It's hard to describe how much I loved Seeds for the Swarm. The first few chapters had me a bit uneasy, the reality of living in a Dust State just a little too familiar and the idea of water rationing a panic inducing and unfortunately real terror. Had the book been set entirely in this landscape, the style and self examination of the first chapters would have had to be very different, but the amount of time spent there is enough to set the stage and inform us of the stakes before we're swept to a richer setting. I have such few notes on the plot because of the genius it obviously took- the general unveiling of students' projects, the field trips and looks at the larger world, and the horrifying, awful image of Jo boiling alive. Readers with a background in STEM will be interested in the tech and bio concepts, and those of you who don't have that won't feel isolated by the information provided. The issues I had were in the reveals- towards the end, it gets harder to unravel who is good and who is bad, who we know secrets about and who is lying, especially if you're expecting a self contained story and not a major cliffhanger for the sequel (which I am very excited for!) If I had the power and authority to edit, I might ask for a few more looks at interesting concepts, or more time spent with Jo, or more time showing daily life in different states, but more from curiosity than gaps in the novel. The writing is rarely clunky, that perfect type of writing where you forget that you're reading individual words written by a person and start living in the story. Well done!!!!!!!

Thanks to Netgalley for approving me the ARC of this book!

I tried so hard with this one. I had been anticipating it for months so I'm not lying when I say I was literally jumping up and down for joy when I saw I'd received an arc. I love the genre of survival at the end of the world which I discovered earlier this year with Dustborn by Erin Bowman and so after reading the synopsis, and maybe being influenced just a little by the stunning cover, I was so excited to read this book.

The start was promising, and it wasn't until she arrived at Wingates that it started to lose me. First off, there was such a big push for usage of correct pronouns that I tired of on every page there being some comment pushing this idea. I was willing to keep going though. Then we had the trip to Camelot. Oh boy, what a disaster. The trip culminates with a sex scene with the man who Rylla is convinced is her true love. Then, a couple chapters later, she's turned to heavy drug use to forget about her problems. At that point I had to stop as, though I was interested in continuing with the story, I just couldn't get past the mature content.

Another disappointing read that I personally wouldn't recommend but I think that there are a lot of people out there who would still enjoy this book as I know other people wouldn't have a problem reading about the content mentioned above. Happy Reading :)

4🤩

The book stays true to its sci-fi/ fantasy/futuristic dystopian genre. It was an easy read, but several glaring issues knocked it down a full star for me.

⬆️
**Good looks at important social issues like climate change, food production, government control
**Really enjoyed the duality of characters. The “heroes” and “villains” constantly blurred lines and switched teams, so it was engaging to try to figure out who to trust and who only appeared trustworthy
**Explanations of some complex ideas were more easily explained because students were so segmented by their area of study. Even as an adult, they were discussing some advanced ideas/topics, so forcing them to “dumb it down” for each other allows all readers to understand enough to follow along in the story and simultaneously promotes these characters as the genuine “best and brightest” that they’re touted to be.

➖
**”Field trips”. Just dropping 4 kids into these highly polarizing societies where the community members didn’t mention it and the kids had no safety net. Ehhhh. Good in theory, but not at all realistic.

⬇️
**Characters fell short for me. Rylla is not what I’d call a likable character, and her repeated missteps become more and more aggravating as the book progresses. Life can feel like that when you’re a teenager, but she makes some BIG mistakes that I’m not sure she could realistically recover from all of them. Many of the other characters seemed underdeveloped as well, but at least they’re more likable on the surface. Except for Rylla’s mom. Don’t get me started on her.
**The ending felt far too rushed for me. The sudden set up for a series arc seemed forced and simultaneously made me feel like much of the previous book was just unnecessary.

I’ll need to tell my students about: language, implied nudity, activism, drugs, alcohol, LGBTQAIP+, sex, sex toys, violence, addiction/withdrawal

***Thank you to NetGalley and Stelliform Press for the free eARC of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.***

Thank you, Stelliform Press, for allowing me to read Seeds for the Swarm early!

Sim Kern managed to surprise me with this debut. I found it riveting and charmingly moving.

The worst thing I can think to say about this book is that it is earnest. As an adult reader, with a slightly more jaundiced view of what humanity has done to the earth, I raised an occasional eyebrow but by the end was still sold on the thread of hope that runs beneath the story.

For teens and young adults - the intended audience for Seeds for the Swarm - this may be exactly what they need. They, too, know what humanity has done to the earth, but they haven't had as many years to become cynical. The main characters in this book, intelligent teens who want to repair the world, and have the skills and are in a place to effect some of that repair, are - for the most part - as likable as they are inspiring.

Kern's view of our potential future is frightening in its potential accuracy. Politicians, the billionaire class, and the media all come in for their fair share of criticism, and pointed commentary is made in the introduction of some crackpot theories and the disparate groups that come together when people are frightened and looking for someone to lead them out of the mess they're in.

Well written, with a complex plot, and scientific and technological aspects well described for a non-tech readership, this book somehow manages to end on a hopeful note, even though the reader - as well as the characters - should probably know better, people being what they are.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.

DNF. I give books at least 10% before giving up on them.

This book is just not for me. The pace is too fast - we barely meet Rylla and start to understand living as a Dustie, in an American-but-Third-World-because-no-water state, before she's whisked off to a Lush State (one that has water). Rylla is meant to live a hard life and yet in these pages she has it easy: walking into a state legislature, making a speech, going viral, and then Boom! college. Also, she has state-sponsored education until she's 18 and this is meant to be a place verging on dystopia?

Anyway. I am not engaged enough by the characters, and I am unimpressed by the world building. Maybe this would work better for its YA audience, and/or for people who have read fewer books of this sort.

I have read Sim Kern's Depart Depart, and their short story collection Sugar is Hard to Find and enjoyed them both. And so, I stayed up until the middle of the night reading Seeds for the Swarm. I feel like it’s one of those books that you can hungrily finish in an afternoon if it catches your interest like it did mine.

I liked the premise and the themes explored in this YA cli-fi novel. It's highly readable, but occasionally a bit instructive at times. There were only a few points at which I felt the educational aspect was a bit heavy handed, but I didn’t feel like they distracted me too much from the story.

Rylla, is the main protagonist, she’s a “Dust State” dwelling person (“a dustie”) on the cusp of adulthood. The story begins with water recycling issues, and sets the stage for a dry, dirty, and dismal potential future. Rylla wants to go to university to hopefully escape or improve her circumstances but poverty may not allow for it - she’s looking at working for the very oil refineries she’s against. But after staging a one-woman protest, she goes viral (albeit not for the reason she would have wanted) and as a result, is invited to the kind of “Lush State” university she was dreaming of, all expenses paid.

I enjoyed the exploration of “Dust state” vs “Lush State,” and it wasn't cut and dry as to who the villains and heroes were. I did not know where this story was going to go when starting out. There were several imperfect unlikeable characters, which worked quite well for this novel, there were moments of mutual awkwardness and misunderstanding, where the Lush State wasn’t entirely a woke paradise, and the Dustie wasn’t always the backwards bumpkin stereotype. I would have liked to get to know some of the other characters better, but perhaps that will be something for future books.

I enjoyed the premise of the Humanities class "field trips," where the group of four students jumped into a different social structure for a while and explored with some academic curiosity. There are several opportunities to reexamine your initial assumptions about a character or a group, and I think that was done very well.

I found the handling of addiction a bit disappointing, considering the futuristic setting, and the technological advancements the Lush State potentially had at its disposal - it felt a bit too willpower and shame based for this so-called advanced society - but I did like the somewhat attempt at a community responsibility model.

Loved the queer rep, it felt genuine and not just haphazardly placed.

Criticisms aside, there are a lot of interesting ideas presented here, the story is solid and inventive, and has a lot of adventurous reading potential. I am eager to read the next book in the series and find out what happens to Rylla and the rest of the crew in the rest of the trilogy.

I really liked Kern's earlier novel "Depart! Depart!" but this YA novel--the first in a projected trilogy--was a little too pedantic for my liking. Younger readers might not recognize all of the education being dispensed to them as they follow the story of a young woman from "the Dust"--the barren, impoverished lands of the south of the US--as she travels to an elite university in "the Lush," where she finds that her professors have nefarious plans for saving the planet by killing most of its inhabitants. With a few rather cardboard characters, the book moves from teaching the reader about water conservation to nanotechnology to bioengineering to fungi recycling. All of the teaching is done through conversations or discoveries between the characters, and since they're at college, it might not seem too much, but after a while it begins to grate. Things that happen at the beginning of the novel inevitably return later--a wall-climbing class readies the protagonist for a later climb up a building-and after a while it becomes easy to predict what will happen next. This is a novel designed to instruct, and it does so, but at the cost of it having more fully-fleshed out characters and a less predictable, more original, series of connections overall.

This author has a very unique writing style! I really liked this sort of dystopian/futuristic world where we're running out of water for everyone and the world will end soon if we don't stop it. I found the school part of this book really interesting especially the technology! I wish I liked the main character more, I found her really irrupting. I didn't like the love interest either. This book had great side characters and LGBT+ rep. I was also really interested in her brother's story.