I read Annihilation in one long gulp. Having heard it was creepy beyond belief, I had initially discounted it (I can't *do* horror), and only stepped into the breach because Gina Rodriguez was going to be in the movie and I wanted to see it. So. 
 There were aspects of this I genuinely did like. I kept reading straight through to the end, though a good part of that was me going in search of answers I realized weren't going to be given. There were observations I liked, and I genuinely liked some of the strange blind areas of each character, the senseless things they did or didn't worry about, and wondering which part of the plot was the cause of that. (I'm trying not to leave spoilers here.) 
 But so much of the book didn't pay off. What is Area X and how was it made? We are no closer to discovering that by the end of the book. Why are the expeditions all sent in the same was as the 12th? We have no clue. What about the people who came back? We have one fact and nothing more. 
 In some ways, I genuinely liked the main character. I liked the way she was outside the boundaries of what was expected, and how little was made of that in conjunction with her gender (she was allowed just to BE in a way female characters almost never are). However, I saw no real change in her. In part, this is part and parcel with the events that took place before she went into Area X - how would we know what had changed? How would we know who she was? 
 I guess, in the end, it felt like watching a documentary that had baffled the videographers: the author captured a story, and it felt real, and despite every fantastical piece it seemed to fit together in an internal logic, but the meaning was lost. The reason why the story was told never emerged.