I really wanted to like this book. It had so many glowing reviews and had after all won the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novel, among other prestigious ones. I was also captivated by the epigraph by George Dyson: “In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines”.



Wow, that sounded so promising - this book was going to deal with the issue of humans, nature and machines! Perhaps some theories and philosophies about science and technology, the post-anthropocene and environmentalism were going to be addressed! Alas, how quickly those (perhaps unfair) hopes were dashed.



The first section reads like YA fiction, and Anders does put an interesting spin on the coming-of-age theme with a budding witch Patricia and a science nerd Laurence becoming friends by their default outcaste status in the big bad microcosm of the American middle school system. Throw in a magic tree with some talking birds and a watch that is able to cast the wearer 2 seconds into the future with the press of a button and you could tell that a combination of magic and fantasy with sf was taking root. It kept me interested to see how Anders was going to make this blend of genres work. There was also a good measure of comedy, but mostly of the sitcom variety, with inept parents, evil siblings and school bullies delivering their choice lines and making the lives of our two heroes a daily misery. In the midst of Patricia’s and Laurence’s mutual commiserations, an assassin literally walks into their lives, even as they jokingly speculate on the identity of “a man in black slippers and worn gray socks” on the mall escalators.



The following contrived description seems to have sprung right out of a Nickelodeon TV special:

“His name was Theodolphus Rose, and he was a member of the Nameless Order of Assassins. He had learned 873 ways to murder someone without leaving even a whisper of evidence, and he had to kill 419 people to reach the number nine spot in the NOA hierarchy. He would have been very annoyed to learn that his shoes had given him away because he prided himself on blending with his surroundings.” Theodolphus also likes ice cream and disguises himself as the school counsellor because for some unfathomable (perhaps I missed it in the midst of cringing) reason, his next targets are Patricia and Laurence, and by his influence he manages to wreak more havoc into their lives.



Then there was a quantum leap into the second section where the two characters have become adults and virtual strangers, each living in their separate worlds. The witch Patricia, had been spirited away to a sadistic version of Rowlings’ Hogwarts, and after graduating, goes into the business of protecting nature through witchcraft and magic. Her mentors are shapeshifters and the like, and her missions include “taking out” the rich and corrupt (for a noble cause of course), though Patricia also impressively uses her powers to soothe and heal, like when a party falls apart with bad music and food poisoned guests. Laurence the former science geek has become a sought-after corporate scientist in the midst of building a wormhole generator to send humans off this increasingly uninhabitable Earth.



These two central characters reunite but clash in terms of philosophy and worldview, as well as their seemingly irreconcilable use of science and magic. This is interesting, except that the writing never quite elevates itself beyond the level of a YA novel. Instead there are some frankly awkward and embarrassing sex scenes and a dose of violent gore to signal that this is a proper adult novel, that also happens to deal with serious issues like the anthropogenic destruction of the planet.



It is clear Anders is an ambitious novelist and she has many interesting genre-bending ideas which are not easy to execute and assemble cohesively onto the page. However, it tried too hard to be too many things at the same time, and coupled with the flat characterisation and stilted (some may see it as quirky) dialogue, the novel just did not quite hold well together.