Reviews with content warning for Animal death - The Annual Migration of Clouds

Theoretically super interesting setting and contemplation on more mundane post-apocalyptic life and bodily autonomy, but unfortunately pretty underdeveloped in practice -- definitely feel like the concepts would fit better in a longer work with more fleshed out characters and relationships.

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florecita_lectora's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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amandadevoursbooks's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

Reid and her mother live in an old office building, post apocalypse. They both are infected with a fungus, Cad, that controls its host to keep them alive and potentially can quicken and kill the host. Reid has been accepted into one of the last universities in one of the few remaining dome cities. What follows is basically a slice of life as Reid prepares to leave her home against her mother's wishes.

This little book jams world building and character development into its pages. I love Novellas that do this. It's enough to make it a full story in a slim number of pages. Occasionally, the story gets lost in the lyrical prose.

This is hope punk, and it has been compared to the Monk and Robot series by Becky Chambers. To me it read more like Cathrynne M Valente's the Past is Red or Cherie Demaline's the Marrow Thieves. The world is bleak, and there is hope in the people left.

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sheeky's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I'm in love with this novella. There's something so compelling about a story that leads up to a decision--I think from the start, the exact ending was fairly easy to assume, but that didn't matter one bit because this is one of those stories that is very much "about the journey." Premee Mohamed is an incredibly gifted writer, and her words ebb and flow with a stoic lyricism that mirrors both Reid's emotional journey and the throb of the fungus beneath her skin.

And that's what I mean when I say this novella is "emotional--" not that it will necessarily make you cry (though I did,) but that it fully captures the complexity of a "simple decision." It understands what leaving truly means when you're in community, the tension between the individual and the together and how and where those lines blur. It understands rings of family and left-behind mothers and growing pains and not knowing what you want. It also understands anger, the rage of being handed the remains of a world someone else failed to save. In Reid and Henryk and the rest of the town, Mohamed has written a very clear picture of what we might look like once the climate apocalypse has truly ravaged us, privileged bubbles and all.

The body horror bits of this book are also very good. I won't say too much for fear of spoiling, but: very, very good.

I tend not to buy books until after I've read them; this is 100% something I want on my shelf!

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maryellen's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Such a lovely, hopefully book. Preme Mohamed's writing is just gorgeous.

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crossbun's review

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adventurous dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I loved this book so much. It's just experimental enough to keep me interested without distracting from the excellent pacing and characterization. I felt so immersed the worldbuilding from human society to the natural environment. Mohamed has an eye for detail and tight, carefully crafted descriptions that pack a punch and tell you so much. The weather and bird motifs were well done throughout: begging Reid for movement, for finding a way forward.

Take a look at the content warnings but as someone who's sensitive to a lot of the things on this list, it was all handled with respect and care and didn't feel gratuitous or out of place.

Loved the ending:

Spoiler

I am a bike lover and yelled in delight when her community came through and gave her one. It was such a surprise to see a bike come back after just an offhand mention of bikes being like treasure earlier in the book. It just made me so happy to see bikes as so meaningful in the apocalypse!!

I really thought the book was going to be about her journey and not what it took for her to leave (like a typical adventure story) and it was such a delightful surprise to see that her story was about the choice to take the journey and not the journey its self. It's a story I needed.

I would love a follow up to this, I adored it.

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mossybean's review

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challenging dark reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is a hard book to rate for me, because there were parts I really didn't like just as much as there were parts I loved. I liked the two main characters a lot. Most of the characters had interesting stories attached to them, though I thought there were too many, especially for such a short book! For example, Nadiya meant a lot to the two main characters, but nothing to the reader as I didn't know anything about her. And again,

Spoiler

when they went on the pig hunt

there were so many characters that were introduced all at once that I knew nothing about and didn't have an attachment to either.
I loved the idea of Cad, the maybe-intelligent parasitical fungus. I got really invested in the outcome of Reid's struggle with Cad, as she finds it worsening over the course of this novella. I also loved the idea of this community that functioned off everyone's equal participation in working, but that wasn't a focus of the book sadly.
I think there were a lot of different ideas that could have been expanded into a longer novel, and in some ways I felt cheated that there wasn't more. Reid is struggling with a decision- whether or not to leave her community, her family, to go to this university in the Domes. Most of the book though, the consensus remains equally divided on whether or not this university is even real, and this contention isn't really resoved by the end.

Spoiler

There was tension built there, I was excited about learning about the Domes and the university and what might happen there, but you never find out. It ends in Reid deciding to go, but we still don't know towards what.

I really disliked this one chapter,

Spoiler

where suddenly there's a sexual interest added between the two main characters. There was nothing hinting at them being more than friends, and they didn't have that kind of relationship you could expect would go that way. I imagined them as like brother and sister, so it was gross!

I also wasn't a fan of the hunt, where there seemed to be a lot of gore and violence with not enough reason for it.

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sailormegan's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Writing Quality 5/5

Premee does a fantastic job showing us a future damaged by climate change, much nearer than we realize. I enjoyed her use of taking common phrases we use today and having the characters use them but not understand the original meaning behind them. The “See you late, alligator” inside joke amongst the two main characters, Reid and Henryk, is cute and clever. The precarious calmness in the dystopian world Premee created, was well portrayed in her writing, and the possibility of hope and change is well written.

Characters 5/5

As a novella, you would think there wouldn’t be enough time to fully explore the characters and see a character growth. However, each individual was unique and written with purpose. We got to see the flaws of each character and the consequences of them. We got to see strengths overcome challenges and the growth of our main characters. I couldn’t help but root for Reid the entire time.

Plot 5/5

The plot may seem simple at first, but there is so much to unpack with regards to the sense of community and collective survival vs. Branching out on one’s own to find fulfillment and hope. There’s also a very real, internal battle Reid goes through with the parasitic fungal disease within. There are lot of questions that aren’t necessarily unanswered but had me craving for more information. Our present human population gets called out for our environmental destructive ways and couldn’t help but feel responsible for the post-apocalyptic world this novella shows.

Post-reading Rating 4.5/5

I was really hoping to see the University that Reid ventures off too, something that could’ve been explored if this was a full-length novel. Despite Reid leaving her community there was still that sense of community at the end. Superb.

Who Should Read This

-Fans of Climate Fiction

-Fans of dystopian

-Those wanting a quicker read that makes the reader think

-A want for great world-building and character development

Final Rating 5/5

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