This is a prequel to Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance). It, uh... There's things, you see. And those things happen. Maybe? Probably. Probably some of them happen. But maybe not, or at least not in the same world as the original Southern Reach books. Or do they? There's a swamp town where experiments are being conducted, and things go badly for them. There's spies trying to piece together those badly-gone things, and their things also go badly. Then we see the first expedition into Area X, with spies inserted to pick up the pieces of both badly-went fiascos, and would you believe that things aren't especially rosy for them either?

This book feels at times like it's just playing within the scope of Area X as a concept, and at times it feels like pulpy horror, and other times still it feels like it's trying to act as a multiversal bridge between Vandermeer's various worlds (I see some Borne here, and some Hummingbird Salamander, and I bet I could find some Ambergris if I looked hard enough). And the whole thing feels nonsensical and off the rails almost from the first page. This is a really delicate tightrope walk through material that could feel indulgent to the point of masturbatory, but instead mostly works. The few areas where it doesn't mostly come down to the disjointed nature of the story's chunks not really feeling like a cohesive whole.