Moving and inventive. Though the circumstances Nagamatsu imagines are extremely grim, this is not a book about apocalyptic events eroding our moral compasses. Rather, this is a book about caring for one another in the midst of unsolvable crisis. Nagamatsu's various narrators navigate their grim world with a great deal of compassion and decency. Many of their stories include severed or strained connections to family or loved ones; often they are unable to care for certain people or to care in certain ways. However, each of them, in their own way, cares for others. This is a book about compassionately attending to those to whom you can attend, and making peace with the memories of those to whom you could not. 

Nagamatsu's plague-stricken world sees death reassert its often-hidden presence in the public square, and imagines creative ways in which society might address this change. Not all of these mortuary or palliative practices are ultimately helpful or sustainable, but Nagamatsu makes sure that we notice the compassion, mourning, and hope behind each one. 

Nagamatsu ties these stories together using a framing device from science fiction, which mostly becomes relevant late in the novel. I did not think this aspect of the novel added very much, but I didn't think it detracted much either.

Framing mechanisms aside, this is ultimately (and self-consciously) a book about climate change, about environmental catastrophes, and about the imperfect but essential ways we are called to care for one another, now and in the years to come.