STARRED Book Review: Weather and Beasts and Growing Things

Reviewed by Joe Walters

Inventive & important. Stylish and bare. An eco-fever-dream.

I love weather, I love beasts, I love growing things, so this was an easy book to pick up for me. A gotta-have-it-now kind of book. And what a world I’ve encountered here.

This dystopian sci-fi meets us in a state of climate disaster at the end of this century. Stevven and Eli are just a couple of growing things trying to take care of a garden at the top of an abandoned apartment building, but you’re not allowed to do that. When a drone finds them, they are chased out of their home in search of another one, but across a bare, dangerous landscape. They hear Sewanee’s got the answer, but who in the world knows for sure where is safe. Stevven doesn’t, that’s for sure.

But they have Eli (a brave little nonperson) and BluBerry (a life -changing fruit plant they have to keep safe and help grow). Stevven & Eli run into friends, like Gino the earther, and foes, like blackberry-wielding cult leaders & the police. They escape and find momentary comfort and escape and find momentary comfort and escape, and along the way, we discover the truth of why Stevven is so on-guard. 

Weather and Beasts and Growing Things is a stylish dystopia in concept and form. Words are conjoined, like “Stevvenarm,” and articles (like “the” and “a”) are hard to come by. It makes for strong, sharp, needle-like one-sentence paragraphs that give you an image but ask for you to conjure the rest yourself. It makes the violence, the world seem more abrupt, more in-time, and more disorienting. It’s not always easy to know exactly what is happening at all times, but I was in the mood for a book like this. One that takes purposeful risks, one that makes me confident the author knows where they’re taking me. It’s definitely a book that could be a fun clue-seeking game upon a second read.

When I read books about climate & weather, I want to encounter nature writing. And I’m fulfilled here! The nature writing is spare—those one-word, three-word descriptions—but full in specificity, knowledge, and appreciation for our world. For a book to place such importance on keeping a plant alive and to follow it up with good nature writing gave me what I came here for.

The world is dangerous. The main characters are vulnerable. Their search for home seems nearly unattainable. And yet, the book remains eerily quiet. They travel for a long time, and sure, they encounter obstacles, but they’re always just seeking safety and a place to grow. This allows for plenty of contemplative moments on the state of the world and the things the narration is letting loose about the truth (or at least perception) of every moment. The past is a fog because Stevven wants it to be.

Stevven is a brave, ferocious, hard, scared, and soft protagonist all at once. They legitimately might not be doing the right thing at every point along the way, and maybe they are being a little too aggressive sometimes. But don’t they have to be? I love how raw and real Stevven turns out to be. And the side characters, particularly Eli & Gino, are really likable too. This is a team I’d follow; it seems like they care.

A quiet narrative serves this stylish & contemplative book well, but it does make for slower-moving parts through the middle. I’m a reader who loves hopping in and out of cool prose in short paragraphs & sections, but those seeking a quick-paced, action-packed adventure may find the sparseness of the prose & the temporariness of the conflicts lacking consistent momentum.

But that reader is not me! I love adventures. I love things happening, but I also love things not happening. I love needing to slow down and look at what’s really being talked about here—whether it be about our earth or the things trying just to live on it.  Weather and Beasts and Growing Things is a gem for the literary sci-fi fan interested in our world.

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