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A review by nicovreeland
Appleseed by Matt Bell
3.0
I had a hard time rating this book. There are parts that I really like, and Bell is a very good prose writer, but unfortunately that talent is mostly on display in long descriptive passages that sometimes make the flow of the story feel more like a series of still pictures, often to the detriment of its pacing (in the audiobook version I listened to, one list of animals takes THIRTEEN MINUTES to read).
But ultimately the structure of this novel is not one I find very compelling, and the most compelling part fails when it really gets down to brass tacks. So, even though I liked certain parts of it, I have to consider the novel as a whole to be a failure.
The structure I didn’t like is this: the novel has three strands, narratives in different times that eventually relate to each other. One is a fable-esque retelling of the Johnny Appleseed story featuring a faun and his human brother. One is a Neal Stephenson-ish story about the scientists turned eco-terrorists turned dictators who radically change the world in the wake of the climate crisis. And one is a far-future story about what seems to be a person who has lived hundreds of lifetimes and keeps being reconstituted by a machine called the Loom. Every time he is “printed” again from leftover bio matter, he is changed a bit, so now he has blue fur, horns, and plastic bones.
My problem with this setup is that only one of these strands can stand on its own, the middle one about the scientists. The other two are, at best, leaning against that middle strand, what I started to think of as the “main story.” The other two stories are meaningful only as either thematic echoes of the main story, or for how they directly relate to the main story, e.g. which of the characters becomes the blue-furred future human.
This is frustrating to me because the three strands are given almost equal narrative time. The Appleseed story could’ve easily been a one-chapter prologue, and the blue-furred human an epilogue, but instead they are woven together, and I often just wanted to get back to the main story.
What’s doubly frustrating, and why I ultimately consider this book a failure, is that the main story gets completely unbelievable in its quest to create an antagonist. The evil scientist who “solves” the climate crisis does so (pretty big spoilers here) by undertaking dramatic actions that will literally sacrifice the entire current generation of humans for the future.
This is not even really a secret, they start by designating the western 2/3 of the US a “sacrifice zone” and forcibly enslaving most of the population, stripping them of their rights as citizens, and making their company into the leading world power.
Why do the governments of the world let them do this? Why do the people allow this? In what world would real humans gladly sacrifice themselves by the millions for a future generation? The author attempts to address this later on by making the main scientist (who contributed foundational inventions to the corporation before deciding that he didn’t like it after all) into an eco-terrorist who fights back against the corporation (which also happens to be run by his childhood best friend and lost love), and leads a revolution of non-citizens.
The problem of the novel is that the main story also cannot stand on its own. If the absurd plot twists in it did not have the benefit of obfuscation from the other two narratives wrapped around it, the whole thing would crumble.
But ultimately the structure of this novel is not one I find very compelling, and the most compelling part fails when it really gets down to brass tacks. So, even though I liked certain parts of it, I have to consider the novel as a whole to be a failure.
The structure I didn’t like is this: the novel has three strands, narratives in different times that eventually relate to each other. One is a fable-esque retelling of the Johnny Appleseed story featuring a faun and his human brother. One is a Neal Stephenson-ish story about the scientists turned eco-terrorists turned dictators who radically change the world in the wake of the climate crisis. And one is a far-future story about what seems to be a person who has lived hundreds of lifetimes and keeps being reconstituted by a machine called the Loom. Every time he is “printed” again from leftover bio matter, he is changed a bit, so now he has blue fur, horns, and plastic bones.
My problem with this setup is that only one of these strands can stand on its own, the middle one about the scientists. The other two are, at best, leaning against that middle strand, what I started to think of as the “main story.” The other two stories are meaningful only as either thematic echoes of the main story, or for how they directly relate to the main story, e.g. which of the characters becomes the blue-furred future human.
This is frustrating to me because the three strands are given almost equal narrative time. The Appleseed story could’ve easily been a one-chapter prologue, and the blue-furred human an epilogue, but instead they are woven together, and I often just wanted to get back to the main story.
What’s doubly frustrating, and why I ultimately consider this book a failure, is that the main story gets completely unbelievable in its quest to create an antagonist. The evil scientist who “solves” the climate crisis does so (pretty big spoilers here) by undertaking dramatic actions that will literally sacrifice the entire current generation of humans for the future.
This is not even really a secret, they start by designating the western 2/3 of the US a “sacrifice zone” and forcibly enslaving most of the population, stripping them of their rights as citizens, and making their company into the leading world power.
Why do the governments of the world let them do this? Why do the people allow this? In what world would real humans gladly sacrifice themselves by the millions for a future generation? The author attempts to address this later on by making the main scientist (who contributed foundational inventions to the corporation before deciding that he didn’t like it after all) into an eco-terrorist who fights back against the corporation (which also happens to be run by his childhood best friend and lost love), and leads a revolution of non-citizens.
The problem of the novel is that the main story also cannot stand on its own. If the absurd plot twists in it did not have the benefit of obfuscation from the other two narratives wrapped around it, the whole thing would crumble.