A review by thereadingrambler
The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed

emotional fast-paced

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

4.0

The Annual Migration of Clouds is a hopepunk/solarpunk climate fiction story about Reid, a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, confronting a series choice: leave the only home she has never known and a very codependent mother to attend university or stay and swear allegiance to this community and its needs. This is a little novella and takes place over the course of about a week, from the time Reid receives her acceptance letter until when she makes her final decision and all of the factors that go into making this decision.

Hundreds if not thousands of young adults face this decision every year so on one level this books holds all of the quotidian coming-of-age plot beats that we expect, but because this book is set in a quasi-post-apocalypse world there is a heavy added layer of this clash between the subsistence hunter-gather lifestyle Reid and her community have been forced to adopt and the glimmering advanced-tech world of the dome cities where the rich and powerful fled during this apocalyptic event (which happened decades before Reid was born so we only get glimpses of the past).

To complicate matters even further, Reid is infect with the Cad, a semi-sentient fungus that is visible under her skin and has the ability to control her body and possibly infiltrate her thoughts. This fungus is passed genetically and often doesn’t manifest until later in life, increasing the chances that it will be unknowingly passed from parent to child. This has led to fewer and fewer children being born each year, so every member of the community is extremely valuable for the whole community’s survival. So Reid faces a very complicated and layered choice that Mohamed ably guides the reader through.

I loved the pairing of the very familiar with the very strange to draw affective connections between our present and our near future. Reid was a character most could immediately sympathize with: a brand new adult having to figure out how to separate herself from her parental home. But the added layers to these decisions and developments of the Cad and of the ravaged world highlights what so many of our contemporary youth are afraid of: what world will be left for them? How will they navigate their emotional and developmental future when that future is narrowing because of the choices of the present and the recent past?