Imagine someone inviting you to be the first to sample their culinary skills and then serving you an undercooked unseasoned meal, essentially not even so much a meal as a just a slab of meat or tofu and saying…well, that’s the gist of it, you get the idea, it’s going to be great once it’s done, but can you just review this as is and maybe write up something about to promote it? That would be pretty crazy, wouldn’t it. And yet, time and again certain publishers decide that’s a totally ok thing to do on Netgalley and lamentably this was very much the case with this book. A well written informative interesting book that was nearly impossible to enjoy due to the terribly unfinished formatting. This even had all the right ingredients, but mostly you only knew that from reading about it…such as (like all nonfiction books ought to and few do satisfactory) this one provided tons of visual materials, charts, photos, graphs, etc. We know this because their descriptions are left intact, but the material itself didn’t make it into the ARC version with exception of some photos. And this is very much the sort of book that needed the visual aid, because it was structured around I, much like a textbook, albeit more engaging. The text itself is all over the place too, but readable. And I suppose the publishers decided that was enough, just throw some readable text out there and see how the readers like it. Well, not that much. Frankly, it’s really frustrating. That was the main experience here. Probably not what they were going for, but there it is. I mean, yes, I can objectively say that once properly published, with all of its contents intact, this’ll be a worthy read. It’s interesting, it’s smart, it’s worth stumbling through some of the early chapters’ chemistry to learn all about various species, living and long gone, and what it says about our planet, evolution and future. There’s tons of science, most of it accessible, and tons of food for thought, all of it digestible…albeit a somewhat grim meal, since we are technically living through yet another extinction and this one is all manmade. The author made interesting selections to represents the story of our world, some obvious, some not, but all fascinating to learn about. This isn’t just a biology lesson, this goes well beyond flora and fauna to involve every aspect of the natural world, because, after all, it is all intricately interconnected. It’s engaging, well presented (well, it would have been had it been complete) and thoroughly edifying. If, like me, your main goal with nonfiction is continuous self education, this’ll certainly meet and exceed your autodidactic needs. I would have definitely rated this book higher, but it’s impossible to do that for the condition in which it was presented, because mainly my reviews are meant to represent a personal reading experience and this one was just too frustrating. So yeah, reader beware. Maybe wait for the properly published version. Thanks Netgalley.