This book is awesome, when a world where trees overgrow everything and everywhere a group of people meet and venture on a wild ride. You'll find it hard to put this one down.

This book had some great ideas and imagery. It's also one of those "fantasy for people who don't read fantasy" novels. I would not call it magical realism, as some reviewers have done; it's really quite commercial where I was expecting it to be more literary. The characters and their relationships are not particularly interesting most of the time (exceptions include Hiroko as well as a couple of "bad guys", and someone who dies before we even meet them!) which is unfortunate because this is a character-driven book with a slow plot. There's a lot of world-building potential here, mainly via description of how people handled the Coming of the Trees, but it's never satisfyingly actualized. The weird pseudo-supernatural-creature elements also did not work for me.

I liked this book, but didn't love it. The good bits go quite a long way towards saving the rest!

The apocalypse, when it comes, in Ali Shaw’s The Trees, is not a gradual process. It is immediate, it is all-consuming and it instantly alters reality for the characters. Just as they are not given time to process the change, so also is the reader thrust from the very beginning into the immediacy of it all. But unlike any other apocalypse, which begins with death; The Trees seems to begin with an outburst of life.

The apocalypse is this –nature has taken back the Earth; or at least Britain. Over the course of a few minutes, trees and plants have destroyed any trace of human civilization and have taken over homes, roads, vehicles –everything.

This leaves our protagonist Adrien, floundering in the midst of a situation that he wishes someone else would solve for him. He is also worried about his wife, Michelle, away on business in Ireland. He soon meets Hannah, a natural green thumb, who is overjoyed at the new state of the world, and her teenage son Seb. They set out together, Adrien, to find his wife; and Hannah and Seb, to find Zach, Hannah’s forester brother. On the way, they meet Hiroko, a Japanese-American teenager, with brilliant survival skills. Their journey is dark, violent and disturbing.

The most interesting part of the book for me, was to watch the characters find the sides of themselves that they did not know they had. Adrien, who is definitely unheroic, finds himself to be a “hero” after all–or maybe it is just our understanding of heroism that is different. Hannah, who believes in nature as a positive force, is forced to reckon with nature as being destructive; and this is mirrored in her personal internal journey as well. Hiroko, initially reticent and unwilling to talk about herself, seems to open up a bit eventually.

The other part of the book I liked was the interweaving of supernatural/surreal elements into the narrative. There are mysterious stick figures, known as ‘whisperers’ who only Adrien seems to notice. And the majestic kirin, who show up as some sort of guardians for our characters. These otherworldly elements do not seem so out of place in the wold that has been created here. They simply lend an understanding here that more is happening than the reader understands; and the payoff at the end more than makes up for this aura of mystery.

Overall, the characters are well-written and believable. Hiroko, who is the only non-POC character, seems to be represented well, but I would like to know what a Japanese-American would think of her.

The pacing of the book, while generally tight, seemed to me to lag in places. I can’t really point out where (because, spoilers!), but generally at these times the characters have usually slipped into some sort of philosophical discussion. While these philosophical bits do add to the book, they also put the forward movement of the story on hold, and that gets a bit annoying.

In a world saturated with post-apocalyptic/dystopian narratives, The Trees does stand apart, however, because of this philosophical bent. It is just the right amount of intellectual, and the ending especially can encourage quite a bit of discussion. Which is why, while the book is a good book to read alone, it is even better for a readalong or a book club. Because once you’re done reading, you will want to talk about it.

FTC disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for this honest review.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for my advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This book needs digesting! Reading it was a journey; at times light and breezy, and at others so heavy I felt myself shrinking into the couch. I loved every minute of it. The most remarkable aspect of this novel is that it was the deepest everyday realism drenched in fantasy I've come across so far (I know this is pretty much the definition of magic realism but it feels that that doesn't describe it enough.). The fact that nature destroyed everything man-made overnight to take back its rightful spot on the throne seems so secondary to the trials and tribulations of the main characters. Here we have a pessimistic, cowardly, unsatisfied man who just coasts through life making no real contributions to society. Adrian Thomas struggles with EVERYTHING that life puts in front of him albeit the fact that he has a devoted wife, a secure job, and a calm middle-class life. Well, he had all that until the trees came (minus the wife, he potentially lost her love much much earlier than that). On the other hand, there is Hannah - a single mother, a nature lover, a wonderful human being. Her life was in her eyes pretty much grand (despite being left to raise her son alone) and she welcomed the trees as they are a symbol of humans being forced back into nature - something she has been advocating for all her life. Opposing that is her son Seb, who, according to Hannah, did nothing else but play video games and stare at a screen, never enjoying nature, and had been designated a lost cause.

These three, seemingly very different people, join up and leave their homes behind to find Hannah's brother - a hermit living deep in the old woods - and Michelle (Adrian's for-now? wife who was on a business trip in Ireland with her boss and/or affair). They pick up a badass Japenese warrior, Hiroko, who is Seb's age but that is about all she has in common with him - anyone who doesn't want to be Hiroko cannot be my friend ;) Along the way, they are faced with wolves, death, hunger, weird whispering monsters, and friendly or unfriendly other survivors. And yet, what is in the foreground are not these fantastic occurrences but the inner struggles of each character - struggles that we all face day to day: am I good enough? did I build something up in my thoughts and will I inadvertently get disappointed by reality? what should be my next step? what do others think of me? etc. Each character goes through highs and lows during the long journey - sometimes they falter, sometimes they prevail making them incredibly relatable and lovable.

And the ending of the book was just amazing. It was so weird but yet felt so right. It was presented in the driest and nonchalant way possible that completely downplayed the grandeur that it really was. Nature is a fickle beast. But we must love it for what it is as we are it and it is us.

This is not a book that you will fly through. This is a book that deserves savoring. You must not be faster than the pace of the story. Just sit down with the book and let yourself be carried away in a world of the bizarre but yet so familiar. I highly recommend The Trees. It is beautiful inside and out.