Member Review
Review by
Jake D, Reviewer
Appleseed: A Novel, Review
By Jake Duell
I recently read an Advance Readers Copy of Appleseed by Matt Bell this year which came out on July 13, 2021. This book tackled the ever changing world of climate change and where the results could end. The story takes this on through three narrative plot lines taking place in three time frames. There is Chapmans story taking place as America spread west into Ohio and farther, there is Johns story taking place in the near future which is a world at ecological collapse, and there is C-### story a printed humanoid-biosynthetic exploring the world of the far future.
Though the book's theme is clear throughout, the plot lines tend to stumble at times. Of the characters of Chapmans which is the weakest and most confusing of the stories, Johns story was highly intriguing and kept me wanting to read to see where the stories go, and C-### the story brings the whole narrative home, converging the three characters' stories into a single story.
Overall the book is an interesting take on human destruction and expansion across the world. There is no doubt this story is taking on what climate change could lead to, what human inaction during these dire times could be, and how human action led to the factors of climate change. The story is very much planted in the realm of humanities pitfalls, a philosophical topic I very much enjoyed exploring in books. Due to this almost all the characters are flawed in some great way, like all real humans, with C-### last incarnation being the least flawed of all the characters mentally.
Most of the story takes place filtering the chapters between Chapman, John, then C until later in the book where C disappears for some time. This factor really helped me keep reading as when there were chapters that struggled compared to others. I could easily keep reading knowing the character would change in the next and pick up on one of the other story lines. In some ways this book reminded me of some of the themes of one of my favorite games of all time, Horizon Zero Dawn. Though I would not place this book at the top of my recommended reading list I would give it a strong 6.5/10 and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi, magic and human issues. Overall a bleak story that does have a happy ending. For more of my thoughts on this story, read below. Warning Spoilers Ahead.
I want to discuss in more detail my thoughts on this book, and specifically the main characters arcs. In the next few paragraphs I am going to discuss this book by character in the story's chronological order. One of my issues with the book is that no dates are clearly stated so all three stories take place during general times.
Appleseed begins with the story of Chapman. Chapman is a half fawn half human who spends his time spreading out across the western frontier with his brother Nathanel planting apple trees for the future settlers to eat from and attempting to get payment in return in the future. Chapman of course has a different goal as well, he is looking for the tree of forgetting which will turn him into a human only. This has been a goal since his violent birth killed his mother, caused his father to cast him out, and his brother to save him and run away.
The major issue I have with this story line is it is highly magical and it is not explained well. From Chapmans odd birth as something other than human, to the magical tree, to the witches that are introduced sort of suddenly and really send the story off the rails. The witches seem out of place in the story in general, the book takes place in the American Expansion but these witches seem highly European to me. This would not be so out of sorts if these witches were not established as the protectors of the land, which makes it seem like they should be rooted in the Native American lore. On top of all that they carry a severed head which when it sings causes the future to be seen or traveled too, and the witches and the head have something to do with Chapmans past life when humans and animals lived together in unity.
Overall Chapmans story is an odd one used to tie up plot lines for the other stories. At one point during the witches attack his brother shoots him, flinging him through time but saving him from the witches. He and his brother are not reunited for 10 years. At his point Chapman learns to hide his fawn form and become fully human, which leads to him becoming but not becoming the legendary Johnny Appleseed, living with the ancestors of our second character, John Worth, and then killing the witches, gaining the singing head and burying it in the Johns family homestead. During this time he finally finds his Tree of Forgetting but has to flee from the Worths as they attack him in his Faun form, thus preventing him from finding his golden apple and becoming who he thought he wanted to be. His story finishes with him heading west. This story just falls flat, it has some really great points but when it comes to the potential of looping all the stories together it feels like so much more could have been done, and could have been done better.
John's story is the more modern story and the best story in the book. It takes place in the near future, by my best guess 2070 or so. Again dates are not really stated so this is a bit of a downfall in the story to me. The world he lives in is not far away from our real world but in a much more dire state. The US government is on the verge of collapse and the capital has been moved to Syracuse, most of the western United States has been destroyed and evacuated, most of the animals have gone extinct, and a company called Earthtrust controls most of the world's food supply via their genetically modified crops. John was a founding member of Earthtrust, helping to create super trees and robotic bees, before he fled west following his girlfriend who was an Earthtrust soldier. He is now part of what can best be defined as a terrorist group trying to take down Earthtrust, though most of his time in the West, known as the sacrifice zone, is spent trying to rewild the earth.
In trying to take down Earth Trust he has to head back east to the VAC created on the land he grew up on. A VAC is a community of “volunteers,” US Citizens who have given up their citizenship and rights in exchange for food and a job. VAC’s across the globe feed the world on their genetically modified crops and animals. The VAC John ends up in is Earthtrust headquarters and it does not take long for Eury, Earthtrust founder and John's ex girlfriend, to find him and bring him back into the fold.
Eury is a character we must touch on. She is a genus set out to save the world any way needed. This means she takes tough actions which at times are considered horrendous. Some of the things she does is find a way to map the genome of Animals and Humans and print new life, take the US and EU governments hostage through her VACs, and find the way to transfer her conscience from one body to another. We find out some of her goals and inventions are inspired and powered by that singing head that was buried on the Worth family homestead all that time ago, something she was able to find because she was John's neighbor and she bought all that land for Earthtrust. One of her other plans is Pinatubo, based off the volcano, which will release items into the air to slow the earth's temperature rise and give humans more time to solve their problems.
This is where John comes in, Eury brings John back to the fold and shows him how to print beings and to help her complete Pinatubo. Though John assists, this is actually part of his current girlfriend, Cals, plans to bring down Earthtrust. On the day of Pinatubo’s launch Cal leads an uprising against Earthtrust that spreads across the globe. It's a bloody uprising, which in my opinion actually dooms humanity, that has a plan within a plan. Though Eury assumes they plan on stopping Pinatubo, Cal actually plans to speed it up. There was a backup in this plan where after a specified amount of years if things didn't get better the earth would be plunged into an ice age only warming back up once temperatures normalize and the earth is ready to be reborn. Cal convinces John to change the time frame down to 25 years. Of course humans cannot seem to work together and after 25 years the earth falls into a brutal ice age.
This is where C-### come in. He is a printed humanoid, again a part faun part human, who traverses the icey world digging down for biomaterial to print new beings, mainly himself when the time comes for another body. The story starts with C-432 before he is injured and needs to melt himself and reprint, carrying the story to C-433. Though time is not explored here it appears each of these creatures lives an average of 10 years putting this story over 4000 years into the future. This is a world still frozen, the damage humans did is taking a long time to repair.
C-433 is a different being then the rest though and starts having a tree grow from him. He knows this is important and remembers something from a past life about a base where humanity is supposed to live. Taking off in a solar powered bubble craft he heads on the long journey back to this home. As he travels the tree grows and actually starts to sprout other living beings including “beetles.”
Once he makes it to this home he left long ago he finds Eury waiting for him, now a nano machine “Ghost.” Eury has gone insane in a way merging multiple personalities into herself and becoming power mad in her chance to save humans. Even though her end goal is still noble, her methods are now more questionable to say the least. This is where it is revealed to C-433 that he is, or was John at one point a long time ago, by another printed John. It turns out John and Eury lived down in this base waiting for the chance to restore the world. After a long time their goals diverged and John printed multiples of himself and set them into the world to start preparing the world and collecting samples. C-433 is one of these Johns, the only one to ever return and he is life reborn. In the end Johns/C-433s tree ends up being what restores life on earth once the conditions are livable again, this was not Eurys plan, but it was how everything ended.
I think my greatest issue with this book was it had great bones, which makes it a decent book but not amazing. Some of the plot lines just remained too confusing and some of the hops in the story telling did not make sense. The pull in of magic to bring part of the story together just didn't play well for me. I loved some of the themes of this book, from the dangerous humanity present to our own habitat, to the problems with mega corporations, to the theme of trees and life. We must remember that Adam and Eve were corrupted by a Tree of Knowledge in the garden, Chapman hunts a Tree of Forgetting, and in the end a tree intertwined with a human is what restores life on earth. I am left with one major question, one not clearly answered, were Chapman, John and C-### all the same person, just versions of Chapman when he was stuck in that time tunnel for 10 years?
By Jake Duell
I recently read an Advance Readers Copy of Appleseed by Matt Bell this year which came out on July 13, 2021. This book tackled the ever changing world of climate change and where the results could end. The story takes this on through three narrative plot lines taking place in three time frames. There is Chapmans story taking place as America spread west into Ohio and farther, there is Johns story taking place in the near future which is a world at ecological collapse, and there is C-### story a printed humanoid-biosynthetic exploring the world of the far future.
Though the book's theme is clear throughout, the plot lines tend to stumble at times. Of the characters of Chapmans which is the weakest and most confusing of the stories, Johns story was highly intriguing and kept me wanting to read to see where the stories go, and C-### the story brings the whole narrative home, converging the three characters' stories into a single story.
Overall the book is an interesting take on human destruction and expansion across the world. There is no doubt this story is taking on what climate change could lead to, what human inaction during these dire times could be, and how human action led to the factors of climate change. The story is very much planted in the realm of humanities pitfalls, a philosophical topic I very much enjoyed exploring in books. Due to this almost all the characters are flawed in some great way, like all real humans, with C-### last incarnation being the least flawed of all the characters mentally.
Most of the story takes place filtering the chapters between Chapman, John, then C until later in the book where C disappears for some time. This factor really helped me keep reading as when there were chapters that struggled compared to others. I could easily keep reading knowing the character would change in the next and pick up on one of the other story lines. In some ways this book reminded me of some of the themes of one of my favorite games of all time, Horizon Zero Dawn. Though I would not place this book at the top of my recommended reading list I would give it a strong 6.5/10 and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi, magic and human issues. Overall a bleak story that does have a happy ending. For more of my thoughts on this story, read below. Warning Spoilers Ahead.
I want to discuss in more detail my thoughts on this book, and specifically the main characters arcs. In the next few paragraphs I am going to discuss this book by character in the story's chronological order. One of my issues with the book is that no dates are clearly stated so all three stories take place during general times.
Appleseed begins with the story of Chapman. Chapman is a half fawn half human who spends his time spreading out across the western frontier with his brother Nathanel planting apple trees for the future settlers to eat from and attempting to get payment in return in the future. Chapman of course has a different goal as well, he is looking for the tree of forgetting which will turn him into a human only. This has been a goal since his violent birth killed his mother, caused his father to cast him out, and his brother to save him and run away.
The major issue I have with this story line is it is highly magical and it is not explained well. From Chapmans odd birth as something other than human, to the magical tree, to the witches that are introduced sort of suddenly and really send the story off the rails. The witches seem out of place in the story in general, the book takes place in the American Expansion but these witches seem highly European to me. This would not be so out of sorts if these witches were not established as the protectors of the land, which makes it seem like they should be rooted in the Native American lore. On top of all that they carry a severed head which when it sings causes the future to be seen or traveled too, and the witches and the head have something to do with Chapmans past life when humans and animals lived together in unity.
Overall Chapmans story is an odd one used to tie up plot lines for the other stories. At one point during the witches attack his brother shoots him, flinging him through time but saving him from the witches. He and his brother are not reunited for 10 years. At his point Chapman learns to hide his fawn form and become fully human, which leads to him becoming but not becoming the legendary Johnny Appleseed, living with the ancestors of our second character, John Worth, and then killing the witches, gaining the singing head and burying it in the Johns family homestead. During this time he finally finds his Tree of Forgetting but has to flee from the Worths as they attack him in his Faun form, thus preventing him from finding his golden apple and becoming who he thought he wanted to be. His story finishes with him heading west. This story just falls flat, it has some really great points but when it comes to the potential of looping all the stories together it feels like so much more could have been done, and could have been done better.
John's story is the more modern story and the best story in the book. It takes place in the near future, by my best guess 2070 or so. Again dates are not really stated so this is a bit of a downfall in the story to me. The world he lives in is not far away from our real world but in a much more dire state. The US government is on the verge of collapse and the capital has been moved to Syracuse, most of the western United States has been destroyed and evacuated, most of the animals have gone extinct, and a company called Earthtrust controls most of the world's food supply via their genetically modified crops. John was a founding member of Earthtrust, helping to create super trees and robotic bees, before he fled west following his girlfriend who was an Earthtrust soldier. He is now part of what can best be defined as a terrorist group trying to take down Earthtrust, though most of his time in the West, known as the sacrifice zone, is spent trying to rewild the earth.
In trying to take down Earth Trust he has to head back east to the VAC created on the land he grew up on. A VAC is a community of “volunteers,” US Citizens who have given up their citizenship and rights in exchange for food and a job. VAC’s across the globe feed the world on their genetically modified crops and animals. The VAC John ends up in is Earthtrust headquarters and it does not take long for Eury, Earthtrust founder and John's ex girlfriend, to find him and bring him back into the fold.
Eury is a character we must touch on. She is a genus set out to save the world any way needed. This means she takes tough actions which at times are considered horrendous. Some of the things she does is find a way to map the genome of Animals and Humans and print new life, take the US and EU governments hostage through her VACs, and find the way to transfer her conscience from one body to another. We find out some of her goals and inventions are inspired and powered by that singing head that was buried on the Worth family homestead all that time ago, something she was able to find because she was John's neighbor and she bought all that land for Earthtrust. One of her other plans is Pinatubo, based off the volcano, which will release items into the air to slow the earth's temperature rise and give humans more time to solve their problems.
This is where John comes in, Eury brings John back to the fold and shows him how to print beings and to help her complete Pinatubo. Though John assists, this is actually part of his current girlfriend, Cals, plans to bring down Earthtrust. On the day of Pinatubo’s launch Cal leads an uprising against Earthtrust that spreads across the globe. It's a bloody uprising, which in my opinion actually dooms humanity, that has a plan within a plan. Though Eury assumes they plan on stopping Pinatubo, Cal actually plans to speed it up. There was a backup in this plan where after a specified amount of years if things didn't get better the earth would be plunged into an ice age only warming back up once temperatures normalize and the earth is ready to be reborn. Cal convinces John to change the time frame down to 25 years. Of course humans cannot seem to work together and after 25 years the earth falls into a brutal ice age.
This is where C-### come in. He is a printed humanoid, again a part faun part human, who traverses the icey world digging down for biomaterial to print new beings, mainly himself when the time comes for another body. The story starts with C-432 before he is injured and needs to melt himself and reprint, carrying the story to C-433. Though time is not explored here it appears each of these creatures lives an average of 10 years putting this story over 4000 years into the future. This is a world still frozen, the damage humans did is taking a long time to repair.
C-433 is a different being then the rest though and starts having a tree grow from him. He knows this is important and remembers something from a past life about a base where humanity is supposed to live. Taking off in a solar powered bubble craft he heads on the long journey back to this home. As he travels the tree grows and actually starts to sprout other living beings including “beetles.”
Once he makes it to this home he left long ago he finds Eury waiting for him, now a nano machine “Ghost.” Eury has gone insane in a way merging multiple personalities into herself and becoming power mad in her chance to save humans. Even though her end goal is still noble, her methods are now more questionable to say the least. This is where it is revealed to C-433 that he is, or was John at one point a long time ago, by another printed John. It turns out John and Eury lived down in this base waiting for the chance to restore the world. After a long time their goals diverged and John printed multiples of himself and set them into the world to start preparing the world and collecting samples. C-433 is one of these Johns, the only one to ever return and he is life reborn. In the end Johns/C-433s tree ends up being what restores life on earth once the conditions are livable again, this was not Eurys plan, but it was how everything ended.
I think my greatest issue with this book was it had great bones, which makes it a decent book but not amazing. Some of the plot lines just remained too confusing and some of the hops in the story telling did not make sense. The pull in of magic to bring part of the story together just didn't play well for me. I loved some of the themes of this book, from the dangerous humanity present to our own habitat, to the problems with mega corporations, to the theme of trees and life. We must remember that Adam and Eve were corrupted by a Tree of Knowledge in the garden, Chapman hunts a Tree of Forgetting, and in the end a tree intertwined with a human is what restores life on earth. I am left with one major question, one not clearly answered, were Chapman, John and C-### all the same person, just versions of Chapman when he was stuck in that time tunnel for 10 years?
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
