Our world can feel so secure, with every day following neatly after the previous one. Some things seem stable and secure. So what happens when suddenly, fish start leaving the ocean behind for jaunts on the land? What has changed? And will everything keep changing, or will we find a way to turn things back? Thanks to Fairlight Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My sincere apologies for the delay.

Climate change is bound to have an immense impact on our lives in the coming decades. Especially coastal communities will be affected and, to be very honest, this is not being properly addressed by our governments or by international bodies. With all of that on the horizon, one could ask what the point of writing books about it is. Well, storytelling is how we engage with the world around us, how we ask hard questions, and how we prepare ourselves for difficult choices. The genre of 'Climate fiction', or Cli-Fi, has arisen over the past decade or two and is used in reference to books which engage with climate change. The term Cli-Fi can apply to a pretty wide selection of books, most of them speculative in nature, from the Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dystopian, and Lit-Fic genres. The Fish would also fall under this umbrella term, set in our own world as it is. In her novel, Joanne Stubbs steps ever so slightly into our future, where coastal communities across the world are already threatened and humans have made some efforts to address their impact on the world. Stubbs' novel focuses mostly on the emotional and psychological impact of climate change on humans, so on the way in which it will affect the way we see our own place in the world, for example, rather than the actual consequences. I think for that it is very interesting and many of those aspects are well done by Stubbs. If you're looking for a novel to dive deep into climate science or to be unforgiving in its judgement, though, this is not that book.

The Fish is told through three different perspectives. We start with Cathy, who lives on the coast in Cornwall with her wife, Ephie, who is a marine biologist. They are very happily married, but the sudden appearance of fish who move onto land cause friction in their marriage. Where they are fascinating things to be studied for Ephie, the fish cause a deep unease in Cathy. The second storyline follows Ricky and his friend Kyle who live in New Zealand and are in their final years of high school. They're young, dealing with growing up in a changing world, and when the fish begin to appear it forces them even further to consider where they want to go in life. The final storyline focuses on Margaret, an American expat who lives in Kuala Lumpur. She finds joy in her faith and her missionary work, but the appearance of the fish is something she cannot overlook and it causes a crisis of faith and trust, which she cannot shake. I really liked the way in which Stubbs employed these different storylines. The characters are united by certain common experiences, like a major, world-wide storm which sets off the fish-weirdness, but due to their differing locations and backgrounds, the characters are each affected in different ways. The storylines did feel a little unequal to me. I became very fond of Cathy and Ephie almost immediately and it felt like they had to most extensively sketched-out backstory and characters. Ricky and Kyle were also interesting because this story highlighted the way in which climate change affects the young, whose lives are still in front of them. They either give in to the doom of a changing world, or choose to make changes where they can. To be entirely honest, Margaret's storyline did not hit for me. On the one hand I appreciated the way in which Stubbs showed how an event like this can shake someone's faith and understanding of the world. On the other, however, I get the ick a little from the conviction that comes out of missionary work. This is a personal thing, but it meant that I wasn't as invested in Margaret's story line, even though it had a lot to offer. I think I would have preferred, however, to get a perspective from someone actually from Kuala Lumpur, for example, rather than an expat's perspective.

This is Joanne Stubbs' debut novel and I really enjoyed the premise of her novel. She's got some great ideas going on. Her characterisation is, across the field, also very well done. As I said above, some of her characters truly shine and she has a great eye for the little details that make a character come alive. The Fish is not a long novel, clocking in at roughly 250 books, and the pace is solid. Rather than getting detailed descriptions of everything, we hop from one perspective to another and get insights into specific moments. For me, the writing felt a little dialogue-heavy and there are some seemingly relevant story threads which aren't resolved. I did like the way in which The Fish attempted to tackle something as massive as climate change and the disastrous impact it will have on coastal communities through an attention grabbing premise like "fish walking on land". It catches a reader and then tries to build from there. I did feel that, considering the novel takes place at a moment when coastal communities are already affected by rising ocean-levels, that the impact is relatively mild. I appreciate that Stubbs didn't want to write a climate dystopian novel, so I'm not expecting a high body count, but the novel felt surprisingly cozy at times, considering the themes we're playing with. For a debut novel, however, I think The Fish shows a lot of promise and I'd definitely pick up future works by Joanne Stubbs.

The Fish has an intriguing premise and engages with the impact of climate change on different coastal communities. While the storylines are a bit unbalanced and not everything feels fully addressed by the end, I did enjoy the novel.

This was a really interesting concept and very poignant to real-world issues. I loved the writing and was gripped from start to finish.

The Fish is a hubris soaked, sobering work of climate fiction by Joanne Stubbs. Released 6th Oct 2022 by Fairlight Books, it's 256 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a very dialogue dense and erudite, if dark, book. It's not light, or very humorous and there's precious little uplifting or redemptive here. Humans are a plague on the planet and in this dark near-apocalyptic near-future, the natural world has gone past the point of no return. We've known for decades and seemingly been powerless to act comprehensively to make any meaningful difference in the catastrophic path we're all on.

In the meantime, the appealing characters go about their daily lives, planting rice in a back garden paddy in Cornwall, adjusting to life in Kuala Lumpur which is rendered a coastal city by rising tides, and surviving brutal storms battering New Zealand. Parallel lives, all in the same (sinking) boat.

Four stars. In the vein of Silent Spring, and On the Beach. It feels uncomfortably prescient.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

The pacing of this story was a bit difficult to get through and the dialogue was DENSE. I feel there was a great story here but it was difficult to finish.

I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Well, this was bloody great. I'm a sucker for books containing any kind of climate disaster, and I was worried I might struggle to suspend my belief, but this really worked for me. Fish have started walking out of the sea, and we follow several character narratives all around the world, during the different stages of this phenomenon. I loved it, and the audiobook was amazing. For lovers of Jeff Vandermeer, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Charlotte McConaghy.

Overall three stars A few decades into the twenty-first century, in their permanently flooded garden in Cornwall, Cathy and her wife Ephie give up on their vegetable patch and plant a paddy field instead. Thousands of miles away, expat Margaret is struggling to adjust to life in Kuala Lumpur, now a coastal city. In New Zealand, two teenagers marvel at the extreme storms hitting their island.

But they are not the only ones adapting to the changing climate. The starfish on Cathy’s kitchen window are just the start. As more and more sea creatures begin to leave the oceans and invade the land, the new normal becomes increasingly hard to accept.

The Fish is the debut novel by writer Joanne Stubbs, who also has a background in science. I saw the book being described as climate fiction and this is what caught my interest in the beginning, beside the beautiful cover of course!

The book portraits the uncertainty of the not so distant future. The world reacts to the changes in nature as a result of the climate crisis - in this case the fish trade the ocean for land. The unusual happenings are seen through the eyes of three families. A couple growing rice in their flooded garden in Cornwall, a woman in Malaysia and a family in New Zealand.

While I'm not the usual target reader for similar books this one got me by being a clear call to live more mindfully on this planet. It's the first fiction read I am aware of covering this topic in this way and it's a clear recommendation from me.

So imagine our past 3 years but replace certain virus with fish. Fish that walks and breathes on land, fish that can kill you with neurotoxins, fish that can cause fog that stops you from seeing the tip of your nose. Just imagine that scene. If pandemic was a horror story, to me this is a sign of apocalypse.

World is not heading in right direction. One day a storm comes and suddenly inland cities become shoreline. Flooded area don't clear up. You find fish in unexpected places, but you think it's because of the storm. But then, fish don't leave either. They walk on land, they breathe perfectly fine. This is all curious until the circus turns into a mad house and people start to die. Feeling of doom starts to settle in.

And comes a day where everything goes back to normal as if it never happened. Only the pain and loss stay with people. We follow this story from few different perspective: one is uber religious expat, another is a marine biologist's wife, another is a young adult boy. How they approach this event and how they are affected by it sets the tone of the story. I enjoyed reading this book very much; characters were very well developed and perfectly transferred that feeling of doom to me.

A very strange novel, not really sure I like the writing style and didn’t feel any connection to the characters although I think many people can have all three reactions to the imagined outcome of global warming! The climate crisis is on everyone’s minds and it is helpful to have novels such as this as to keep the problem at the forefront of our minds.
Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.

There is a great story here but I was defeated by the writing style in particular the dialog-heavy scenes which are filled with what feels like unnecessary cliche beats to the point where I was distracted from what was happening.

...she catches me in her gaze

her brown eyes smiling

she scrunches her nose

she raises her eyebrows

a smile showing at the corners of her mouth...

Many readers don’t notice these beats as they read, any more than they do the periods at the ends of sentences. But I’m not one of those readers.

“How long will it be, before everything in the sea turns on us?” I loved the concept of this novel - the climate emergency causes fish to decide to live on land - but found the execution lacking. There are three narratives: one in first person (Cathy, in the south of England) and two in close third (Ricky in New Zealand and Margaret in Kuala Lumpur) and it meant that despite them having roughly the same space on the page, Cathy always felt like the protagonist and I couldn’t get invested in the others. There was also never a clear explanation of what caused the change in the fish, just vague hints at pollution and the human problem, and I was disappointed to find towards the end that this might all have been a Covid narrative in disguise when cities start to shut down and masks become necessary. I wanted this to go deeper, but it was firmly stuck on shore.

Such an odd book; initially I was not sure I would be able to finish it, but... Seen through the eyes of 3 different families, climate change has affected our world so much that fish are leaving the oceans to walk on dry land (on their fins, no less)...I give this 2 stars only because I finished it, but I leave it to you to decide if it is worth the read...

Fish on land must be the strangest manifestation in a plotline of a dystopian world that I have yet encountered. This book deals with the aftermath of a rare phenomenon, an epic storm that swept across the globe, as experienced by three individuals, one in Cornwall, one in Kuala Lumpar and the third in New Zealand. I enjoyed the concept and admire the commitment to it. I did, however, feel it dragged on a bit. Still, it's a three star read.

The cover of this book coupled with the synopsis really had me intrigued.
The idea was unlike any I’d read before and was looking forward to getting into it.
However, it just didn’t seem to hit the spot for me.
There were so many ideas floating around in the book, it was almost like brainstorming. Where you play around with it before deciding on which way to go.
I’m so sorry, I really am. I wanted to like this book so much, but it was just off point for me on this occasion.
Thank you for the opportunity to read this.
2.5/5

While I was captivated by the events happening in this story, the manner it was told in ultimately never really came together for me. This is a work of climate fiction, exploring how humanity responds when drastic changes begin appearing in nature as a result of the climate crisis - for example, fish walking on land. It’s an interesting premise and for that alone I was excited to pick up the book.

What didn’t work for me were the three different protagonists. As a whole it felt disjointed, and I had different levels of investment in each storyline. I liked Cathy, who lives in Cornwall near the ocean, but I felt that her relationship with her wife Ephie played into too many ‘unhappy marriage’ tropes without adding anything to the story. (I did, however, find the latter part of Cathy’s story fascinating. The scene with her and the shovel was phenomenal.) Ricky, a teen in New Zealand, interested me well enough, but his story seemed to have less moving parts than the other two protagonists; I kept waiting for more to happen. Finally, we have Margaret, an American expat living in Malaysia. I didn’t know how to feel about her, which is alright. Her chapters felt repetitive to me. That might have been an intentional choice by the author, given Margaret’s emotional state, but I still grew tired of her wallowing and eventual panic.

So this is an odd one for me. I really wanted to love it! The ways these characters experienced their world changing around them was the best part of the book. I was fascinated, and at times horrified and discomfited, by their world and their perceptions of it. The protagonists’ relationships with the people around them rarely moved anything in me, with few exceptions (both of which occurred in Cathy’s portion of the story). I dragged my feet reading this one because I just wasn’t all that into it. I’d be willing to give this author another go, though; I think she was onto something really special here, and I look forward to seeing what she’ll write next.

“The Fish” – Joanne Stubbs

There is a fish on the sand; I see it clearly. But it is not on its side, lying still. It is partly upright. It moves. I can see its gills, off the ground and wide open. It looks as though it’s standing up.

Set in the not-too-distant future, “The Fish” is a parable of our reluctance to accept our role in changing the makeup of our planet, a cli-fi-adjacent tale of smaller stories set across a world on the brink of disaster. Out on 6th October, my thanks to @netgalley and @fairlightbooks for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

The book has three storylines that are somewhat connected. In flooded Cornwall, Cathy and her wife Ephie, a marine analyst, decide to plant a rice paddy, having given up on the hopes of any other type of garden in the new climate. Their relationship is loving but seemingly on a knife edge, filled with the petty grievances and hurt feelings of years together. Meanwhile in Kuala Lumpur, itself now on the coast, expat Margaret struggles with life in a different culture, unable to speak any of the local language, separate and aloof from the suffering of the local population (though I’m not sure if the author intended this comparison…). Finally, in New Zealand, teenage friends Ricky and Kyle watch the storms come in, faced with a future that seems to involve climate turbulence and, more worryingly, walking fish…

I wanted to love this, and it was certainly very readable, but in the end it came out as empty book calories, a page-turner with ideas that aren’t ever fleshed out, avenues left unexplored, characters underdeveloped. I never felt anything of note towards any character with the possible exception of Cathy, and interesting ideas of how different generations, genders and races are reacting to climate change are sadly never delved into as fully or as insightfully as they could have been. An interesting disappointment.

‘When they come, I will feel like we deserve it.’

This unique and unsettling piece of climate fiction was a slow burn for me until about halfway through. From then on, I really wanted to find out what happened. I thought it was interesting looking at a global environmental disaster through the eyes of three such different characters and found them all thought-provoking and believable, especially Cathy and Margaret. I think this was a clever and insightful way to show how people can be affected differently by the same things.

Joanne Stubbs writes with an easy confidence which allows the reader to feel part of each person’s story. She is clearly very knowledgeable in her field and able to explain the devastation in the book, wrought by the effects of pollution and climate change, in a clear, concise manner. The imaginary scenarios created by the author – fish adapting to land, violent storms, poisonous mists – are horrifyingly credible. They certainly challenge the reader to think about the potential consequences of our self-centred lifestyle in new ways. These haunting words will stay with me: ‘Nature -that great beast of a woman – was out to get us all.’

This is a clever debut by a talented author. I will look out for Joanne’s next book with great interest.

Since this is my first real exploration of climate fiction, I can't confidently say whether someone who knows more than I do, or has read more on this subject, might enjoy it or find that it adds anything interesting to the conversation. That said, I personally quite enjoyed it, and it did raise a lot of questions for me.

I was very much drawn in by the idea of reading about characters who are all having very different reactions to climate change. Some of them try to adapt, some ignore it completely, and some (probably the most relatable?), just check the news excessively whilst feeling completely confused and powerless.

The novel begins with a slow burn, and definitely becomes a page turner, with each of the three storylines holding up against one another.


There are some things that I am just undecided on, and think that I will probably stay undecided on them. First of all, though I did enjoy each storyline that we followed, the sections that followed Margaret - a middle aged woman living in Kuala Lumpur - gave me a couple of pauses.

*POTENTIAL SPOILERS BELOW (SORRY)*
She is a white woman who moved to KL with her husband, and she joins a Christian group who visit brothels in order to try to connect with and potentially convert some of the sex workers there.
I could probably talk about this aspect forever, so I'll try not to be a bore.
The idea of a white, middle class woman doing this is very uncomfortable, and in some scenes it does feel as if the sex workers and their struggles are there to help the focus on Margaret's own trauma... However, I prefer not to completely pass judgement on what an author's intentions are.
I can't really discern whether Stubbs just wrote this without thinking about it, whether they were specifically criticising the behaviour slightly (Margaret does at one point look around at her Church group, and in a moment of self awareness, comment that they are all mostly white expats), or whether they are just presenting a character without really passing any judgement (I am well aware, as a reader, that the actions/views of a character don't necessarily reflect those of the author. Yay for fiction!).
All I know is that, as I said, some of the scenes in which the character interacts with the people of KL do make me uncomfortable, but the novel remained a page turner and gave me plenty to consider!

Overall, I quite liked the way that Stubbs focused in on the bizarre event of regualar fish becoming land fish. It really works to explore the reactions that people would have to a massively strange event caused by climate change. I'm not saying that climate change hasn't caused bizarre happenings in the real world, but that Stubbs shows us a world where people are pretty much being slapped in the face with the reality of climate disaster and yet they still close their eyes to it.
I like that though Stubbs focuses a lot on the characters who are extremely worried and preoccupied by the events, that also tackles the people who completely ignore what is happening. The author does a good job of reflecting our current circumstances, and using science fiction to heighten the ideas of the novel.

I am quite impressed with this debut novel, and though I was left unsure about some things, I always think it's better to have lots of conflicting thoughts on a book than to simply read it and move on. I will definitely be turning this one over in my mind before I go to sleep.

Thanks a lot of letting me read a copy of this novel!

Pretty good. I'm sure there will more and more climate fiction produced. I enjoyed this one overall and stayed mostly engaged. I hope this finds an audience.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

The concept totally hooked me and I was excited to read this as an aquatic lover.

Obviously, loving ocean life made this quite uncomfortable as the grotesque descriptions of crazed sea life are overwhelming (but necessary).

So why three stars? The story is split into three parts and the only one I really cared for was Cathy. While Margaret’s arc certainly surprised me, there was no real conclusion. This still works for me even if her ending felt a bit shock-jocky. Ricky? Missed the mark for me.

It felt like we were aiming for something like the Contagion movie where multiple narratives pull together in a time of chaos but in such a short book, just focussing on Cathy would have been better.

I do think she was a great example of the anxiety and havoc this situation would cause.

I enjoyed it and got ‘Tender is the Flesh’ vibes from this (not so) dystopian reality. I’ll certainly be checking out anything else that this author puts out.

**I was sent this novel to review by Fairlight Books and Netgalley.