04/03/2025
So I decided to give this book a listen because I was looking for dystopian with a female lead. Once again, a book that is not too dissimilar to The Road but in a different way. Lauren is traveling on a road after her community is burned to the ground. She wants to spread her concept of a new religion, Earthseed. The book starts where Lauren sounds too old for her age, and I never got a sense that she changed age through the story. However, if you can let that pass, the book is really interesting to see how much worse society gets as things fall apart. Most of this book deals with climate change and fallout from climate change, among other things going on. Certain parts of the story are brutal, and will take your breath away. I actually find this book to be better than the second one, I think because it is more focused on Lauren. I love God is Change and I love how it is spelled out in her belief system. I love that we get to go with her as she figures it out and decides to create Acorn where her vision can start. I will say some of the story suffers from meandering story, where survival is the only motivation, but the overall goal feels so big, so unattainable, that you don’t have connection with it. I think in the second book, she focuses on this to help sell that point, but here, it just seems like such a pipe dream. I would have liked to see them bring earthseed to life in a bigger way and have it be a bigger battle in the end, but, I still appreciated what a fantastically crafted world this is. I just want to sit and chat with Lauren.
2025-12
