This meditative book about our planet and its ability to adapt and weather all manner of disruption and change came into my life at a time when the fears of surviving in an increasingly unlivable and sinking city threatened to overwhelm me. A heavily industrialised city about to lose its lungs, that I share in common with the author, I might add. By book's close, thankfully, I was reminded of the resilience of this place we call Earth, our Terra Mater. Our time here will be but a chapter in the story of the world while it persists and endures long after us. We destroy ourselves—but this magnificent pale blue dot? It's here to stay, to remain a realm of infinite possibilities.

These four overlapping stories by Shubhangi Swarup, with their colourful characters, together perform a paean in honour of this diverse home that we inhabit. With lyrical prose, she takes us through the Andaman islands, the Burmese fault line, Nepali back-alleys, and the snowscape of Kashmir and Ladakh, albeit at a languid (dare I say, orogenic) pace. Straddling multiple timelines, the chaos theory of our lives reflects itself upon the geography of these lands, too, emphasising the fundamental interconnections between all things. And her lush descriptions will make you want to appreciate these places for yourself, to go back in time and experience all of their raw, untapped beauty.

The opening chapter is the strongest, with a touch of magical realism and stunning sentences that demand veneration from the reader as you admire the landscape so rich with flora and fauna, each with a unique evolutionary history. The deeper I sank into the story of Girija Prasad, I could feel the work of Shubhangi's deft hand, bringing forth the majesty of island life, newly freed of colonial yoke—slowly and carefully, as if polishing a diamond. She ties the islands to the prisons of Burma in predictable yet no less remarkable fashion. Here we meet the orphan Plato and read a familiar tale, of political persecution in the fledgling republics that were only recently serfs to foreign empires. The slight shift in tonality was surprising but welcome, with vivid characters in a book with otherwise fragmentary, almost mythical archetypes.

My sympathies then to an ambitious writer who is clearly full of ideas, and even more so, of love and awe for the natural world and people attempting to live in harmony with it. Sympathies, in lieu of disappointment, that the disparate threads were braided together in a contrived manner, as often happens when the scope of the creation becomes larger than the creator. The last two chapters are a tectonic departure from what came before; here, the interrelations are misshapen pieces in a puzzle. There is closure in solving such a one, but not quite. It feels clumsy, rushed and lacks the lustre that preceded it: a conclusion unworthy of the characters populating the denouement and of the continuation of our human legacy that they represent.

Sympathies and encouragement, for it is impressive, nevertheless, that this imaginative, well-researched and eloquent story, featuring the Earth as its protagonist, is the writer's debut. With it, she has added the Indian subcontinent, its lakes, glaciers and mountains, to the growing catalogue of climate fiction. The future will bring much finesse and precision to her mind and pen. A woman who doesn't miss the forest for the trees; an author to watch out for, indeed: "All evolution is guided by the primordial instinct. The one that set us free to explore the uncertain geographies of longing, only to stumble upon the bliss of mortality. The instinct leads us all to the primordial lake. Floating as uncomplicated single cells, waiting for life itself to cease."