If Cormac Easton’s mission logs on the Ishiguro pulled you in as the crew vanished one by one, you’ll love the biologist’s journal in Annihilation. Her matter-of-fact notes warp as the expedition into Area X unravels, secrets multiply, and even identity begins to blur—echoing the way Cormac’s account turns suspect as events repeat and reality slips.

Like Cormac alone on the Ishiguro, Kris Kelvin is isolated aboard a remote station where the alien ocean manifests his buried guilt. As Rheya returns and the crew frays, the novel drills into conscience and perception with the same claustrophobic pressure that crushed Cormac after each crewmate’s death.

If the tight focus on Cormac’s solitary struggle aboard the Ishiguro worked for you, this delivers that same suffocating intensity. Gyre descends alone into an alien cave system with only Em on comms—deceptions, dwindling supplies, and mounting dread mirror the ship’s narrowing corridors and Cormac’s increasingly desperate choices.

If you were hooked by Cormac’s recorded logs and how they frame each failure on the Ishiguro, Mark Watney’s sol-by-sol entries will hit that same nerve—only with a different flavor. The intimate logbook voice, technical constraints, and one-man problem-solving create the same immediate immersion in a life-or-death situation.

If the repeating events and shifting truths in Cormac’s account grabbed you, this time-twisting thriller doubles down. NCIS agent Shannon Moss navigates branching timelines and an approaching "Terminus," where each investigation reframes the last—much like how the Ishiguro’s mission replays with new, unsettling implications.