Otherworldly Reads Book Club: "Annihilation"

Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation is the first in a series of three books called the Southern Reach Trilogy. The story describes a team of four women who set out into an area known as Area X. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself. They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers--they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding--but it's the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.