My very favourite thing about this book is characters describing technology and other old-word items that they’ve never come across before, but are well-known things to the reader. It’s like a guessing game. A large piece of tech hammered together out of sheets of metal with wheels inside a great big metal band and a pipe sticking out. A soft slippery cloth puffed up like a pillow. Any guesses? There are loads of them, and I love it!

Language is another great thing. Seeing how it has evolved over time or how old and unknown words are pronounced and interpreted to make sense with the words people already know and understand. Mythen Rood, for example, had a previous and similar sounding name we’d be more familiar with. Koli doesn’t know how you communicate with tech and so when he learns the word he calls it an in-their-face. This shit is freaking catnip to me, I can’t get enough of it.

I don’t think I have ever been so keen to get on and read the next book in a series. There are so many hints and clues and foreshadowing and points to connect. I have theories, and I need to know how everything comes together, when and what details are revealed, and what the hell happened in the past and will happen in the future. Most of my theories involve Ursula. She knows so much. How? Who was she before she became a wandering doctor-of-sorts? How old is she? I have some ideas. I also kind of maybe half suspect (or, at least, I want to believe) that this story is set in the far flung future of The Girl With All the Gifts. It’s a stretch, but noxious trees and enough time… let me have this.

A longer review can be read at my book blog: Marvel at Words.