A strangely unsettling but beautifully written text about a world that most of us will only ever read about. This is a book that draws one in (under?) with the promise of hidden stories and mysterious explanations of the subterranean world. Sit down, clear your mind and dive in.

“Into the underland we have long placed that which we fear and wish to lose, and that which we love and wish to save.”

As he has done with his previous works, such as The Old Ways and Landmarks, Robert Macfarlane takes us on an emotive and fascinating journey through the landscape — only this time, we’re traveling underground. Like our ancestors before us, we’re “making journeys into the darkness”, reaching deep into the Earth to better understand our world, ourselves, and our place within it. Blending history and myth, geology and environmentalism, reflections from his travels and psychology, Macfarlane gives us a book that is both rich and dark. We are enticed by landscapes both above and below ground whilst simultaneously struck by the poignancy and urgency of a planet in peril.

The book is separated into three parts — Seeing, Hiding, and Haunting. We descend into caverns and catacombs, seek out underground rivers and glaciers, and explore the interconnectedness of nature that goes far deeper than the topsoil of a land. We encounter humankind’s influence on the land beneath us: nuclear storage, mining, fossil fuels, pollution, and more. We get a sense that we, as a species, are leaving behind the worse kind of legacy in the strata of this land: death, destruction, and decay. This theme of legacy weaves in and out of the book as Macfarlane explores our ancestors and the ways they left their trace on the world, and connects with people who are deeply connected to the land today. It is all too easy to forget that our actions have consequences, and not all of those consequences are good ones. How we work to seek to interact with, and preserve, this beautiful planet for the future generations should be the work we do now, as we journey onward to become ancestors ourselves, and one day return to the arms of Mother Earth. Powerful, essential reading.

I received an e-ARC from the publisher, Hamish Hamilton, through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Robert Macfarlane is the master of poetic prose. His latest book Underland follows in the same flow as Landmarks, The Old Ways and The Lost Worlds. It is hugely far reaching from the past to the future from the underground communications between trees to world vision. His voice is very lyrical and mystical and quite old fashioned to a gloriously rich manner. It is a book to be savoured slowly and allow the words and thoughts to seep into one whole body and soul.

I found it perhaps a little too poetic for me and found it difficult to pull away from the sensation of the beauty of the words to appreciate, if that is the right word, to read the message behind those words. Nevertheless I would recommend taking this on a long walk, a very long walk, and stopping at night in the middle of nowhere and pulling your copy out to appreciate the world around and below you.

I was wary of Underland at the beginning, as I normally reach for Macfarlane’s books when I cannot go exploring myself. Sort of a stand in adventure while bound to my desk for work or asthma keeping my indoors in winter. How would it work reading about him exploring terrain that I have absolutely no interest in exploring myself? Would I love it or would I be detached and disinterested?

Right from the beginning, I was greeted by the high level of writing. It is a bit like meeting up with an old friend, you sit down and pick up where you left off, even when it has been years. The writing is sublime. And the introduction to the Underlands is gentle, sharing his fascination, his motives for writing, he slowly guides us into the book. I loved visiting underground spaces in this way without the need for myself to get uncomfortable, wet or in a dangerous situation. Armchair travelling at its best.

Not all journeys take you literally underground, some are just left you wondering what’s underfoot and I certainly took that with me on my walks last week on holiday in Scotland. Oddly, I thought most about his words after climbing the hill to an old Iron Age Hillfort, pondering what lay beneath me and what memories the stones held that I was standing on. I don’t think, I ever really gave that much thought to what is under my feet than that what lies before my eyes when out walking. And quite frankly that change in perspective was refreshing.

It also got me thinking about my own place in the world, what legacy I will leave behind. What impact I can have to safeguard, to protect and to pass on. And this is where the real strength of any good book comes from: The moment you put it down, it still occupies your thoughts, you carry its wisdom with you and phrases pop into your head when you are doing other things.

Certainly a book for me that I will revisit over and over again, preferably reading out passages to my husband, because the writing is just so wonderful. And we shall keep going out and find beauty and be still.

Unfortunately, the author's style isn't working for me, so I'm abandoning the book at 30%. I find it shallow (ironically), full of poorly evidenced observations on the human relationship to underground spaces which don't stand up to much thought. I chose it because I'd been told his writing is gorgeous, but I'm afraid I'm not seeing that. The descriptions on the whole are pedestrian, and I am so tired of being told about him shimmying through almost impossible tunnels - it would appear one narrow underground tunnel is much like another.

A mismatch here between author and reader, and I'm sure - in fact, I know from looking at other reviews - that it will work much better for other readers. This makes my one-star rating harsh, but it's a subjective rating of my lack of enjoyment rather than an objective judgement of the quality of the book.

“The same three tasks recur across cultures and epochs: to shelter what is precious, to yield what is valuable, and to dispose of what is harmful. Shelter (memories, precious matter, messages, fragile lives). Yield (information, wealth, metaphors, minerals, visions). Dispose (waste, trauma, poison, secrets). Into the underland we have long placed that which we fear and wish to lose, and that which we love and wish to save.” says Robert Macfarlane in the Introduction to this wonderful book.

I say ‘wonderful’ but I’m not sure if that is the right word or if it is even possible to summarise it in one word. It is certainly an immediate favourite of his that I have read. It is also, despite dealing with ‘deep time’ (or “dizzying expanses of Earth history that stretch away from the present moment”) his most contemporary and urgent book. And it is dark too, concerned with climate change, conflict, disposal of nuclear waste and how these affect nature, landscape and people.

“We are presently living through the Anthropocene, an epoch of immense and often frightening change at a planetary scale, in which ‘crisis’ exists not as an ever-deferred future apocalypse but rather as an ongoing occurrence experienced most severely by the most vulnerable. Time is profoundly out of joint – and so is place. Things that should have stayed buried are rising up unbidden. When confronted by such surfacings it can be hard to look away, seized by the obscenity of the intrusion.”

At the same time, it is a book full of wonders. Macfarlane’s writing is lyrical and beautiful, thoughtful and personal. “Colour is preposterous, gorgeous again. Blue is seen utterly as blue, green known fully as green. We are high on hue, high on the wild noise of the wind, high on the last of the sunlight that glosses the streamers of the veering swallows, high on the huge vault of the sky and the boiling clouds it holds.” on coming out of a Mendip cave at sunset.

The people Macfarlane meets, from plant scientist Merlin Sheldrake in Epping Forest to Norwegian fisherman Bjørnar Nicolaisen and Lina in the underground Paris are fascinating and so are the stories they tell and the journeys they take with Macfarlane. I know I will mine the Notes and Bibliography for years to come seeking to become more familiar with some of the authors and texts that Macfarlane refers to and quotes. I did the same after reading The Old Ways, the first book on nature and the relationship between landscape and people I’d read and it has been the most rewarding experience. Gutted Macfarlane's one London appearance to promote this book sold out before I could get tickets.

Robert Macfarlane once again leads the way in new nature/science writing. This time he leads us down, investigating the world deep under our feet through caves, mines, underground cities, burial sites, ice-holes and more, recreating the darkness, claustrophobia and mind-bending effect of visiting these hidden and mysterious places. He weaves history, psychology, geology, literature, mythology and nail-biting suspense with the characteristic love of language and adventure which make his revelations both accessible and inspiring. It is a book that demands to be reread; at times Macfarlane can overload his readers with an incessant flow of ideas and facts although his narrative structure remains strong enough to carry everything he throws at it. I found myself staggered by fundamental aspects of our existence on this planet that I had never even considered. Ultimately the book is a gateway to a world we are only mildly aware of, whether we choose to follow Macfarlane down the rabbit-holes and crevices physically or consult the many references he provides for further study. Macfarlane may have mass appeal but he treats all his work as proper academic research to his great credit-he never takes the easy path.
Be in no doubt that many books exploring similar territory will follow hot on the heels of Underland - but Macfarlane's comprehensive and engrossing volume sets a standard that few will match.

I am a fan of Robert Macfarlane's work and have read a number of his books over the past few years. All the previous books I've read have been largely about life in the open. This one takes a very different direction and goes Underland. In common with previous books it looks at its subject in differing places, times and ways. The range of Underland topics that he manages to cover is diverse, fascinating and thought provoking at times.

I would argue that you need to savour a Robert Macfarlane book . I actually took a couple of months to read this, dipping in when I felt the inclination. In the case of this book in particular, and his others sometimes, they take you to strange places often known mainly to the author. For example the chapter on the Wood Wide Web I found simply fascinating. It was a subject I had little knowledge at all of and I found that it touched something in me. The Paris catacombs I knew slightly more about. Or at least I thought I did! Once I read the chapter I knew far more.

Within the chapters there are often comments that are almost "asides". Again these made me sit up and take notice. I would offer as examples the comments on the hunger stones in the river Elbe or the life of drain workers in India - marvellous. The writing is rich, interesting and vivid in the main. It is not a book to rush.

If you want to skip a bit fine but do be careful. There are gems in amongst the main headings. Taking the Karst and underground (sorry - underland) river near Trieste there are notes/stories/thoughts about cave exploration, rationale for doing so, mythology, flora and fauna, and dark tales of war among other things just as an example.

I will confess that not every chapter fascinated me however the ones that did left me reflective and pleased that I had gained some new knowledge of this world we live on. I loved some of the ideas that came across to me in this book. When in Greenland he offers the idea that ice has a memory for thousands of years for example.

During the course of this book he meets with/stays with/explores with some deeply fascinating people. There is a rich warmth of humanity in this even if sometimes the stories take us to far darker places.

After Greenland Macfarlane goes to Finland to see the Hiding Place. This is a storage facility being built deep underground and intended to last for 100,000 years. It is for the storage of nuclear waste. Interesting enough you might say. However, in the way that this author seems to be able to do so easily, he couples this with the Kalevala, an epic folk poem from Finland. This poem dates back a long time however Macfarlane draws out somewhat surprising similarities between this two quite different topics. Obviously (!) he also looks at the subject of other nuclear storage facilities as well together with that topic as a whole. In turn this leads to the subject of language systems and how to communicate with people who will not be born for many centuries. It is remarkable just how readable and interesting he can make such diverse subjects.

In a sense this is a difficult book to review. My journey Underland over the period of a couple on months will not be the same as anyone else's probably. The parts that touched me may not touch others in the same way. Certainly some people will look at this book and simply wonder why. However if the idea of this interests you maybe you should look at trying it. If you have read previous books by Robert Macfarlane it is possible that, like me, you will consider this his best richest book yet.

I always enjoy the books Robert Macfarlane writes but this one is my favourite. Ever since I read Alice in Wonderland, I have wanted to go underground and see what’s beneath our feet. I read a lot about the underground in crime fiction but that’s another kind altogether so I was particularly keen to get stuck in with this.

Robert certainly has a nice and assured style to his writing that exudes his passion and love of what he’s writing about. He takes you with him every step of the way and it’s a wonderful journey.

There were so many fine places to visit! Catacombs, glaciers, nuclear waste sites, caves and more besides. This is a very unique travel guide that’s for sure. It’s amazing what you learn without realising you’re doing it. I feel more intelligent for reading this but also more curious and more interested in what lies beneath my feet.

I’ve been to a few places in the book but it’s the Catacombs in Paris that chilled me the most. Skulls and skeletons along caverns and in caves ..a spooky site but a one stepped in heritage and history. It’s certainly made me want to travel to more of the places he talks about. He’s an excellent guide and there is a sense of calm, chill and claustrophobia along the way.

He examines the need for travel, for exploration, for people’s fascination with caves and burials, exploration underground. There’s so much packed in yet it never feels like a fact book. Far from it - it’s as if Robert has taken you on a very personal an interesting guide..

Brilliant. I loved it. It’s unique, refreshing and uttterly captivating.

This is the most amazing book. I spent my weekend absolutely immersed in it. It's not always an easy read, not because Macfarlane doesn't write like a dream, because he totally does, but because his work on the looming environmental catastrophe we are making for ourselves does not make for easy reading. It is powerful stuff. Having said that, the rest of the book was incredible. I particularly loved the chapter about how trees and fungi communicate with and support each other in woodlands. I loved the section on underground cities and rivers. Macfarlane has a knack of writing so beautifully that you find yourself sucked into the text and absolutely fascinated by what he has to say. It's like waking up to an entire world of things you never knew existed before and being treated to a whole new way of seeing and thinking.

Underland is a look at the world below, an exploration of the Earth's 'underworld' and the effect it has on society, science, and elsewhere. Glaciers, underground rivers, caves, mines, tree roots, catacombs, and nuclear waste sites all feature as Macfarlane combines physical travel with academic reading and a look at human imagination and past.

The book feels poised between the past and the future, looking constantly at time and deep time and what will happen to these underlands next. Human stories are charted next to explanations of history and science, all written in an approachable and interdisciplinary style. Some of the most fascinating parts are those about experiments looking for dark matter deep underground, Macfarlane's claustrophobic journey under Paris, and descriptions of people's obsession with caving and underground river charting. There is an eerie sense throughout the book, a haunting of what is beneath our feet and how much of it is unknown in some way, and combined with the lyrical style it creates quite an atmosphere.

Underland is strange and even uncanny, unlike other books you might read, and this is why it is deeply (pun unintended) engaging. Whether or not you usually read books about geography, exploration, or travel, this is one worth picking up, blending many different areas and combining the academic and theoretical ways of looking at landscape with scientific and very human ones. It is a book about nature, but also about the human imagination and our sense of the underland, whatever it may be.

I’m a seasoned armchair traveler, used to shadowing journeys that I know I’ll never do myself. One of my BFFs is always telling me ‘never say never’ and perhaps she’s right, except when it comes to this book, Underland. Hand on heart, I will never follow in Robert Macfarlane’s footsteps underground. I’m too claustrophobic.

This book is many layered. A bridging theme to his many different journeys is our generation’s legacy to the future. In the words of Jonas Salk, “Are we being good ancestors?” No, we’re not, is the short answer and I think we all know that. There’s nowhere that it’s more apparent than on Greenland’s glaciers. The speed at which they’re melting should terrify us all. MacFarlane doesn’t just travel over the glaciers, he abseils into a moulin which is a hole made my meltwater that deep down will turn into a fast flowing river that melts the glacier from below.

It is his journeys below ground that sent shivers down my spine. He describes his caving exploits in England so well that I found myself holding my breath with him as he squeezed through holes so narrow that he had to turn his head sideways to get through. How can people do that?! He journeys miles out under the North Sea through mining tunnels where equipment is left to rot because it’s impossible to get it back out. I felt just as claustrophobic when he writes about his ‘urban exploration’ experiences, squeezing through rabbit hole size spaces to gain access to mile after mile of tunnels beneath Paris. I didn’t know this was a thing and that there are groups of people all over the world participating in this ‘hobby’.

As he wanders through a forest, he learns about the hidden life of all that grows there. A forest ‘might best be imagined as a super-organism’. A city of interactions - with trees, fungi and plants sharing, trading, befriending and supporting each other in a world that lies hidden under our feet - ‘a wood wide web’.

This book is full of amazing journeys, thoughtful writing and guidance for the future, if anyone wants to listen. The ultimate lesson we should learn for our own peace of mind is ‘Find beauty, be still’.

With thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books UK for a review copy.

Macfarlane's latest book is his weirdest and most magical, his most political, and definitely his darkest. Maybe also his best. It's a coming to terms with the Anthropocene that is aware of the issues with that term, and which at times feels like it would be more at home with Donna Haraway's alternate coinage of the Cthulhucene – not least when a melting glacier exposes something ancient and horrifying which for a moment resembles a black pyramid. Alan Garner gets a mention early on, but that's for his early work, whereas the excursions into deep places and deep time here reminded me more of the haunting, fragmentary Boneland. Also of A Land, come to that, though with Jacquetta Hawkes' faith in a kind of permanence sorely shaken by recent discoveries. Elsewhere, as his voyages into the underdark strip Rob of light, voice, verticality, turning at times into literal dungeon crawls (at one point he's wriggling along like a snake), I was reminded of Veins of the Earth – though while some of the explorations detailed here may not have been strictly legal, (spoilers) Macfarlane doesn't actually end up resorting to cannibalism as everyone in that book seems doomed to do. Or not that he admits here, anyway. For a final reference point, the occasional litanies of ancient interments around the world, complete with reminders that these utterly alien people cared about their dead too, made me wonder if the crazy sod weren't trying to pull off a global Urne-Buriall, and strangest of all, more or less succeeding; Underland left me at times with a similar sense of deep horror at the fragility of the moment, mingled with a strange and almost serene acceptance, in a way few books other than Urne-Buriall ever have. Albeit always with the awareness that, where Browne's memento mori was in a sense on an individual scale, nowadays it feels more like the Reaper is limbering up for a trolley dash.

The theme, in case you hadn't gathered from my free-associated rhapsody there, is the subterranean, the hidden worlds beneath our feet. This can mean anything from tooling around in tunnels under the seabed in a Transit van with a game old geezer called Neil, to the search for dark matter carried out in a hushed space honestly known as a Time Projection Chamber. There's an underground party which really is underground, a gathering for a literal subculture in Paris. Occasionally these interactions strike the false note of a TV documentary where the presenter affects wide-eyed innocence as they ask an expert to explain something the presenter obviously already knows – I find it very difficult to believe that Rob doesn't recognise a Mithraeum when he sees one. But for the most part they capture what an alert and affable soul he is, happy to talk to and learn from anyone. And elsewhere the mind-boggling is clearly genuine, as when he tramps Epping Forest with the brilliantly named Merlin Sheldrake, whose sincere opinion is, never mind Marvel, fungus is the real superhero*. Sheldrake makes a strong case for this, too, though it'd be one of those revisionist takes which emphasise the sheer weirdness and inhumanity of superheroes. The more one learns about fungus, the way it transmits messages not just fungus-to-fungus but between trees of different species, the way that not only the boundaries of species but the edges of an individual organism get muddied, the more Jeff Vandermeer reads like he's writing kitchen sink realism. And that's before we even get to the notion of earth tides. It's strange how a book about the ground can leave one feeling so absolutely the opposite of grounded. Over and over we come back to the notion of things buried coming to light again as the Earth shifts, ever more so as we throw its natural rhythms out of alignment – so ancient anthrax is resurfacing as the ice melts, old hunger stones as the lakes fall, and chemical weapons from our recent past come back thanks to the subtler but no less destructive chemical damage we've done to the atmosphere with all that CO2. Sometimes in the later chapters, I felt the sections about land which had until recently been under ice might be a bit of a cheat, but the family resemblance just about holds it together, and it all comes round at the last to a wonderful section about the deep storage facilities for nuclear waste, intended to warn off investigation even after our cultures, languages, maybe species have gone – all of it tied here to some truly ingenious, insidious thoughts on the Kalevala. I say 'at the last'; a lovely epilogue follows, and even in the backmatter there's a bit more lurking, including one brilliant twist hidden in the Acknowledgments.

Two last thoughts:
I don't entirely buy the etymological speculation that even the name 'humanity' derives from 'humando', burial; it's wonderfully poetic, but seems a needless extra complication when we can already derive it from 'humus', earth, which ties in to so many creation myths anyway.
I love that a book this mythic and thoughtful and even hortatory can also be summed up with a Fast Show punchline, given that each of the author's voyages finds him in a hole, with an owl.

*Coincidentally, the one time I played the old Marvel RPG, I made a character with fungus abilities. He was far too powerful for balance, and only debatably viable as hero rather than villain. And this was so long ago that we were still being told fungi were plants, so you can imagine how much more terrifying he'd be in light of recent scholarship.

(Netgalley ARC. Also, I've known Rob on and off since school. But, you know, you read someone's first book because they're a mate; you don't keep reading up to the seventh unless they're eminently readable)