A review by treyhunner
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys
Gender, sexuality, climate change, parenting, religion, inter-species symbiosis, inter-species relationships, corporations, governments, communes, and more.
I enjoyed this book, but it did feel like there was a LOT going on sometimes. Occasionally rabbit hole on a particular topic went a bit deeper than felt warranted. For example I appreciated how much gender played a role in this book, but some of the discussions about gender signaling and pronouns felt very lengthy. I imagine if this were made into a movie those discussions wouldn't make the cut and the viewer would simply be expected to pick up on those elements of world building (there would be more showing of how different societies handle gender and less explaining of it).
I also wished some of the characters had a bit more depth at times. At times this felt a bit like a long short story. I still enjoyed it though.
I appreciated the reference to Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower that was thrown in somewhere: "All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change."
I do wish the aliens were more *alien* (like Octavia Butler's Dawn). That would have made some of the alien-human contact moments much more challenging to write though.
I enjoyed this book, but it did feel like there was a LOT going on sometimes. Occasionally rabbit hole on a particular topic went a bit deeper than felt warranted. For example I appreciated how much gender played a role in this book, but some of the discussions about gender signaling and pronouns felt very lengthy. I imagine if this were made into a movie those discussions wouldn't make the cut and the viewer would simply be expected to pick up on those elements of world building (there would be more showing of how different societies handle gender and less explaining of it).
I also wished some of the characters had a bit more depth at times. At times this felt a bit like a long short story. I still enjoyed it though.
I appreciated the reference to Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower that was thrown in somewhere: "All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change."
I do wish the aliens were more *alien* (like Octavia Butler's Dawn). That would have made some of the alien-human contact moments much more challenging to write though.