Authority

The second book in the Southern Reach series is I assume considered in general a bit lesser, and I more-or-less agree with that. Annihilation was a powerful story of change and identity, and with powerful imagery and crazy worldbuilding. Authority I think was ultimately a bit more ambitious than that - VanderMeer tried to maintain a sense of deep, hidden meaning while hampering himself with an environment meant to be 2-dimensional at first glance, tropes of blank-faced men in suits doing secretive things. To a certain extent he succeeded, with some more subtle flourishes, but the intentional subversion of tropes I think ultimately weighed down the story a bit too much and in the end you get a novel that is a bit of a pulp and a bit of something else and not fully, breathlessly one or the other.