A review by snappydog
The Roots that Clutch by A.E. Bross
4.0
I don't usually say things like this, but I think this is a three-and-a-half rounded up for me. That's a thing people on Goodreads say, right? Oooh, I'm a real reviewer now. Fancy.
So! The Roots That Clutch. Interesting book - it sort of feels more like a Novel in the classic sense (like a Water Margin or a Genji or even something Balzac-y) than what we usually expect to get these days. We follow Tirzah from a terrified five-year-old to a rather more proactive young adult, which is a pretty cool thing to see. It's not often you get to see that much of a character's life in one book, so it was definitely an interesting choice that makes this book feel different. It does make for some slightly odd pacing at times, since we dip in and out of the most important episodes in Tirzah's life - it can end up feeling a bit like several installments of a series collected into one volume - and she's really the only character who's in the whole thing. But then I never really thought the conventional wisdom about pacing was much worth following anyway, so eh.
That certainly is the area I think I have the most thoughts about, though. I could see this working really well as, like, a webcomic or something where each period of Tirzah's life was a self-contained issue or miniseries, because they do feel kind of separate and not the most continuous; I think, like I say, that's at least partly because very few characters appear in more than one or two of these time periods. Which is a shame, because that means we only get to spend a little bit of time with each of them, and some of them I'd really have liked to see more of! Again, though, this isn't necessarily a criticism: it's a choice for how Bross wants to tell this story, this sort of personal epic spanning Tirzah's entire youth at once. I'll be interested to see how much time subsequent books choose to cover; by the end of The Roots That Clutch I suspect the series will slow down from here to stay longer in shorter timespans, with this first book perhaps feeling in retrospect like a really cool prologue-origin story kind of thing.
And I certainly do expect that there will be more to come, and not just because this book's explicitly labelled the first in the series! It delivers well on what first-in-series books need to do: it introduces us to a world, makes us interested in that world, and lays a lot of groundwork to let the reader know that big things are going to happen.
Oh - something cool about this book is that it has a character who interchangeably uses he/they pronouns, which I'm not sure I've seen represented before and I like that very much ('cos hey, that's me!). (That said, I'm not 100% sure the instances of 'he' in the narration and dialogue are totally intentional, 'cos the only explicit mention of their pronouns are that they use 'they/them', but whether they're typos or not I'm choosing to interpret it as interchangeable he/they and celebrate that, and you can't stop me!)
Also: further LGBTQ+ rep, rounded sex workers, and a talking (well, telepathically talking) fox. What the heck are ya gonna complain about there, eh?
(What you don't really get, just yet at least, is much exploration of the world's main problems as highlighted in the blurb - the water shortages, etc. It comes into it a little bit, but not much, so I'd go into this knowing that the story focuses on one girl's personal journey rather than imagining it might be a wider-scale thing about climate measures or something.)
So yeah - I would recommend Roots That Clutch if you're up for an experience that might feel a little differently paced than what you're perhaps used to. It's a less usual way of telling a story these days, but I think it works for this particular story. You'll be teased with hints of grand-scale movements in god-kingdoms, magic of which we just scratch the surface, and all sorts. Also, you will be desperate to see the antagonist get punched in the face at some point, which seems like a pretty good reason to keep reading the series!
So! The Roots That Clutch. Interesting book - it sort of feels more like a Novel in the classic sense (like a Water Margin or a Genji or even something Balzac-y) than what we usually expect to get these days. We follow Tirzah from a terrified five-year-old to a rather more proactive young adult, which is a pretty cool thing to see. It's not often you get to see that much of a character's life in one book, so it was definitely an interesting choice that makes this book feel different. It does make for some slightly odd pacing at times, since we dip in and out of the most important episodes in Tirzah's life - it can end up feeling a bit like several installments of a series collected into one volume - and she's really the only character who's in the whole thing. But then I never really thought the conventional wisdom about pacing was much worth following anyway, so eh.
That certainly is the area I think I have the most thoughts about, though. I could see this working really well as, like, a webcomic or something where each period of Tirzah's life was a self-contained issue or miniseries, because they do feel kind of separate and not the most continuous; I think, like I say, that's at least partly because very few characters appear in more than one or two of these time periods. Which is a shame, because that means we only get to spend a little bit of time with each of them, and some of them I'd really have liked to see more of! Again, though, this isn't necessarily a criticism: it's a choice for how Bross wants to tell this story, this sort of personal epic spanning Tirzah's entire youth at once. I'll be interested to see how much time subsequent books choose to cover; by the end of The Roots That Clutch I suspect the series will slow down from here to stay longer in shorter timespans, with this first book perhaps feeling in retrospect like a really cool prologue-origin story kind of thing.
And I certainly do expect that there will be more to come, and not just because this book's explicitly labelled the first in the series! It delivers well on what first-in-series books need to do: it introduces us to a world, makes us interested in that world, and lays a lot of groundwork to let the reader know that big things are going to happen.
Oh - something cool about this book is that it has a character who interchangeably uses he/they pronouns, which I'm not sure I've seen represented before and I like that very much ('cos hey, that's me!). (That said, I'm not 100% sure the instances of 'he' in the narration and dialogue are totally intentional, 'cos the only explicit mention of their pronouns are that they use 'they/them', but whether they're typos or not I'm choosing to interpret it as interchangeable he/they and celebrate that, and you can't stop me!)
Also: further LGBTQ+ rep, rounded sex workers, and a talking (well, telepathically talking) fox. What the heck are ya gonna complain about there, eh?
(What you don't really get, just yet at least, is much exploration of the world's main problems as highlighted in the blurb - the water shortages, etc. It comes into it a little bit, but not much, so I'd go into this knowing that the story focuses on one girl's personal journey rather than imagining it might be a wider-scale thing about climate measures or something.)
So yeah - I would recommend Roots That Clutch if you're up for an experience that might feel a little differently paced than what you're perhaps used to. It's a less usual way of telling a story these days, but I think it works for this particular story. You'll be teased with hints of grand-scale movements in god-kingdoms, magic of which we just scratch the surface, and all sorts. Also, you will be desperate to see the antagonist get punched in the face at some point, which seems like a pretty good reason to keep reading the series!