This is a 3.5, but that concluding essay REALLY persuaded me to round up rather than down.

I won't lie, I took a bit of a gamble picking this one up; I will admit to being a basic bitch who largely only cares about the "charismatic" fossils as the author calls them: dinosaurs and other large megafauna. Frankly, exigent plants don't much fascinate me beyond the vague, distant desire to love and appreciate "nature" so it was a safe bet that ancient extinct plants would do little more for me. Still, I hold to the belief that anything can be interesting if you give it a chance and so, I gave it the old college try.

Black is clearly incredibly passionate about the subject, so if you're one of those people who can appreciate anything if the one telling you about it is in love with the subject, you'll be right at home. The book is structured as a series of ancient vignettes; stories told through what can be learned from appropriate plant fossils of various geological epochs. From the primordial soup to several hundred years ago, we learn how plant fossils can tell us about the state of the earth at various times, the way animals lived, and the methods by which present life on our planet came to be. Much of it is incredibly fascinating though I found myself getting bored with some of the narratives the author constructed as a vehicle for delivering what might otherwise be some fairly dry science. This method of hiding our science pills in a roll of short story style narrative cheese might be very much to many people's liking, so on this point I will concede I am likely in the minority.

The book ends with a personal essay that is passionate, revelatory, and caused me to genuinely look at everything I had previously read with a new context that was simply put - beautiful. What I'm left with is a decently informative, well-told nonfiction series of short stories that are good but not great and a fantastic little essay that elevated the whole experience. I can't tell you to pick this book up if ancient plants don't pique your interest, but if you take the chance and give it a try like I did, you might learn something - whether it be about science, life, or gaining perspective.

Thank you to Net Galley and MacMillan Audio for advanced access to this audiobook. Expected date of publication is February 25, 2025 at time of writing.