Three separate stories, separate timelines, along with a healthy dose of mythology. I will admit, it was highly entertaining, but at times felt a tad repetitive, which slowed the pacing. The opening was good, the deer-man Johnny Appleseed mix intruiging, and of course the climate disaster fiction very timely.

It was a long book, which accounts for why it took me so long to review, but the writing is so damn good. It's easy to see Bell is a master of his craft.

I would recommend.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got me to read on even though it was among 296 other books I’m charged to read.

“Admiring the fine accidental melody of clean water falling branch to branch”

This is quite the tale, expansive and allegorical, incorporating ancient myths, fables and American folklore. The story is told in three timelines, three main viewpoints. One is the near future, one is of the past when America was being colonized, and the other is the far future. Every timeline deals with the world coming to an end, or vastly changed from what it currently is into something new and different.

In the past, as settlers conquer the wild, Chapman and his brother Nathaniel travel around planting apple tress for their future. Chapman is a faun, half-man, half-animal. Faun and apples are echoed through each story line.
In the far future a lonely C, a regenerated synthetic, reborn when the current body is too damaged and needs to be renewed. The current form C-433 looks mostly like a faun as well. This newest version stopped the exploring, instead found old books and is trying something different.

Then we have our near future, where the corporation Earth Trust is taking over while attempting to save the what is possible with the climate and species collapsing. People join as volunteers giving up everything, even their citizenship in exchange for shelter and food. This timeline is easier to connect to, closer to our current world and yet a bit fantastical as well. John is this focus here, he helped start Earth Trust, with Eury the head of the corporation, yet now thinks she’s gone too far. He has a plan to stop her.

This is a bit like fantasy and science fiction mixed with fables and ancient myths, perhaps some magic thrown in. The book has almost a feel of a trilogy contained within this one book.

I started this book with high hopes but it failed to catch my interest and I had to stop after a few chapters. There was a lot of early on jumping around that made it difficult to grasp what was happening or how any of it flowed and I just did not care to continue.

A truly unique science fiction novel for modern readers. This story combines the ingenuity of American folklore with the breathtaking experience of coming upon new worlds (quite literally).

Stunningly unique, entertaining, emotional and un-put-downable book. Matt Bell is a legend and this book was a joy.

Super well considered spec-fic and firmly securing Bell's place in the best of the climate apocalypse genre. Bell's prose is tight and keeps the three narrative timelines poised and tight - characters work well in setting - delves into moral questions in an intelligent and provocative manner. Highly recommend.

One of the joys of genre fiction is its ability to explore big ideas through a literary lens. Sci-fi in particular can display an audaciousness with regard to the concepts it espouses. It also offers a special sort of storytelling flexibility, its trappings and tropes opening up a long runway for writers to create something that is both thought-provoking and narratively engaging.

Matt Bell’s new novel “Appleseed” is precisely that kind of engaging provocation. A tale told in tryptic, blending myth, near-future tech utopianism and climate apocalypse, the book winds together three disparate timelines, all connected by the shared roots of a goal that must be met in different ways in different times.

It’s also a book about humanity’s quest for connection, a quest that sometimes leads us down some counterintuitive paths, all in the name of finding that interpersonal closeness that we all seek. “Appleseed” illustrates that operating for the greater good can be noble, but it also depends on just who is deciding what that “greater good” should be.

In our first thread, we’re in the untamed west of the American continent in the mid-18th century. Chapman is a faun, a half-man-half-beast wandering the wilds alongside his human brother Nathaniel. Nathaniel has a plan to make his fortune – move from place to place planting apple orchards ahead of the steady westward expansion, then returning to collect compensation from the settlers to come who have availed themselves of the pre-planted bounty.

Chapman, meanwhile, is haunted by his otherness – he seeks not just a tree, but a Tree, one whose fruit might give him the guidance he seeks. However, he is haunted – haunted by what he is, yes, but also by mysterious forces of potentially nefarious intent.

In the late 21st century, a man named John moves through the largely desolate American West. The ravages of climate change have led to societal breakdown; rising seas have rendered coastal areas uninhabitable and everything west of the Mississippi has become an arid wasteland. John is fighting against the monolithic EarthTrust corporation, an entity whose massive power masks even more massive plans – plans that John’s early work made possible.

Despite his misgivings, he must try and find a way back into this world that he abandoned in hopes of upending a master plan that will forever alter the global landscape.

Lastly, we land in the far-flung future, a thousand years hence. A lonely creature named C – the latest recreated entity in a long line – is tasked with hunting down any organic material remaining beneath the massive sheets of ice that coat the planet. But when an accident reveals other instructions and offers a chance to reengage with other living things, C undertakes a mission far more dangerous than any that he – or any of his predecessors – has ever done.

Along the way, C discovers that life finds a way, even if it isn’t necessarily what he expected, leaving him to do everything in his power to give that life a fighting chance.

“Appleseed” strikes an interesting balance between the bleakness of the characters’ situations and the hopefulness of their actions, finding ways to celebrate indomitability of spirit in the face of odds that become ever more overwhelming. That balance cuts to the core of the human condition, with each story offering a glimpse at that core from a slightly different angle.

The craft and construction here is particularly impressive. Each one of these stories could easily stand alone on its own merits with nary an edit – Bell has built three very real, very distinct worlds, each with their own characters and conflicts – and yet they are all very much thematically intertwined. To create three compelling stories – three compelling realities – and bind them together seamlessly? That’s some first-rate writing, no doubt about it.

Whether we’re talking about the repurposing of American frontier legend with a healthy dose of much older mythology, a tale of a corporate techno-state run amok amidst a leadership vacuum or the search for sustainability in a world left frozen by anthropocentric hubris, the underlying themes are the same.

“Appleseed” is not an optimistic book – it casts far too many shadows for that – but it is definitely a hopeful one. That might seem like a semantic difference, but to my mind, it is a very real one. Finding reason to hope in the face of seeming hopelessness is a key component of the human condition – a condition that Matt Bell deftly and thoroughly explores here.

When I read Author Bell's 2013 novel, <I>In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods</i>, it was a startling experience. Sadly, it came at almost exactly the same time as my epic emotional collapse so I've only recently reviewed it. Let me tell you now, in brief, why I think it was an extraordinarily good read: Myth-making never ceases, no culture is without its myths; that book was an exploration of The Couple Myth at length; and there is no better way to make myths than to put the most complete possible vocabulary of the day around them. <I>Appleseed</i> is a fuller exploration of this technique applied to Climate Change.

What myths are we exploring this time...is there a myth-set tale that this three-handed sonata plays on? Yes...the title's the first giveaway, there's a definite connection to the Johnny Appleseed myth made from John Chapman's actual life spent planting the American West with economically useful apple trees in advance of the settlers coming to Ohio (yes, that *was* the West then, surprising isn't it two hundred years on).

Nathaniel, older human brother of Chapman the faun, does the work of finding the way, avoiding the humans who would hurt or kill his behornèd brother of the golden eyes and hoofed legs. Chapman knows the land, even the land he's never been on. It is his nature. And we all know what happens to Nature, don't we. The greater glory of a christian god is costly, always and in all ways; do you wish to continue past the point of no return?

John lives in our near-term future, a recycler busily trying to undo the Works of Man that Chapman and Jonathan, in their innocence, believe to be Progress instead of progressive rot. He travels alone when we meet him...he is looking for his (female, of course) buddy/pal/squeeze because, well, humans need each other. His dystopia, an American West (the one we know as such today) is tinder-dry, eczema-dotted with our dams and roads and ghosts of towns that he wants to render inoperable and irreparable. Needless to say, the corporate entity that actually, formally, owns the whole expanse doesn't like some rando ruining perfectly usable infrastructure. Especially now that all those pesky people aren't cluttering it up. The slow reveal of why John and his ex are doing what they're doing to re-wild the West is a piece of misdirection I can't quite bring myself to spoil...but suffice it to say the era of mythmaking about Man's Plenipotentiary Powers à la Sisyphus is not over yet.

And then there's C-433. This being lives many, many lives in our distant, glacier-scraped future. This way of live is enabled by spelunking the crevasses that always open in craters and reclaiming for reuse whatever materials from the time before are reclaimable. We're not-quite told that C-433 is a clone host for the consciousness of an earlier human...or maybe faun? note initial...and this iteration/incarnation is a risk-averse, therefore old, entity facing the reality that a scavenger doesn't produce anything so will, inevitably, pass from the scene. As a way of life it is severely limited.

But, in each of these story lines, there is a leitmotif, a through-line, that Author Bell resurfaces for your easter-egging pleasure. The Loom might be my favorite fictional technology ever; the uses of the scavenged materials, the most poignant. The apple...the choice that C-433 has to make...there are absolutely delightful connections made among these grace notes. The complexity of the read is one of its pleasures and I encourage you, like you would with any rich and calorific consumable, to go slowly...make it last. Think about it as you go to sleep, dream its scenes as you're processing its sweet, sonorous prose.

So why, if I'm practically crooning my pleasure in hopes of luring you to read it, am I rating it less than five full stars?

Because, while I as a lifelong inhabitant of this country appreciate its US-centered myth-making and its implicit acceptance that our (in)actions are largely responsible for this disaster, it feels wrong to simply dismiss with a cursory glance the planet-wide scale of it. Because there's a weird, unnecessary straight-man sex scene that jolts progress to a halt while we indulge y'all's ugly needs. Because the ending...while interesting...wasn't anything like the rest of the book so felt merged from a different FTP with middling success.

None of those things rise above the level of quibbles because the gestalt carries the day. There is such a beautiful tapestry woven of these lovely words. I've avoided quoting them to you because, well, which ones? Why those? Where's the perfect quote for this idea...this one, that one, no no the other one...and it got headachey trying to figure it out.

What didn't get headachey was this phrase, this simple phrase, that says everything the book and the future need you to know: "No matter what you do, there will never be more time left to act than there is now."

A call to arms, a fable of consequences, a myth of magisterial beauty and magical urgency.

Appleseed by Matt Bell is an ambitious, thought-provoking work of eco-fiction that interweaves three interconnected storylines that span across millennia (think something along the lines of Cloud Altas).

1) The first storyline is highly allegorical and centers around two brothers—one a faun, one a human--who plant an apple orchard. However, as the trees grow and bear fruit, the brothers quarrel over what to do with them.

2) The second storyline follows John, a “Volunteer” for a megacorporation called Earthtrust whose farms produce food for majority of the world. However, social unrest breaks out as a growing resistance wants to redistribute Earth’s resources.

3) The third storyline follows C, a Frankensteinian creature who lives a lonely existence as presumably the last living being on Earth. It dedicates its life to scavenging enough biomass so it can be reborn again. However, the latest version of C may have a chance to break the cycle and revive the rest of life on Earth … at the cost of its own immortality.

While, at first glance, these are seemly unrelated stories, they gradually become more interconnected as the book progresses, and I have to say that I found the third storyline the most compelling of the bunch. It was the first storyline about the brothers that was the weakest aspect of the book to me. As a parable, I felt like it could have been easily condensed into a several pages instead of dragging on.

Also, it’s also important to note that this is a very conceptually-driven book. As a result, this book does spend a lot of time explaining its world, its ideas, and its technology making this for a bit of a slower read. Bell integrates some really cool and imaginative biotech ideas in there though. For instance, there’s an invention called the “Loom,” a 3-D printer for organic matter and nanobees (yes, you heard me).

Overall, Appleseed is an imaginative, memorable novel that weaves sci-fi with myth while examining our relationship with nature.

**4/5 stars**
Appleseed impressed me, and I wasn’t expecting it to. I’ve been profoundly bored with the cli-fi genre and it’s general lack of intersectionality. It is, after all, a branch of sci-fi that is very much heralded by white men and limited to the Westerner’s vision of climate disaster. But Bell brings settler colonialism, ongoing struggles for Indigenous sovereignty, as well as women’s roles in the climate apocalypse to the stage in a way the genre does not often do. Bell reminds readers that these are not problems of the future, but problems of the present, lest our world look like the character C’s— an icy, inhuman place where nothing truly alive survives.

Bell’s prose sometimes reads like the Transcendentalists’ and sometimes like Le Guin’s, depending on whose point of view he is evoking. He does this smoothly and masterfully; it feels intentional. It has been a while since I’ve read a book by an author who really knows the power of voice.

What bumped this down from a five-star read to a four-star read is the pacing, which prompted me to read Appleseed in small, slow bites rather than one long read. Some stories should be enjoyed this way. It is how I read Le Guin books and most non-fiction. However, the pacing and time jumps between chapters— though well-done— often had me losing interest and feeling like it would be a chore to pick up the book again and figure out where I’d left off. This is partially a me problem, since I have trouble picking up books once I’ve paused reading them for a time. But I have a feeling this might be an issue for other readers picking up Appleseed.

Regardless of pacing or time jumps, Bell’s Appleseed is a triumph of prose and depth, a formidable addition to the cli-fi genre and an example, I think, for future cli-fi novelists.

Appleseed will makes its way onto bookstore and library shelves on July 13th, 2021. Thank you Custom House for the eARC via NetGalley.

I am already inclined to focus on climate and man vs. nature in stories, but this year I’m really feeling the pull. So, let's just casually review this next book that deals with the impending doom the news is talking about so much more often these days. Of course, when I say casually, I mean really dig into my own feelings about the issues at hand and how this book made me examine them. Appleseed, by Matt Bell, is a science fiction epic that dives deep into the christian and western mythology that inspired the creation of the United States of America, while examining the nation’s relationship to nature and climate change, with profound prose and tight storytelling.

Appleseed is a century- and millennium-spanning story that follows the lives of three folks and their relationship to nature within North America. Chapman is a faun (yes, that kind of faun) that travels the Ohio valley with his human brother, Nathaniel, as they clear cut forests and plant apple trees to sell to the growing number of settlers in eighteenth century America. Nathaniel hopes to civilize the savage and uncivilized land to add to the glory of God, while Chapman struggles with being not entirely human. John lives in the near future, the United States has abandoned the land west of the Mississippi river, and ceded the territory to a corporation called Earth Trust. John, in his younger years, founded Earth Trust, but abandoned them for life of illegally rewilding the west when his ex and CEO of Earth Trust, Eury Mirov, began taking liberties with the company's goals. However, he is pulled back in by other dissenters to try to shut Eury down once and for all. The final story follows C-432, a being that lives thousands of years in the future that tries to survive among the arctic wastes as glaciers reclaim what was once North America. How all these stories are connected and what they say about our experience is for the reader to discover chapter by chapter.

Appleseed definitely falls into the “tough to judge” category for me. It’s an excellently written story with incredibly well defined and explored themes. Bell takes a lot of interesting risks with the story, and doesn’t hold the reader’s hand, allowing, and in some cases forcing, them to digest it at their own rate. Bell’s prose is fascinating as it changes pace and offers different details through the separate timelines, giving each one its own distinct feel. The characters are different enough from each other that the stories feel apart. But the stories and characters exhibit just enough of the same qualities to make the themes pop out throughout the whole book. I was astounded how easily I slipped back into the story every time I picked it up. The book urged me to consume it in a few days, and I accepted that this was the only way to truly experience Appleseed.

However, I am woefully confused by my reaction to the book. I enjoyed my experience with it, but every time I sit down to dissect the ideas that Bell has put forth, I get frustrated. It is not an issue of coherence; Bell’s writing makes it incredibly clear what is happening. His prose, though detailed and full of wonder for the natural world to the point that it meanders at times, is explicit in its goals. Instead, I think my issue is that this book is a discussion piece. It is full of ideas and unreliable narrators that talk about their own problems against a backdrop of increasing scope. The world Bell posits in his stories is both enchanting and horrifying, playing off well worn western myths and more recognizable tropes within climate fiction. It takes you to places you dreamed of as a child in elementary school American history class, both idolizing them and dashing them against a rock. He envisions a future that is without people, a world in which humanity has failed to stop or slow the effects of climate change, and it is empty.

It’s impossible to miss the “humans caused climate change” aspect of Appleseed. Bell succeeds in firmly rooting it within the creation of the USA itself. Using the myth of Johnny Appleseed, Bell dives deep into the heart of manifest destiny, and the un-wilding of North America into a godly paradise for good christian men. He deftly connects it to the middle timeline story of the near future and extremely far future through language, characterization and humanities relationship to nature. It’s an incredibly well thought out story that highlights the different steps along the way where we as a species failed to see the signs of our destruction.

Where I take issue is that his exploration is unfortunately narrow, and limited to a very specific American experience and christian-tinged worldview. It caused a dissonance whenever there were nods to other experiences outside this particular window, hinting at the complexity of the issue, only to have the book snap back into place and follow a very distinct pathway. I had trouble reconciling this robust and thoughtful look into America’s relationship with nature, while the story accelerated to a neat and tidy conclusion, complete with a John Hughes style “here’s where we are now” montage ending. It felt weird to place everything being discussed within the book as a “human” issue when it’s also detailing a very specific and narrow experience. It didn’t necessarily ruin my experience with the book, but I had a harder time suppressing my discomfort with it as I continued the story.

That all being said, Appleseed is still a fantastic experience. Bell’s grasp and use of language is truly a sight to behold. The book is an excellent example of how to tie major themes across different timelines, and pull from mythology to lend historical weight to the story. It is truly epic in that sense, with Bell’s use of western history and mythology. Unfortunately, it just started to feel a little too narrow for my taste when it comes to climate focused fiction. Bell merely hints at other ideas, instead of exploring them in relation to his themes, in my opinion, losing an opportunity to really dig into his themes of environmental stewardship. In any case, this is an admirable addition to the growing library of climate fiction.

Rating: Appleseed 8.0/10
-Alex

Wow! This profound, thought-provoking novel requires you to read slowly, as each of three story arcs wrestle with profound issues about the ultimate survival of humanity, what it means to be human, what it means to be alive, and what damage to Earth humanity has wrought. The book centers on three ultimately diverging stories set centuries apart: the pioneers’ expansion west in America, a near future environmentally ravaged Earth, and a thousand years in the future post-apocalyptic Ice Age. Each story’s fight against bleakness feels both unsettling and bracing.

In 18th-century Pennsylvania and Ohio, two disparate brothers push the boundaries of the frontier wilderness, annually planting hundreds of apple seeds to create future orchards. Nathan, the older brother, hopes to grow rich collecting from future pioneers who settle the land. Chapman, part human and part-mythical faun and in a story arc part fairy tale, hopes that one of trees will someday and somehow grow an apple that will enable him to be human, and not feel so isolated and alone.

In late 21st-century America, environmental change has forced the West to be vacated and refugees sent to a private company started in Ohio that seeks to preserve what little life is left. John, one of the founders of that company and disillusioned with the company’s growing greed, has gone out West to engage in eco-terrorism to try to restore the land to its pre-human condition. Ultimately John returns undercover to corporate headquarter to confront and thwart his uber-ambitious cofounder Eury.

Eons in the future amidst a glacier-covered Earth, part-human and part-faun “C-433” driving an ice crawler has gone through hundreds of life iterations, with a personality and memory “rack” implanted in constantly regenerated “biomass.” The current iteration of C, recreated with part of a tree’s biomass discovered under deep ice by his predecessor, becomes part tree, replete with bees and grass. He also discovers long-forgotten instructions, leading C on a dangerous journey across the ice to find what, if anything, of humanity remains.

All these stories ultimately converge as the book wraps up its disparaging take on humanity’s wrecking of Earth, and failed stewardship to preserve both our species and a life-sustaining climate. Fortunately, the power of our planet, its millennium cycles of hot and ice ages, and life’s resilience transcends human greed and power for destruction. Appleseed’s deep philosophical insights and heft resonate long after you’ve finished the story.

Unique book combining greek myths thrillers and science fiction along with historical novels. Each point of view was involving and while the message was rather down beat it provided food for thought

All too believable cautionary tale of where we’re headed if we’re not careful. Depressing but only because of how realistic it is.

A breathtaking work of fiction, both in its scope and its execution. Matt Bell writes beautiful and evocative passages that stay long in the memory. Appleseed is a cautionary tale of our future, but one that harkens to the past. I loved Bell's ability to weave fairytale and myth into a story of science and environment and man's deadly impact on nature itself. A strange, gorgeous, sometimes harrowing novel, Appleseed is a must-read.

Appleseed is an epic work spanning thousands of years and raising significant questions about our impact on the plant. Consisting of three separate but related timelines Matt Bell takes us on a journey from a new interpretation of Johnny Appleseed, to a near future with severe effects of global warming and mega corporations, to a far future with the final effects of the previous two timelines. While I found some aspects of the book frustrating, I found it well worth the read and I think it will definitely give you things to think about.

Thanks to Custom House for providing me with a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really dug this book, but honestly it was a little too long for me. But that's a me thing. This is the first book I read by this author and I loved the prevalence of it. Really digging cli-fi lately and this was a thinker.