An absolute heart-wrenching, hopeful, wonderful masterpiece. 

I didn't love it, but I wanted to. Love the idea on paper, did not enjoy the execution. 
I found the male protagonist too obsequious to be believable, and was more into the story about the friends and coworkers than any of the spicier bits. 

I liked what this story was trying to do, but I don’t feel like it actually accomplished everything it set out to do. 
It started off so strong,  and I was fully invested in what was happening, but then I felt like the ambitious storyline really just went a bit off the rails. 

I'm not sure why I keep reading this series, I find it mostly frustrating and not in a satisfying way. I had hoped this would be the third and final book in the series, but there will be yet another one. Perhaps too much intrigue at every corner for me. 

I feel like I'm missing something from the book, and reading the effusive reviews of this one has me wondering what it is. Nothing about it really grabbed me, and it felt like a bit of a slog to get through to check off a box on my Hugo nominees challenge.

This book feels like a classic. It has the style of a book I would have read as a young person, that perhaps my parents would have passed on to me 30 years ago. It was generally fun to read-aloud, and me and my 6 year old enjoyed it, but it was not without faults. 

The usual trope of the "bad" being tied to fat and/or stupid that seems consistent in many children's books was present. There was definite ableism, and the repeated and casual child abuse was not my favourite to have to describe or explain. There was some on the go editing while I was reading. 

I did really like the way the authour didn't finish the story off with everyone being just good, or just bad, so there was a bit more nuance than a more traditional classic story.

I think the general lesson on being forgiving was nice, and there are a bunch of great vocabulary building words.

I find the premise and the writing a real slog, I think this will likely be my last book I attempt to read from this authour, because there is certainly a format, but it's not really one that I enjoy. 

I didn't find it compelling enough to continue. 

I read Sim Kern’s Real Sugar is Hard To Find a few weeks ago, and it has stuck with me. The short story collection grapples with some heavy topics - climate change, reproductive freedom and reproductive justice (both to have, and to have not), what we owe one another, parenthood, compassion and understanding. I feel like it really captures some of the highs and lows of thinking about the future (or even just existing in the present.) 

 

I suspect I connected with many of these stories to the level I did, because I'm a both a parent and someone concerned about the environment. Or someone thinking about the future or the world we leave behind for future generations. These stories help create potential futures, and thankfully, in many cases feature moments of repair in ruin (though not always.) 

 

Stand outs for me were The Listener, in which we get to live in a world with at least one person that can talk to trees - but it’s also a story about family and identity. The New Nomad, where a parent confronts the unpopular idea of having another child on a struggling planet. The heartbreaking Tadpoles, where it’s about so much more than tadpoles. The Last Roads was a powerful story of change, restoration, forgiveness, and understanding. The intersection of reproductive and horticultural freedom in The Propagator. I realize now that I’ve started, there are many stories I want to call out, several weeks after reading this book - they’ve stuck around in my mind. 

 

Worlds where the freedom to reproduce is curtailed, worlds where the freedom from reproduction is curtailed, worlds where family and community and society is restructured, worlds without cars but with accessible transportation, worlds with radical forest sprites, worlds full of imagination, there is so much richness in this work, and I'd recommend it. 

 

Sim Kern has this ability to create worlds that feel like they exist, with relatively few words, and they’ve become an authour I follow and buy the works of. Definitely one to watch I think. 

 

I bought this book, and also got a review copy from netgalley. 

I think it's nice that the authour took the time to layout some of the Trigger Warnings by story, so that's worth checking out if you need/want to as well. 

Arboreality is a novella, composed of several stories that could stand alone, but together become what feels like a massive saga in relatively few pages. It’s an expansion of the Theodore Sturgeon Award-winning short-story in Clarksworld, “An Important Failure,” which can give you a taste of some of the writing. 

We start out in a world that’s struggling with the impacts of climate change, but it still feels somewhat banal, in that slow descent into quasi-apocalypse I can imagine our (real) society falling into. People are still working or doing mundane things like maintaining a lawn, there is government support, hospitals exist, the world still connects, but it’s clear things are not great – a library is flooding, there are concerns about water, and infrastructure is crumbling. The book progresses from there – things get worse, but they also get better.

In the beginning we meet Bernard, a former professor turned book rescuer, turned planter of native trees and other plants. We meet violin makers and musicians, we meet homesteaders, we meet community organizers, and we meet them through time, and their points of intersection and interdependence.

The story is primarily set on southern Vancouver island, in the Cowichan Valley, and only hints at what’s going on elsewhere in the world – sometimes pulling way back (like on a space station) but otherwise, very localized. It hit many of my sweet spots in terms of speculative fiction – I love the well woven, interconnected stories, with environmental themes, climate fiction/potential future, and ultimately, a few different views of human resilience – in this case, implications of larger technological advancements that work towards less dire global circumstances (The Canadians), but primarily community based resiliency, on a local level, through low-tech interventions and actions. 

Arboreality tells of a possible future, with inventive and creative possibilities. I’m not sure if it’s a book for everyone, but I can see it being a book I re-read in the future, for inspiration and hope. Despite the dire circumstances explored in Arboreality, it’s still a beautifully optimistic read. 

I also wanted to acknowledge how thoughtful and beautiful this cover by Rachel Yu Lobbenberg is, especially within the context of the book. .