Read for the Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for Fiction TBR.

This novel tried to do too many things at once; that, or it felt like it didn't quite know what it wanted to be. It features three narrative strands: a) two brothers, one human the other a faun, travel the Ohian Frontier in the 19th century, planting apple trees they hope to cash in on in the future. b) A man in the ecologically devastated 22nd century becomes involved in a ploy to sabotage the hubristic world-saving aspirations of his highly intelligent corporate overlord ex-girlfriend. She owns a good chunk of the world through her company Amazon Earthtrust (sorry I had to make that joke) and hopes to save Humanity and the Biosphere using what I'll call the "Snowpiercer Method" (I hope those who can will appreciate the more obscure reference here heheh). c) Centuries in the future, a many times bio-technologically printed, and re-printed, faun patrols the surface of the frozen, post-apocalyptic Earth in search of organic materials, and maybe something more...

And it all felt like a bit of a mess. Plot strands b) and c) are very directly connected, but plot strand a) barely connects to the rest of the novel, though it was also, ironically perhaps, the most emotionally engaging for me - not that there was much emotional engagement overall anyway. And that in turn is probably because the character work was better in strand a) than it was in either strand b) or c). Brotherly love is central to it, which I appreciated in a literary landscape awash with (poorly executed) romances. But it wasn't anything particularly compelling either.

Plot strands b) and c) fall within the broader domain of science-fiction, but plot strand a) doesn't in the slightest, and falls rather in the domain of fantasy, or even magical realism. I didn't get the point of having a faun main character, so completely divorced from its original mythological context, and the other main elements of the story. I get that it was supposed to be part of some "Orpheus and Eurydice Myth" motif, but said motif was very poorly put together and very clunkily - not to say pointlessly - embedded in the overall narrative. I love mythological themes, motifs and symbols in fiction, but not when they are poorly incorporated and/or executed, which I felt was the case here.

The story also felt, despite its references to other areas of the world, too US-centric, hell too Ohio-centric even, to me. It's strange because a narrower setting doesn't necessarily bother me, even in stories that rely on a premise affecting the entire world, but here it just didn't work for me for whatever reason. It was all just too small, and I couldn't care (no offence to Ohians).

The world-building was lacklustre in strands b) and c), and the overall theming... Ugh, it was tedious. This novel features superficial - to me - ecological theming of a specific type I hate, because it relies heavily on establishing a hard divide between Humanity and the rest of the Animal Kingdom wherein the former is cast as near-irredeemably Evil and the latter as overly simplistically Good. I for one believe this divide is part and parcel of the problem, even when it is well-meaningly established in favour of ecological conservation. And whilst I have a decently misanthropic streak (lol), if a story makes me feel overtly defensive about Humanity, I know it's done fucked up. 😆 It's naïve dualism that just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned, in light of ecological knowledge or even ecologically-informed spirituality if we're going to go with that. Appleseed, thematically, is basically the polar opposite of the recently-ish read Hollow Kingdom when it comes to depth, nuance and personal appeal.

Yes, there is also, apparently, theming about Christian Manifest Destiny, or something, and The American Dream, bits and bobs about consumerism, capitalism, blah blah... But none of this felt particularly salient, interesting and/or well executed to me. The prose was competent to good, sure, and to be fair I found a lot of the Ohian landscape, forest, swamp, what have you descriptions in strand a) sufficiently evocative. But at the same time I struggled to keep reading in many places, so much so that after a while, even my "favourite" strand of the story could barely hold my attention.

There were a couple decent ideas here, more-good-than-not writing, but so much more that was poorly executed or simply not to my personal preference. That's why I feel it lands smack-dab on an average or mediocre 5/10, though I rounded the star rating down because ultimately, I just didn't enjoy Appleseed at all.