“I felt the story was revelatory while being impossible to interpret.”

This line from the book sums up my experience pretty well. Williams is my favorite short story writer, but I think her style works better for me in small doses. It’s hard to sustain that kind of surreal dialogue for an entire novel. That being said, the writing was indeed revelatory and I highlighted dozens of passages. The story itself is scarily prescient-sounding. A future that bears out when people not only stop caring about the earth but criminalize anyone who does care. Environmentalists and ecoterrorists are not the only ones who are the bad guys in this dystopia — even regular citizens who don’t show enough “loyalty” to humankind are subject to scrutiny and even punishment. The “humans above everything” possibility is a scary crystal ball to stare into.