I had heard great things about Beneath the Rising so Premee Mohamed was on my radar when I saw this and her other recent novella on NetGalley. I loved getting a taste of her writing, especially within the cli-fi genre. I really enjoyed The Annual Migration of Clouds, but I wanted more. For me, novellas are successful when they satiate you. But this book felt like the first third or half of a novel, or even the start of a series. 

The climate disaster apocalypse has come and gone and the remnants of humankind are largely scattered and living in small, isolated, and tight-knit subsistence communities. And many are infected by a mysterious parasitic disease. Including Reid, the young woman protagonist, and her mother. 

The novella opens with Reid receiving a mysterious letter informing her that she’s been admitted to a mysterious, possibly-fabled university that all have heard of, but none in her community has ever seen or attended. The whole story revolves around Reid preparing to leave for this university--telling her mom, finding people to cover her work, making arrangements for her sick mother to have enough food to live on and barter with, and readying herself to leave her best friend behind. Reid is offered the opportunity to participate in a dangerous but lucrative hunting expedition that will allow her to leave with the peace of mind that her mother is taken care of. The bulk of the plot then ends up revolving around this hunt-gone-wrong, which is interesting, but ultimately feels too disconnected from the larger world that Mohamed introduces--the university, the disease. The result is an evocative portrait of family, friendship, and the bonds community in a post-climate disaster society. It is enjoyable, thought-provoking, and affecting.

And yet, as the remaining pages dwindled, I got more and more upset that I wouldn't get any closure on whether the university is real, whether it’s a good place, whether the people there are working to cure the disease.

Many thanks to NetGalley and ECW Press for giving me advance access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

Not to go all STEM major in this review, but the science in this book was super interesting. I’m not 100% how specifically accurate/feasible everything was, but the setting seemed very tangible and well-developed despite being a novella. The conflict Reid was facing is one I think many people face at some point in their life, though oftentimes less permanent and direct than the situation here, of whether to pursue a new opportunity or stick with what’s comfortable. The side characters were great and Cad was a fascinating concept, especially since research has shown that fungi quite literally possess intelligence, though necessarily in the exact way we view it. Sometimes the prose itself was a bit hard to follow and I definitely had to go back and reread a few sections, but overall it was a wholesome and intense read.

I absolutely loved this novella, the only negative I could offer is that I want to know what happens next! I would happily read more from this author and that cover is so beautiful.

The Annual Migration of Clouds encompasses the affect of climate disaster, genetic disease and the need to move beyond a comfort zone.

This is the first reading experience with Premee Mohamed and is one of the most beautiful and poetic novellas I have read. I was immersed in the words Mohamed chose, she touched all senses. The ebb and flow of pace kept me interested and I hope there is a follow up novella to learn more of Reid’s journey. There is a sense of stream of consciousness in her writing, which I appreciate in any written work. Her style of writing is unique and may be challenging for some. For me, I loved it and highly recommend the read.

I loved it! It packs a punch and manages to fill lots of everything (world, characters and their relationships and dynamics) in less than 200 pages. Very impressive. Well worth a read.

I really enjoyed this book, although it was not what I expected. There were shades of "The girl with all the Gifts" and Margaret Atwood's climate fiction in the idea of a post-apocalyptic future where a proportion of the population has been infected with a mysterious fungus. In some it kills quickly, whereas in others it appears to want to protect its host. This was a surprisingly domestic story or a girl and her mother who live in a community that has to barter and work together, and is always short of food and manpower. She receives an invitation to the almost mythical university, and I was expected the book to be about her journey and arrival. In fact, it almost felt like a tease that the entire novella is more about her deciding whether to go or not. However, I enjoyed the story and it stuck in my mind for a long time.

This was a really fun read.
A moving and weird little dystopian story that doesn't give you all the answers.
I love the author's writing, it doesn't really feel YA I think..
Loved it!

I thought this book was such a unique concept and had lot's of potential but I just could never quite connect to it. I think this was almost too vast of a story to be told in such a short amount of pages which is where I think this novella was let down

Firstly, I'd like to thank NetGalley, the author and the publishers for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.

I love dystopia. It's one of my favourite things to read. I love to see the different kind of disasters and I love hearing about how people have adapted and how they survive. I really enjoyed this book, but I don't feel that it's one I would go back to quickly and I probably won't continue on with the series.

I liked the idea, I liked the atmosphere and the writing; and while I completely devoured the first half, I found myself loosing interest in the second part. I don't know specifically why, maybe I just fell out of the 'dystopia' mood, but whilst the first half was memorable and enjoyable to me, I didn't feel the same way about the second half.

Despite that, I loved the world-building, I loved the body-horror type or dystopia it was and I think it shows so much promise for the rest of the series.

The Annual Migration of Clouds is set in a world in which climate change has caused the collapse of society, leaving little behind. Many of those that survived are infected with cad, a mysterious mind-altering fungus that lives in a symbiotic relationship with its host which eventually results in a painful death. Reid, a young woman carrying the parasite, has been given the opportunity to move away from her isolated community to one of the last remnants of pre-disaster society. It is a one-way trip. The novella follows her as she decides whether or not she can abandon her mother and the community that relies on her.

This book isn’t quite what I was expecting. Rather than an action-packed narrative, we get a character-driven, introspective story exploring themes such as survival, obligation, friendship, fear and regret as Reid wrestles with her life-changing decision.

I suspect the contemplative nature of the writing won’t appeal to everyone, but it’s certainly an interesting read.

My thanks to NetGalley and ECW Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to #NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

In a dystopian future the world has been ravaged by climate disaster, our protagonist Reid lives within a small community eking out an existence in the remains of a city. There is no electricity, no way to regain the knowledge lost in previous generations, a shrinking population ravaged by a semi-sentient parasite, called Cad. Reid and her mother are both infected.

Reid has been invited to go to Howse University, a mysterious enclave of knowledge & scientific research. It’s a future she has always dreamed of, but now it is within her grasp she is torn by her conflicted feelings. Is she selfish - or foolish? How can she abandon her mother and the only community she has ever known? Does Howse even exist beneath its fabled dome? What knowledge might they have to share with her? A cure for Cad?

I found this story, which could have been bleak, intrinsically hopeful. The community is self supporting, people pull together and look out for each other, encouraging Reid not to settle but to search for something more. I hope the author chooses to continue Reid’s story, I would love to follow her to Howse and learn more about Cad and Reid’s battle against its growing control over her body.

The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed

The Annual Migration of Clouds is an upcoming novella by Indo-Caribbean/Canadian author Premee Mohamed, whose work I'm most familiar with from her Lovecraftian horror-thriller series that began with Beneath the Rising. Mohamed's an author other writers I follow have highly recommended, and I've enjoyed a little bit, but hasn't really clicked for me the way she has for others. So I was interested to see if my opinion would change outside of the Beneath The Rising setting.

And this novella is really interesting and very much the type of story that generally appeals to me - a character focused story - set in a post-apoc Canada - featuring a young woman/teen in a world with seemingly no escape, with a parasitic illness affecting her mind and a mother who depends on her, given a chance at a new life in a better outside world, and feeling all the guilt that entails. It's a story about relationships, about one's own will, about the risks one takes, and it works really well.


Quick Plot Summary: The world has been ruined since before Reid was born - ruined by climate change, by the loss of reproductive rights, and by greed, and so the rich fled into their domed occupancies with their technology while the rest of the world grouped together to try to survive with what little they remained to understand. And of course there is the Cad, the parasitic entity that is passed down by birth, which infects people and affects their minds and bodies.

Reid has long resigned herself to living and dying in her community, caring for her mother and hanging with her one friend, and dealing with the Cad as the parasite gets worse inside of her. But then she receives a response to an application to a school inside one of the domes, an application she expected nothing of, inviting her to leave and join them. But with Reid's mother depending upon her, a mother debilitated by the Cad and other work and emotionally insisting that the invite is a sham, and with her knowing nothing else but her community, can she really leave them all? And if she can, are her decisions being made by herself or being influenced by the Cad?

Thoughts: This novella features the struggles of Reid in a world that has fallen apart for reasons that are extrapolations of our current world - reproduction rights taken away, environmental disasters, the works - leaving the unfortunate survivors with nothing but each other and memories of how the world used to be (and with memories of how technology should work but not how it necessarily will). And so these people are so tied together, even as they're slowly dying out - from hunger, from environmental disasters (a dust bowl like incident is described destroying soil), from trying to hunt dangerous beasts (pigs) with weak weapons, or from the Cad. And this leads to relationships that are both understandable and in many ways are kind of abusive.

Foremost is Reid's relationship with her mother, who keeps trying to push in more and more dangerous ways for Reid to stay home with her and supporting her, and who is also suffering from the Cad, such that Reid feels like she can't tell if her mom's actions are her own or the will of the Cad, which is very much inspired by self-preservation above all else (or so it seems). It's an abusive relationship as her mother never tries to see what Reid needs and how Reid keeps putting herself out there to try and help her mother, and its the biggest struggle for Reid to overcome. That said, Reid's best friend Henryk forms the other struggle, in that he's a cowardly boy who could do very little without her support (their other true companion having left long ago) and lacks parents, and Reid's underlying concern for him is just as underlying her fears of leaving. And then there's the Cad, which makes Reid feel like she has no choices at all.
It all comes together as a story with a strong emotional impact, and is well worth your time.

This clever and moving novella is set in a post climate disaster, civilisation collapse world. Reid, the young woman who is the main character, has just been accepted into Howse university. She currently lives in a self sufficient town/community where only the oldest remember a time with electricity. The University would’ve been domed and enclosed when disaster happened, Reids people have survived nonetheless. Reid also has a disease called Cad for short. It’s a fungal infection that lives in a symbiotic relationship with its host, so much so that it can protect the host from danger.
With this as the basis of the story it becomes an exploration about survival, friendship, memory and regret, fear and anger. Fear of an unknown future, and anger at the previous societies that lived so carefree and carelessly. But the story is told with hope and courage and I found it well written and an interesting read.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a free copy.

I did that thing which reviewers probably shouldn't really do, which is go through and read other reviews before writing mine. However, in this case, I did so for a very specific reason: I had a suspicion about how this book would land, and I think I was mostly right.

A good friend of mine who is very much a litfic fan once gave me a beautiful definition for literary fiction (the genre) as opposed to commercial fiction with a literary quality. She said that both litfic and commercial genres ask certain questions, but genre fiction must provide an answer to the questions it asks within its story, whereas litfic tends to be more concerned with the exploration of the question itself. The endpoint is less important than the journey, and so on.

That tendency sometimes gives litfic its reputation for books that meander, have unusual structures, or end without concluding (the narrative seeming to trail off or finish abruptly.) More commercially oriented readers are sometimes put off by those aspects, and if you're used to other genres then it can be genuinely frustrating. (I found Handmaid's Tale frustrating, for example: it just stops at a semi-random endpoint.)

Migration of Clouds is a beautiful, thoughtful, and eerie musing, and I'd feel comfortable classing it as literary fiction (a tag it won't get labelled with in all likelihood because of the highly speculative setting.) I realise there's a degree of subjectivity there, but that's my take on it. A lovely, evocative, sensory, thoughtful, and multi-layered novella.

But I think it might get a slightly cool reception from the SFF crowd because of its litfic structure, and might not suit genre fans looking for a more tangible, more 'defined' grasp on those speculative elements. I didn't mind the structure but did find myself wishing it was a little bit longer, because I was quite interested in knowing whether the university was real. Hopefully the author will put out more novellas in the same world some day.

I was excited to pick this up both based on the blurb and having enjoyed discovering Premee's work over the last year and a bit. Loved the characters, loved the premise and setting, with its subtle Canadian qualities. This one didn't come together for me quite as well as her other recent novella, THESE LIFELESS THINGS, however. There were some amazing character moments, but several of them didn't really get resolved or seemed to get sorted too quickly, and one involving side character Henryk seemed to simply get abandoned. I think there was potential here for a longer work that didn't get realized, which is a shame based on the things that worked really well.

Thank you NetGalley & ECW Press for a digital review copy of The Annual Migration of Clouds. This short novella
of a dystopian Earth ravaged by the climate crisis hits hard with the ever increasing need to deal with our all to real climate crisis right now. Despite the heavy topic, it is not what dominates when reading this book, but rather Reid's story, her unfathomable choice and the real connections and humanity that is tested in such a harsh world to survive. Premee Mohamed's prose is beautifully written and a joy to read, magical and full of imagery that really sparks the readers imagination.

Unfortunately, I really struggled with the middle of this book, or more just after the start, as for me, the story was difficult to follow and almost slowed down too much. For such a short book, I felt like I was burning away pages and getting no closer to any kind of resolution, almost scared to reach the end. Once the book picked up again however I could not put it down, with such fantastic writing and brilliant pacing later on in the book. Another downside for me was the lack of resolution, and the eagerness I have to know more. I felt like I was left with more unanswered questions that I would have liked, and the ending felt like it could be the start of the book itself. I want to know more about the world, the people, the infection and where Reid's story goes next. It feels like the pay off for the entire set up is just not there, and despite thoroughly loving what this book has to offer, I was left wishing the book was much, much longer, or that a longer sequel is in the works.

This was lovely. The prose in particular was wonderful; I haven't read prose like this maybe ever, unexpected and lush but still crystal-clear.

It's worth noting that there isn't much of a "plot" to speak of; nothing really "happens" in this book in the conventional sense. The novella is more of a long-form character examination. But much to my own surprise, that did not interfere with my enjoyment of it! What the novella sets out to do, it executes perfectly. The end result is clever, compelling, introspective, and honestly – considering the setting is post-apocalyptic, and contains a lot of pain – quite sweet. "Hopepunk" is the word, all right.

I received an e-ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t read a lot of dystopian books, though I can enjoy them from time to time. But something about this cover and the title intrigued me and so I requested it from Netgalley. And I am so glad I did.

This novella is a small and almost intimate story about a young woman having to make a choice, and it is superbly written. The dialogue felt completely natural and the main characters inner voice was done spot on. It has been a while since I read something that flowed so natural and easy. I am sure this book will make an amazing audiobook.

I really liked the idea of Cad… a kind of parasite living inside people that can alter their behaviour to protect their host… until they are done with them and painfully kill of the people. It is a hereditary disease, that spread like wildfire after abortion, sex-ed and anticonseptive were banned. A whole series of other tragedies has hit the earth as well both regarding climate and manmade, creating a world of settlements fighting for survival where knowledge has gone. I loved the idea how they used the plastic left behind by previous generations, because they cannot make their own anymore and the landfills are still aplenty.

In this world we follow Reid, who gets a letter that she has been accepted at a legendary university no one knows is even real. She has to choose between staying with her mother who needs her help to get by, or go escape the daily struggle to survive and work on a chance to fix the world.

And that is all this novella is really… a superbly written, character driven story with a fascinating world as backdrop. And I adored it. I really hope Premee isn’t done with Reid, or at least this world, yet, because I need more!

3.5 stars

This is probably the only novella that I have ever felt should have been longer. Another Cad-related scene or two would have made this nearly perfect for me. Cad as an idea was very unsettling and interesting and I enjoyed every instance where it reared its creepy head. I would have especially loved one more gruesome encounter like the one that gave me Princess Mononoke and The Troop flashbacks. This is a quieter tale than those works however, with more introspection and emotional conflict (which was spot on) and was told very effectively through the writing style. I wish more young adult stories (or with young characters that appeal to teens) were written this way.
I will definitely be reading more this author's work, for the great ideas and the style! I would definitely read a sequel novella or another story in this Cad-infested setting, it has real potential.

Many thanks to Netgalley and ECW Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I wasn't aware this was a novella till I saw how fast I was burning through it.

It's a very interesting concept, and the world building is fantastic, but there's SO MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS. This almost reads as a side novella from an actual series - almost as if you should already know some of the answers to the questions raised.

I'd definitely be interested in reading more from this author, but I'm not sure I'd recommend this book since it doesn't resolve anything and leaves so many threads hanging.