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4.14 AVERAGE


"Beautiful how it all pours out, after dark, after light" - Maggie Rogers

If I could remember every word of this book, my life would be infinitely better. Also, I will never look at a tree the same way ever again.
emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
adventurous emotional informative medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
informative medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

“This is not our world with trees in it. It's a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.” This book was so beautiful and bittersweet. I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time. Time to go plant some seeds
emotional reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

4.5 stars. Read it too slowly to properly keep hold of the narrative but it was very beautiful. And powerful. Made me think a little too much about all the trees dying though so I don’t think I wanted to pick it up as much
hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character

A good illustration of some of the reasons I find this platform difficult: it's asking me if the cast of characters are diverse. Well, what do you consider diverse? Some of the characters in this are trees. How diverse is that?

It's a great, all-encompassing story about a group of people who have links to trees, many of whom are involved in an attempt to safeguard a forest from a public works program. In a sense, it's an eco-thriller like The Monkey Wrench Gang or The Ministry of the Future, but it's maybe a bit more silly because so many of the characters act like the trees are sentient - and in fact, the author seems to think so too, judging by an interview I listened to. Why though? Do we think the only way of persuading the reader to want to care about trees is by making out that, given enough time, they could probably do NYT Connections? 

 OK, well, mildly annoying, but it doesn't detract from the wider point of the book.