Beneath A Thousand Skies

Hello,

Today I am reviewing Arborescence by Rhett Davis. I’m not sure if I went in expecting something different, or if there were just too many elements that didn’t quite work for me, but even after writing this review, I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about this book.

When I finished Arborescence, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it, and I’ll be honest I still don’t, and perhaps in some ways that is the point because this book treads a path between almost comforting, but also deeply unsettling and thought-provoking. The kind of book that needs to sit a while – fitting with how the people take root. I think also in part, that I went in expecting something slightly different. I picked this one up, because the blurb reminded me a little of the myth of Baucis and Philemon which for some reason was always one of my favourite Greek myths growing up.

However, Arborescence is a very different creature.

Firstly, what did work for me about this book was the prose – as jarring as I find certain elements of the flow, I cannot deny that Davis is a fantastic writer. This book is in some ways like a tree taking root, and growing, building up word by word, guiding you away from the noise of modern life, into a quieter, slower, almost mediative world. Yet, at the same time, the thing that I appreciated most about this book was how deeply, quietly unsettling Arborescence was. At its core yes, it is a complicated mix of hope and despair, grief and acceptance, love and resentment, melancholy and optimism; with the boundaries between them blurring throughout, and developments often spiralling between the two, and varying by experience and belief. But, in some ways it also felt like a horror story -we feel it through Bren’s tension in the forest, how unsettled he is after Oscar, but in the sense of a slow, creeping dread of something changing, ending, with no way back.

Davis conjures it most powerfully through some of the most beautiful imagery, with the idea of decaying cities being overrun with fresh green, and the view of trees that were once people taking root both in places that had meant something but also weren’t always the best place for survival. Just the thought of seeing someone you loved becoming a tree and knowing that they might not survive even like this. It’s a very unique blend of horror, that is more disquieting than terrifying, and yet it builds and builds throughout. The only downside is I’m not sure it really had an outlet at the end, which might be why that unsettling feel has lingered so much.

In some ways I felt not so much that it was trying to do too many things, but that some of the elements were uneasy bedfellows. Which in a way mirrored the relationship of our main characters. The Artificial Intelligence thread for example often felt jarring alongside the subtle, creeping spread of Arborescence and all the side effects and questions of that process. Yet, at the same time it was quite a poignant storyline; reflecting both on the current and future threat of AI within the workforce, to draining resources, but what made it land even though I found this thread less engrossing overall than the main storyline of the trees, was how Davis handled that advanced technology and ‘intelligence’ in a dystopian future. That those ‘advantages’ were not actually advantages in a world slowing down, that without humans, in the end it had no power – it was both a nice change from dystopian futures where the technology is what reigns, but also quietly, softly hopeful.

In some ways it was the same with the relationships out with Bren and Caelyn; little, jarring intrusions, that particularly for the first half of the book never sat completely comfortably for me within the flow of the story. Absolutely necessary for grounding our main pair in the world, in their families, roots outside the nuclear nature of their relationship. Which in some ways is the point, especially as those intrusions filter out towards the end, both through loss and life, but if felt like it mirrored the transformation from the busy chaos of the modern world, to the quieter, slower pace of life in a world where that noise has faded away; and the connections at the end, like the rebuilding between Travis and Bren through awkward messages, felt more meaningful for everything that had happened.

In terms of characters, we spend most of our time with Bren and Caelyn, with Bren being our eyes and ears into this world; and in some ways they felt like a steam encountering a blockage and slowly wearing its own path around it until it can run fast and free. Bren is very sedentary in comparison to Caelyn, he goes with the flow, caught in her current and in the constraints of a job with very little meaning; and that had the potential to hold the story back, but his voice, reflections and thoughts tinged with humour, melancholy and a strong awareness that he is a adrift in the that current actually works very well. While, I can’t say I have a strong attachment to him as a character, he made for an excellent witness to the changes around him. Caelyn on the other hand, I will admit I couldn’t stand from the beginning, perhaps because she was too flighty to catch hold of most of the time, too caught up in her own world, her path, her beliefs; and actually, her choice at the end made me angrier than anything.

I was not a huge fan of the almost interjections by the characters themselves, random topics and thoughts, that were often irrelevant to the heavier moments. For myself, I found it quite jarring and I would pause for a moment going ‘what?’ more often than I care to admit; and yet at the same time I can see the purpose, especially with a story that was wide-ranging, narrowed down to the personal level with Bren and Caelyn, and it does work very well to show to the discordance between them even when they were more closely together – and I will admit that some of my favourite lines and questions came from those moments.

Arborescence through both these two characters, but also as a whole wrestle with both the idea of selfishness and community. We see the former very much in how Bren and Caelyn (especially the latter) are in their lives; but it is also an uncomfortable bedfellow in the process of those who chose to stand still and become a tree. There is this idea that people are doing it to help save the planet, to give something back, believing it will make a difference; and we do get to see that impact to some extent; but at the same time Davis delves into the flip side of the coin, with the people left behind. The families with no answers in the early days; the ones left behind as more and more people chose to become trees. Who is selfish? The person who became a tree? Or those raging against them, when the planet is healing?

Alongside this is very much a sense of community, from those who start the Arborescence movement, the camps who have built social structures to help one another, those who care for those who have planted in. We see it in the way George and Bren tend to trees in the latter part of the book, serving as in-betweens between those who have changed, and those left behind. And the fact that even in this world, slowly closing in amongst the green, as technology recedes, the people are still there, still living, still planning for a future.

I can’t say that I loved this book. There were elements certainly that I really liked, the prose for one was fantastic and there are a lot of lines that I think will linger with me long past the readying. And as I said above, as uncomfortable and unsettling as the atmosphere of the book was, it was really well done, like an alarm beacon ringing in the back of your head. Davis has taken a fascinating approach, to incredibly relevant topics; and while I can’t say overall, I loved the book, I do think it is one that should be read and I am glad I read it, and I think I will be chewing it over for a while.