This is a tough one to rate for me I think. I am not someone who needs immediate answers to everything, especially not in horror like this. I completely understand why those who do would hate this though, as it remains dedicated to it's surreal ambiguity.

I think for this cosmic/environmental style horror, it works perfectly. This is a story about nature moving on beyond us, so as the narrator's worldview begins to shift with her 'change', it makes sense that the reasoning and descriptions are almost incomprehensible. I almost feel like I'm listening to a fungus if it could speak at times, which quite obviously would fill anyone with insane dread.

And I think that's what I love most about the book. It manages to fill me with that same existential dread that climate anxiety does, and in a way it's comforting to read someone else's conception of it.

I'd also like to say that I watched the movie first, and I love it as well, though I think of them as two different entities in the same genre rather than an adaptation of another. The movie's addition of more creature horror is badass of course!! But I do feel well fed by the book's more psychological and existential aspects the movie strayed away from.

Anyways, I'm really back and forth about whether to read the next two despite owning the series. I'm afraid it'll explain too much and ruin the horrifying mystique of it all, but I'm also a curious little bird. Definitely not a ghost bird though.