DNF @ 20%

I am a completist. I have a hard time putting down a book even if I have absolutely no desire to keep reading it aside from needing to finish it. This is a bad habit. I am working on giving up on a book if I am not enjoying it in any way after the first 100 pages. Maybe this book improved after the first 100 pages, but I'm not sticking around to figure that out.

This is a message book. It has a message (Environmentalism - good. Ravaging the earth - bad). This book is very, very focused on its message and everything - characters, plot, dialogue - is a servant to that message.

There are three (presumably intertwined, but I never got that far) storylines. Very unhelpfully, the chapter sections provide no timeline information, although the book jacket provides dates for each storyline. To wit,

The first storyline, according to the book jacket, is: "In eighteenth-century Ohio, two brothers travel into the wooded frontier, planting apple orchards from which they plan to profit in the years to come." What I actually gleaned: Sometime in the late 1700s or early 1800s, in an alterna-history America, the human Nathaniel and his brother Chapman who is a faun plant seeds. I presumed it was supposed to be the 19th century (1800s) and not the 18th century (1700s) because this is obviously a riff on Johnny Appleseed (whose real name was Johnny Chapman, so how on-the -nose that one of these apple seeding characters is named Chapman). But the book flap says 18th century, so the 1700s it is! There is no absolutely no indication that one of the main characters would be a faun (you know, the half-goat, half-human mythological creatures of untamed woodlands). In fact, when I listened to the audiobook, I initially thought it was talking about a fawn (as in a baby deer), so I was extra confused. I am not sure why the book jacket hid the ball on this one. The audience for this are already sci fi readers. Throwing in a mythological creature isn't that far off for that audience, but that instantly turns this from a book about "our" world and how we destroy it to an alternate dimension/world/whatever where a human mother can give birth to a faun.

In the "historical" timeline, Nathaniel is the proto-industrialist who wants to dominate the wilderness and says such pointed things as "The wilderness must be pushed back" and "Yes, brother, yes, a tree must die so a man might heat his house but surely there will never be any shortage of trees." He has all the subtlety of a Captain Planet villain. These chapters are also teeming with descriptions of a verdant, idyllic wilderness, because, of course, this planet used to be an EDEN until MAN came and CUT DOWN TREES WITH BABY BIRD NESTS IN THEM (literally happens in this book). Chapman, being the symbol of wild woodland that he is, is more hesitant about the destruction that is being wrought in the name of (potential future) profit. He is such a sensitive soul, that when his brother hunts down a moose, he "looks on in horror as Nathaniel dresses the kill with his knife." The scene is written with graphic descriptions like it is a horror story. THIS IS THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. I am assuming that since he was raised along Nathaniel, Chapman is not a life long vegetarian. And even if he was, people did not buy their meat pre-packaged in a grocery store. People used to have to hunt their own food. Or slaughter their own animals on their home farm. I would be flabbergasted if this is the first animal he has seen hunted and field dressed. It just seems incredibly un-18th century like, but that's because it's not meant to be realistic. It's meant to be a SYMBOL that Nathaniel is the barbaric violence of man against all nature and Chapman is the conflict between the peaceful, in tune with nature half with the more "civilized" half.

The next section is about John. The bookflap states that this is set "fifty years from now" and I will just have to take this as true, because I would never know that from reading the first 100 pages. It's set sometime in the future, when climate change and corporate greed have destroyed all that is good. John is an ecoterrorist hiding out in the wilderness but for some reason the Evil Corporation doesn't want people to live in the abandoned land.

The third section is about C-432. The bookflap says it's set "a thousand years in the future" and again, there's nothing indicating that in the story itself, but sure. North America is covered by a sheet of ice and C-432 is in some kind of sad Wall-E-esque abandoned creation, so a thousand years sounds right. Not much happens with C-432 in the early chapters, but his storyline at least holds the most promise. Nathaniel/Chapman I found aggravating, and John feels like just another iteration of the typical apocalypse/dystopia.

Derivative, anti-science, and just not interesting. This book thinks itself transcendent in a way that only a book written by a white man can. It’s written in 3 perspectives - and while many books benefit from that mode of story telling, this one just made me lose any shred of investment by jumping around. And the Goodreads blurb comparing him to Jeff VanderMeer? Pft. Maybe the comparison to Neal Stephenson is justifiable, but only in the author’s clear thought that “if my secondary characters are all women, I’m a feminist!”. At least Neal’s prose is well written. Don’t waste your time on this book.

Three stories, three different time periods; the near-future and far-future ones connected though how the historical one is relevant in any way I fail to understand besides a general idea of "apples".

But... the POV characters aren't relatable. Most of the side characters aren't relatable either. The only character I found in any way relatable was Eury, who is also clearly signposted as the Big Villain, which, um, probably wasn't supposed to happen?

Spoiler

She had a vision, she had a plan to execute that vision and she wasn't exactly wrong. But we're supposed to support John and his group just because? There's only one moment in which I didn't like Eury and that was a throwaway moment solely connected to today's geopolitical situation, so if those three sentences hadn't aged incredibly poorly I'd find no moment in which I didn't like her.

3.5 stars. I liked this book, but it's extremely complicated. The were too many balls in the air for me. This is probably a problem with me, not the book. I was doing too many things while listening to the audiobook. Sorry Matt.

literally obsessed

Appleseed is an ambitious book that unfortunately was not to my taste. It's very poetic, heavy on exposition, and a bit weird; I can adapt to any one of those, but all three together make it a poor fit for my preferences.

By chapter 3 I got it. No need to keep hitting that same gong over and over. And over and over. Is this pretentiously tedious or tediously pretentious?