Arboreality

4/5. A novella consisting of linked stories of the slow climate apocalypse in western Canada, focusing on the relationship between humans and trees.

Ah, lovely. I am often skeptical of these more literary speculative projects, but this one is a winner (literally, I picked it up because it won the Le Guin a few years ago and that award is reliably looking at interesting things). A sad elegy strung through with hope, a hard book about hard things, a beautiful book about beautiful things. It’s telling a multi-generational story of the warming world through ecology. The angles here are unexpected – an old man rewilding his abandoned neighborhood, a luthier making the last violin he can make, the surly keeper of a tree cathedral.

Recommended if you like that sort of thing, and can take this book’s occasionally too self-conscious of its symbology-ness.

Content notes: The slow dissolution of modern life and what that means for treating the sick and dying.

This Brutal moon

3/5. Third book in this scifi trilogy, really do not start here.

Damn, it didn’t land it. It didn’t terribly fumble it either, but.

Let’s back up. I really liked the first book in this trilogy, which you should absolutely go into unspoiled because the ride is worth it. But she had to do different modes with the next books for plot and structure and not repeating herself reasons. Unfortunately, I was glad to see these people again, but I think this whole series lost momentum and vitality. And the deeper this series got into the story of a remnant population barely clinging on after a genocide several decades ago, well. She says they aren’t supposed to be space Jews, but, like, girl. These books are doing that thing where they valorize an oppressed population and an oppressed culture in a way that is both satisfying and also uncomfortable, if you get me. Satisfying in the way a reductive viewpoint is satisfying. Uncomfortable in the way a reductive viewpoint is uncomfortable.

Also, I am not at all qualified to opine on this, but I’ve caught the edges of conversations from people who think she has valorized her space Jews right over the border into weird antisemitic trope land, which did jump out at me when ( spoilers for the end of the first book ). Anyway, do with that what you will.

Look, I’m complaining about this a lot, but I genuinely think the first book is doing cool stuff, and I genuinely think the whole series is thinking about identity and refugees and cultural violence and retribution and repair. All chewy, important stuff. Also, the way women and nonbinary people are allowed to be intense and obsessed with each other and over-the-top in the first book is the good shit. I’m glad I read it, even though the last book had serious POV bloat (way too many) and didn’t land with the force I wanted it to.

Content notes: Torture, violence, discussions of genocide, child loss.