Thank you to Macmillan/TOR for sending me an ARC of this title. I received this copy for free and this review contains my honest opinions. 

 

The Terraformers is an environmental science fiction set on a futuristic Earth-like world. I was fascinated with the world building aspects and loved each of the characters. Some things were hard to visualize for me, and some things were never explained, but I thoroughly enjoyed spending time learning about Sask-E and the people that live there. Several aspects of this society were just SO COOL to read about. In fact, I would have been interested in a story just on the terraforming process of the world. 

 

While I did really enjoy this novel, there are two issues I need to bring up. First, I’m not sure this qualifies as a “hopeful” story to me (as promoted in the blurb and reinforced by the author’s acknowledgements in my copy). While it technically does end on a hopeful note, it’s a VERY slow build up that finally pays off in the last few chapters. The first two stories did have moments of hope, but neither really addressed the systemic flaws central to the overarching conflict. 

 

Second, I think it was a disservice to condense these three unique stories into a single novel instead of giving them each their own space to explore their world and its issues. Even though the stories as a whole were interconnected (prior events shaped future events), this novel read like three independent novellas collected together instead of a single, cohesive narrative. While this isn’t necessarily bad, the complexity of this futuristic world wasn’t able to be fully explored in the limited space and the reader was only given partial glimpses into how the world and society had evolved over the course of 1600 years. The short space and significant jumps forward in time between stories also left me frustrated with how some character arcs were treated. If the intent truly was a series of interconnected novellas, I do think a fourth was missing: the story of the original group of terraformers (the Archaeans) creating the version of Sask-E we’re introduced to with Destry. 

 

I am definitely interested in reading more science fiction by this author, and I look forward to exploring more of their work. Thank you again to the publisher for sending me a free ARC.