[1] Acceptance jumps around in time and between the perspectives of several characters from the first two novels in the Southern Reach Series.

In the years before Area X, Saul Evans — the Lighthouse Keeper introduced in Annihilation — builds a friendship with nine-year-old Gloria, the girl who becomes the psychologist of the 12th expedition and the former Director of the Southern Reach.

Saul begins to have vivid nightmares: he imagines walking into his lighthouse only to discover it has transformed into the Tower.

Gloria leaves to be with her father just before Saul returns to the lighthouse at night and sees a glowing light emanating from the trapdoor beside the lens.

She has a strained relationship with Lowry, the only survivor of the first expedition and the man responsible for organizing each subsequent journey into Area X.

However, as seen in Annihilation, the Director dies before Saul can receive her message: an apology for never returning to the lighthouse as a child, thanks for his friendship and guidance, and a promise always to remember him as the Keeper of the Light.

They wander in the wilderness before arriving at Failure Island, where they encounter Grace Stevenson (the assistant director of the Southern Reach, whom Control had previously worked with).

Grace reveals why Area X grows so quickly: time moves faster inside the border during specific "cosmic" shifts that seem to happen randomly.

She has held off the takeover by the brightness, using pain as a way for her body to resist it, and believes that her eventual change will likely be more radical, perhaps into something like the moaning creature.

Ghost Bird — herself a copy of the biologist generated by Area X — encounters her original self, transformed into a staggeringly immense, hyper-sentient, whale-like creature, unbound by physical law and covered with eyes.

As he comes closer to the light at the bottom of the Tower, he realizes that it is the flower that pricked Saul and created Area X.

"[3] The Guardian called it a potent conclusion to the trilogy[4] while Kirkus gave the work a starred review.

[5] During its opening week, Acceptance was ranked as #16 on the New York Times Best Sellers List for Paperback Trade Fiction.

[6] The New York Times wrote a full page review calling the book "pure reading pleasure" and added that "VanderMeer has created an immersive and wonderfully realized world.