I think Steve Erickson's "Days Between Stations" has a train that goes near Area X. I have not had my perceptions as warped, by a mainstream literary/SF mashup, since reading Erickson's superb book and its sequels/related pieces. VanderMeer's prose works to pull the reader into the inner life of the unnamed narrator (all the characters are unnamed, for in-universe valid reasons). On the surface of the story, if you go by the blurb, you might think it's another take on "The Dome" by King - an area mysteriously cut off, but this time we're following the activities of the agencies on the outside.

No, not at all. The only King that is close to this is the bizarrely unfocused wandering in the shifting sands and spaces and warped timeframes of his first "Dark Tower" book, "The Gunslinger". Yet we are neither in Mid-World nor Erickson's world - we're in what might be the Gulf Coast or the Florida Atlantic coast, though again the exact place, before the world changed in the event that turned it into Area X, is never named.

Didn't know of this series, nor of VanderMeer, till I read John Scalzi's recent "Big Idea" post about/by VanderMeer on the 2nd book, the just-published "Authority". Read the substantial excerpt of that at McMillan's site, and immediately popped over to Kobo to buy the first. Could not stop reading it.

Usually I like to let perceptions settle at the end of a book that has a definite sequel, that is part of a planned series. Often, because the author hasn't released it yet. Even if I come late to it, I like to wait a while, because the author didn't release in immediate sequence, thus wrote expecting a gap in the reader's memory. But with both the short publishing gap between early-2014's "Annihilation" and last week's "Authority", the second of his Southern Reach Trilogy, I want to stay in the still-altered mindset coming out of "Annihilation" when confronting "Authority". Wasn't in the budget to buy another full-priced (not overpriced but normal "traditionally published" ebook pricing) book this week, but I need to go back to Area X.