The Submundo Delta is unlike anywhere else on Earth. The forest floor is made up of tree roots, tangled together over the sea to make up a landmass, the foliage is magenta and the creatures are unrecognisable. When English police-officer, Ben, arrives at the Delta to investigate the deaths of a group of local creatures only recently deemed persons, he discovers that the forest has strange and enticing power.
This book is written in a very interesting and unprecedented way. It is not story driven, which I believe puts a lot of people off, but which I actually found very interesting. It is a book of world building and concept building, which does not, in my opinion, need to rely on a strong storyline. Beckett introduces a variety of characters and with their backgrounds, shows the Delta through their eyes and explores their psychological journeys. The setting is, in a way, the whole story. The way that the Delta effects people differers, and each person's experience shows a different aspect of humanity, psychology, compassion, logic, etc.
I love the concept of the Zona, an area which you cannot remember once you have left. The time spent there is erased from your memory as soon as you leave it's boundaries, meaning that in the Zona people find themselves free to do whatever they wish, knowing that they will not have to live with any consequences, even so little as the memory of having done it. Ben is convinced of the idea that the Ben who was in the Zona is not the one who lives outside of it, and is terrorised by the idea of what he may have done when he knew he wouldn't remember.
This book made me think a lot about what it means to be human, whether or not we should let fears be part of our decision making, and whether we as humans really have a right to take what we want, accessing remote areas regardless of how it effects local communities and habitats.
The conceptual nature of this book was done very well, right up until the last 50 pages or so. At that point I felt that it began to unravel, and unfortunately it stopped working for me. I get that the forest was working it's magic on Ben, and so he is meant to be getting more theoretical and less literal, but by the end I just found his chapters to be unreadable messes, more abstract than interesting. I get what Beckett was going for, I really do, I just didn't enjoy his execution of it. There was one sequence for instance that gave me a flashback to the video game scene in the film of The Beach, which is not a compliment coming from me.
Overall, I loved the general setup of the book, and the characters were each fascinatingly flawed. The delta was beautifully crafted, and I enjoyed all of the amazing descriptions of the otherworldly foliage and fauna. It's exciting to imagine somewhere on Earth being so different and other. I would say around the middle of the book I would give it 3.75 stars, but by the end, 3 stars.
This book is written in a very interesting and unprecedented way. It is not story driven, which I believe puts a lot of people off, but which I actually found very interesting. It is a book of world building and concept building, which does not, in my opinion, need to rely on a strong storyline. Beckett introduces a variety of characters and with their backgrounds, shows the Delta through their eyes and explores their psychological journeys. The setting is, in a way, the whole story. The way that the Delta effects people differers, and each person's experience shows a different aspect of humanity, psychology, compassion, logic, etc.
I love the concept of the Zona, an area which you cannot remember once you have left. The time spent there is erased from your memory as soon as you leave it's boundaries, meaning that in the Zona people find themselves free to do whatever they wish, knowing that they will not have to live with any consequences, even so little as the memory of having done it. Ben is convinced of the idea that the Ben who was in the Zona is not the one who lives outside of it, and is terrorised by the idea of what he may have done when he knew he wouldn't remember.
This book made me think a lot about what it means to be human, whether or not we should let fears be part of our decision making, and whether we as humans really have a right to take what we want, accessing remote areas regardless of how it effects local communities and habitats.
The conceptual nature of this book was done very well, right up until the last 50 pages or so. At that point I felt that it began to unravel, and unfortunately it stopped working for me. I get that the forest was working it's magic on Ben, and so he is meant to be getting more theoretical and less literal, but by the end I just found his chapters to be unreadable messes, more abstract than interesting. I get what Beckett was going for, I really do, I just didn't enjoy his execution of it. There was one sequence for instance that gave me a flashback to the video game scene in the film of The Beach, which is not a compliment coming from me.
Overall, I loved the general setup of the book, and the characters were each fascinatingly flawed. The delta was beautifully crafted, and I enjoyed all of the amazing descriptions of the otherworldly foliage and fauna. It's exciting to imagine somewhere on Earth being so different and other. I would say around the middle of the book I would give it 3.75 stars, but by the end, 3 stars.