The creativity and artistry of this is genuinely amazing. I love the physical feel of the book (it's quite small, the pages are really nice to touch and are black!). Every 'hybrid anthropocene animal/plant/mineral/fungi' (e.g. the plastic eating caterpillar, or the lab rat, or the lost roomba) is well thought out and drawn beautifully in white on black paper. I think this kind of not just looking at, but really seeing, our surroundings and how people/capitalism has influenced it is so so important in these times. And it was just really fun to flip through!

I don't often read poetry so I don't have much to compare this to. But I felt compelled to join the Pagebound giveaway for this book because of the themes of home, loss and becoming.

First of all: I LOVE the cover and back, they're so pretty!

Now about the poems: many of the poems really spoke to me as someone who is currently slowly losing their father through dementia. Even though he is not dead yet, I can relate to a lot of the grief and hope expressed in the poems. So I would recommend it to anyone going through something similar. I can imagine that if you cannot relate, many of the poems will not really make sense emotionally. Maybe it's also a nice read if your partner or friend is going through grief to better understand it.

I really appreciated how the poems seem to express thoughts in a feeling way, if that makes sense. The poems really embody specific feelings that sometimes only occur to me as thoughts. Some poems actually helped me feel those thoughts instead of ruminating in my head, that's pretty amazing. My last therapist couldn't even do that!

Curious about more writings from Moila:)

I loved this! The worldbuilding is so complex but gets explained as the main character discovers more, so it's not too much. The strongest part, and one of the best I've read, is the character development; not just of the main character, but of all characters. This, alongside the focus on ecology, makes the book stand out from other SF by far. I was a bit confused at the beginning since there seemed to be many different storylines and characters, but it all makes sense. If you're confused or having a tough time following in the beginning, definitely stick it out!

CW for the book: some mentions of rape, not graphic or extensive but it does happen multiple times (not to the main character). It disgusted me a bit but I do understand why Tepper added it.