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wall that should not exist and appears to be alive. As he runs upstairs in terror, he sees that the border of Area X is moving, encroaching on the facility and leading with it a replica of the director. Control is the only member of
Southern Reach who reacts to this development with alarm, and he abandons the facility as Area X envelops it. Returning home to pack, he encounters his mother and learns more about what has been happening. Control also realizes the director's identity as the little girl in a photo found at the lighthouse in Area X. This completely alters his outlook, as it is now clear that she is somehow profoundly interlinked with the anomaly.
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videos) and discovers that there have been many more expeditions into Area X than have been disclosed to the public. The all-male 11th expedition alone had multiple iterations with slightly different control factors similar to a lab experiment, leading to the formation of an all-female 12th expedition to see how this composition would interact with Area X. The 12th expedition's biologist was the protagonist of the
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agents. Control finally meets the biologist at a remote location where she has unexpectedly created another portal to Area X at the bottom of a pool of water, a gateway that she believes has formed from a "brightness" she carried that has run its course through her. She jumps into the pool, and
Control, hearing a voice in his head urging him to follow her, also jumps.
294:-like in this tightening, increasingly paranoid focus. But where Poe kept his most vicious blows relatively oblique, VanderMeer drives them deep — albeit in a corkscrewing way that is no less cruel and exquisite. There’s a slower buildup of tension in this book than the first, possibly because it’s almost twice as long. The payoff is absolutely worth the patience.
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In his role as director, Control frequently encounters friction with the existing staff to various degrees: in particular, the assistant director Grace
Stevenson, who seems to have an emotional attachment to his predecessor. Control methodically sifts through the accumulated data (interviews, photos,
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Control visits the previous director's house and makes discoveries that hint at a connection to Area X. After returning to
Southern Reach headquarters, he has an unsettling interaction with one of the scientists in a hidden room. He tries to go to the science division but finds his path blocked by a
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Control suspects that he is under hypnosis and (correctly) surmises that his handler, "The Voice," is hypnotizing him to steer his investigation. He is able to throw off the effects of hypnosis and work more independently, but this alienates him from
Central, and he relies on his mother to protect
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Control also learns that the biologist has escaped
Central. Based on his intuition and knowledge of the biologist's background, Control travels to the site of an old field study she had conducted before she came to the Southern Reach, with Central close behind despite his efforts to dodge their
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The biologist mysteriously reappears in a vacant lot and is detained by the
Southern Reach for debriefing; Control begins interrogating her. Slowly, he begins to empathize with her and understand her interest in the area's ecosystem. However, she is uncooperative, insisting that she is not the
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and is isolated for safety; in truth, the region has been taken over by an unknown force changing the environment and ecosystem behind a largely impenetrable "border." He is a secret operative assigned by the mysterious
Central group which oversees the Southern Reach. He comes from a family of
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revolves around the operatives of the
Southern Reach agency. The agency is responsible for the investigation into the unexplained phenomena of Area X. The second book takes place in the human inhabited areas (unlike the first book,
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As in the first book, VanderMeer also performs a careful character study of one of the few people strange enough to contend (debatably) with Area X. This elevates the whole exercise into something more than just a
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biologist and requesting that
Control refers to her as Ghost Bird; after initially failing to gain any information about Area X or what happened there, his tactics become increasingly more unconventional.
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John "Control" Rodriguez takes over as the new director of the Southern Reach, a government agency formed to manage a coastal region named Area X. The public is led to believe that the region suffered an
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operatives: his mother and grandfather are prominent and influential members. Control reports to a handler called "The Voice" at Central over phone calls and e-mail.
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him from retaliation. Central forcibly removes the biologist from the Southern Reach, as they believe Control has developed an emotional attachment to her.
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a B+, saying that the story in Authority "elevates the series beyond bio-thriller to something truly compelling."
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is an expedition into the Southern Reach, the agency sending in the expeditions." It was released in May 2014.
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
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