Anne-Sophie Devriese

'Biotanistes' is a story that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. The Earth has dried out, clusters of survivors try to rebuild their lives at the few remaining oases. In addition, the world has become matriarchal, women rule now. As they seem the only ones to have escaped the Curse - which strangely enough only affects men and boys -, the surviving men have only one task: semen. Strangely enough, I didn't read anything about this procedure.

We follow Rim, a young girl, a sorceress, who was taken in by the Convent. This convent offers children shelter, education, etc. Also, there are biotanists who create prostheses for injured animals. You can become a biotanist, but also a hunter or a surveyor, for example. However, it's the Sisters who decide which direction you are to take. Surveyors travel back in time to collect data, information and even grains to rebuild the present world. If you need a drug to be able to travel, then so it shall be done. Some travels go back to the 17th century, others to the refugee camp in Calais, France, in 2016, where main character Rim will find out about the cruelties in such a situation.

There's a plethora of characters that will be presented: Rim, Alex (another saved girl who's actually a boy, as will be revealed much later), Ulysses (a peddler, he also saved Rim, brought her to the convent), Iseult, Imogene, Magda(lena), Olympe, Ibrahim, Meriem, Chaïm, Bashir, Nour, Nadir, Anthoïna (biotanist and sister of Ulysses), ...

Speaking of the aforementioned clusters who try to survive in these harsh conditions, they're called nornes or norns. There's a link with Norway, for one reason or another. However, these people are not liked by the Sisters of the Convent, so the latter try to eradicate the former.

I'll cut to the chase, because, to be honest and unfortunately, this was not a successful read for me. I tried and really wanted to like the book, also because the premise looked interesting. As someone else here wrote, the pace is slow, the story takes off only around/over halfway - and it's a +/- 600 page novel! And stand-alone at that. So, "logically" you'd expect everything to flow smoothly, have explained/described what needs to be explained/described (even if every story has its gaps that the reader is to fill in with his/her own imagination), so you can derive a certain message the author wanted to convey or just enjoy a good story.

Alas, alas. YA-label aside, my main hurdles were the writing style and the episodic and very fragmentary character of the chapters. Let me explain: Normally, you have a certain order of things, like A --> B --> C --> D. This kind of thread makes it easy to follow along and if you're of the visual kind, perhaps paint the world and the events in your imagination. Here, on many occasions, I wondered if I had overlooked something or not read attentively enough. Flipping back and forth didn't help that much, if at all. The expected A --> B --> C --> D here was reduced to A --> D.

This leads me to believe that the original version (or any previous version) of the book was longer, whether 100-200 pages or less/more. Some shifts didn't make sense and several times my mind tried but failed to understand the transition, precisely because of the lack of filling, hence the A --> D, or maybe A --> C, if you will.

I became frustrated to the point that I skimmed a large part and wondered if anyone else felt the same way about the setup of the story as I did, because most reviews I've seen were all (quite) positive and raving. Did we read the same book? Or does it show that not every reader focuses on the same things or sees the story from the same or a similar point of view? But yes, I did find someone - well, two readers - who was/were also frustrated or stupefied: Les lectures de Doris and The Books Howl. Their reviews are in French, but Google Translate or Deepl can show you the big lines of their remarks.

All is explained at the end of the book, or is it? The Curse is not the kind of disease about which the Sisters spread false propaganda to set up their conquest and eradication of the norns. It's a virus that was unleashed onto the world when the icecaps/glaciers melted and yes, somehow, only men/boys were victim to this epidemic. Indeed, not all holes are filled, it's up to the reader to imagine what, why, how, ...

'Biotanistes', which refers to only a small aspect of the story - as does the scarab on the cover -, has an interesting premise, and pertinent themes (male-female equality, biodiversity and ecology, ...), but the elaboration was not that good, in my humble opinion.

As Delphine Doris, whose review I linked above, wrote - and I paraphrase: There are so many ideas and propositions in this book that not everything can be addressed or dealt with in a proper manner, despite the +/- 600 pages. To repeat myself (and speculating, of course): The original version was probably much longer, maybe even more coherent, but for whatever reason(s), a lot had to be cut out.… (mehr)