Reviews

there's some good stuff going on here--the ruminations on leftist politics and infighting, the questions of morality, the layers of lies all of the characters are tangled in--but it just didn't land for me. the pacing is WAY off. the ending is unforgivably short and unresolved considering the length of this. and generally, I just couldn't really get into it bc I just didn't enjoy reading most of the characters.

liacad's review against another edition

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mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

reliures's review against another edition

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4.0

Literary ecological thriller following Birnam Wood, a gardening collective as they stumbled across a farm that could make their enterprise a real success, until they realise it is also zone of interest for a certain Robert Lemoine, a mysterious American billionaire.

I really liked the themes in this book, about ecology, politics, capitalism, corruption, privilege, environment, etc

The book felt very wordy as in no chapters and long sentence but the writing felt easy to read.
This was a lot more political than I thought, and sometimes it felt too much, I think I would have preferred less dumps of political/social monologues/dialogues and more dispersed throughout the novel.
Most of the characters had positive and negative sides (like a bit insufferable and a bit naive) so they were entertaining to read especially Robert Lemoine because he felt like a proper James Bond villain.
Some of the other dialogues/descriptions felt too superfluous, so the pacing felt a bit off to me.

I did like the plot, the different point of views showing each major events, the different twists and I literally gasped at the end of part 2 where shit really hit the fan. The last 30 pages were insane, especially the last 5 and I actually liked the ending the author went for.

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