This novel won the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin award, which tells you a lot. As I read, I often compared this book to Le Guin's writing. Campbell covers a long span of time during which humans somehow adapt and start to mitigate the damage to the climate caused by our growth ethos. Campbell is hopeful and lays out a plausible way to deal with climate change, at least in British Columbia. I hope this book gets read more widely, it is not simply a projected future scenario, her characters have depth and her writing is beautiful. ( )

Stelliform Press has become a favorite press of mine, and this was another gorgeous, thoughtful book. Campbell's prose is so gentle and intricate, there's a fascinating interplay with the minimalism of her dialogue, the careful nuance of her progressions and structure, and the near-violent presentation of the future that we're so rashly building for ourselves (and have been building for ourselves for centuries). Although there were moments here where I desperately wanted to linger longer with particular characters and times--especially in the very first section of the book, before I realized what I'd walked into, and in the middle section of the book that it seems this book stemmed from (based on the Acknowledgements)--I soon understood what Campbell was doing and could only admire her for it.

This is a smart and in some magnificent ways subversive book, and I'm so glad to have stumbled across it and given it a chance. It's yet another proof that everything from Stelliform is worth paying attention to. ( )