kaffeekatze 's review for:

All Tomorrows: The Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man by Nemo Ramjet
3.0
challenging dark mysterious reflective sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: N/A
Loveable characters: N/A
Diverse cast of characters: N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
This is a quick read, or in my case listen cause I stumbled upon the audiobook online. Written as a grand retrospective narrative of human development in space, it doesn't really make sense to approach it looking for character development, or diversity, or a sophisticated novel-like style. So I was more paying attention to how convincing I found this story, whether I liked the themes, etc. 
I found it difficult to get into because a lot of the time, I got the impression that it simplified evolution and ecosystems/biospheres, and imposed too many rigid limitations on their adaptability. Likewise, it uses these big concepts like 'intelligence' and 'consciousness' without really going into much more detail about them, which is why the themes fell flat for me in this regard. If your book is at its core about humanity/human-ness, you have to discuss those concepts in more detail to say something meaningful. 
One example of this, for me, were the mantelopes. The narrator describes how the discrepancy between their mental and physical capacities robbed them of their capability to act human. So, at that point of the text, I concluded that to the narrator, being human requires one's mental and physical capabilites to go hand in hand. (Someone else pointed out on goodreads that in this dimension, the text puts forward a view of humanity that is based on ableist assumptions.) At the end of the narrative, though, it seems like the narrator's view of humanity is more broad and bound to things like community. I felt like it was a bit inconsistent in that regard.

At the same time, I appreciated the way the text really felt like it was pushing the margins of body horror by combining it with huge dimensions of space and temporality and the rupturing of societal continuity. It also dealt with a bunch of themes I found really interesting: the parallels between different societies wrt how they view and interact with their environment, who they consider to be akin to themselves and, conversely, which subjectivities they cannot even acknowledge. You can always catch me with topics like ecocide, terraforming, colonization, ethics, dehumanization..... Overall really interesting if you're into those topics but do not expect entirely waterproof worldbuilding or an immersive, emotional story. 
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