthropologist goes missing. The psychologist is shaken but says the anthropologist was too scared and returned to the Southern Reach facility. The biologist and surveyor explore The Tower again, finding the anthropologist’s broken, dead body. The biologist thinks whatever is doing the writing on the walls, which she calls the Crawler, killed the anthropologist. When they return to camp, the psychologist is missing, as are supplies and weapons. The biologist notices a lighthouse glowing in the distance. While the surveyor stays behind, she walks miles to the lighthouse and discovers journals from past expeditioners, including her husband.

She finds the psychologist, who has jumped from the top of the lighthouse. The psychologist screams “annihilation” at her, which is a hypnotically programmed trigger word meant to induce her to commit suicide, but the biologist is immune to her hypnosis thanks to Area X’s spores. The psychologist thought the biologist was chasing her, likely hallucinating, and confirms the anthropologist was murdered by the creature in The Tower. After the psychologist dies, the biologist returns to base camp. The now mentally unstable surveyor shoots her, and the biologist fires back and kills her. She then reads her husband’s journal, which details how his entire team observed doppelgangers of themselves entering The Tower, which made them abandon their mission. Her husband crossed back through the border following the coastline.

She returns to The Tower underground to discover the Crawler, who is writing on the walls. Her brain cannot comprehend the words; she feels her mind being “probed” and “burned.” She sees the lighthouse keeper’s face deep within the Crawler’s horrific body and runs away, though the Crawler leaves her alone. In Annihilation’s conclusion, the biologist decides to remain in Area X. She wants to find signs of her husband’s past journey. She leaves her journal and her husband’s journal in the lighthouse.

Authority begins after the biologist’s expedition and follows protagonist Control (John Rodriguez), the new director of the Southern Reach, as he tries to solve Area X’s mysteries. The final book, Acceptance, gives insight into the past, revealing the lighthouse keeper’s life and how Area X came to be, starting with the anomaly in his lighthouse. It also follows Control, Ghost Bird, and Grace as they explore Area X, searching for the lost biologist and answers while the mutated area spreads and infects more life forms. The present-day characters experience multiple struggles in Area X, including finding notebooks of evidence and meeting the biologist in an unexpected, changed form. Along with their explorations in the present, chapters from the lighthouse keeper Saul Evan’s point of view and Cynthia’s in the past round out the trilogy’s conclusion.