Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I venture to say: this is not sci-fi! This is the horror of the unknown, wherein eldritch forces twist the world and warp our very selves!
It's slow like a roller coaster ratcheting up a hill. Vandermeer lets the story drip out slowly, as we strain to make sense of things along with our hero. The book drifts further and further into a dreamlike state, where some mysterious and seemingly inevitable fate looms. It evokes a lot of the same uncanny as The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, another great bite-sized horror.
This is a very short read, and though it's the first of a trilogy it stands alone, provided you don't need every question answered. The concept carried me through to the last page, but I felt no need to unravel things any further. (I was also warned off the second and third installments by a trusted friend, so the Wikipedia plot summary was enough for me.)
If you liked this flavour of horror, I highly recommend Nick Cutter, specifically Little Heaven. Think: similar Eldritch Horror but throw in a Jim Jones-style cult from whom three murderous weirdos try to rescue a little kid.
Also:
Squads have hypnotic triggers implanted by their commanders - not really a spoiler - which I'd never run across before, until one day later when I started The Forever War, from almost fifty years earlier. I'm clearly behind on my tropes.
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