Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn

8 reviews

a1exander's review

adventurous hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War

Moderate: Animal death, Cancer, Abandonment, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Death, Drug abuse, and Drug use

imlfox's review against another edition

challenging hopeful informative sad fast-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Animal death, War, and Pandemic/Epidemic

atamano's review against another edition

hopeful informative medium-paced

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death

Moderate: Colonisation

horizonous's review against another edition

hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death and War

Moderate: Death, Drug abuse, Gore, and Terminal illness

Minor: Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Child death, Gun violence, Blood, Medical content, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Colonisation

lanid's review

challenging dark informative inspiring reflective

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Animal death, Body horror, Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Terminal illness, and Colonisation

questingnotcoasting's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

4.0

This was fascinating. It's a travelogue of abandoned places around the world, some of which I'd heard of, like Chernobyl and Varosha in Cyprus, but most of which I hadn't. There were a lot of different reasons each place became abandoned including war, natural disasters, industrial contamination, climate change and human resettlement and it was all so interesting to learn about. There were are few times where the nature descriptions started to go over my head because I couldn't picture the plants or animals Flyn was describing but generally it was an easy read because I was so intrigued. Through exploring all the different places she discusses topics like climate change, rewilding, agriculture, invasive species and nature's resilience. I certainly don't know enough about those subjects to have big opinions of my own like I've seen in some reviews but I feel like I learnt a lot from this and it gave me a lot to think about. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death

Moderate: Death

Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cancer, and Terminal illness

beholderess's review against another edition

hopeful informative sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death

Minor: War

jazzyinthewild's review

informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

This book was not what I expected at all.

When I was first made aware of this book, for some reason I immediately thought it would be all doom & gloom, and that if I read it I wouldn’t finish it but I was SO wrong!

Flyn’s writing is entirely captivating, I would even go as far to say mesmerising. In every chapter I felt fully immersed in each of the abandoned areas, it was a super easy, refreshing read. I found myself reading a chapter at a time, travelling across the globe to places I didn’t even know existed. 

Throughout the book we visit Scotland, Turkey, Estonia, Ukraine, USA, France, Tanzania & Montserrat, discussing the effects of landfills, war, radioactive waste, agriculture, introductions of non-native/invasive species and other manmade issues impact the nature of an environment once it’s been left to its own devices.

This book is incredibly well-written, you can tell how much time and research went into each and every page. Flyn goes into so much detail about the history of each location, including stories from local people, and also gives her own experience of each place which made the whole book truly magical. She immerses herself completely into every location, giving beautiful descriptions of how nature is reclaiming the land of abandoned places. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Animal death, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and War