This is a science fiction/speculative fiction book, but set in our world, not some made up world with no connection to ours. Bunn deals with the contrast between having personal power and giving up control to something outside of oneself, with figuring out the most important things in life (money & security or relationships & having a purpose bigger than oneself). The characters are an interesting mix – broken people who are eager to find answers, politically powerful people who will fight to keep their power, and those who decide to choose what’s right over what’s comfortable.

I’m not real happy about the fact that Bunn ends the book on a cliffhanger, and who knows how long I’ll have to wait for the next one! I stayed up too late reading this book, and it sure is a mind-stretcher.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. #TheRowan #NetGalley

Val, a journalist, hired by the influential best friend of the Vice President goes to try and identify the source of some unusual events centering around a Rowan tree. While there, Val witnesses the properties of the Rowan tree and an extraordinary series of events follows.
A bit of a mixed bag, for me. I really enjoyed the mix of sci-fi/ fantasy and the thriller components and the story moved at a really good pace. I will say I head to re-read a couple of chapters as they were a little confusing. The characters maybe lacked a little bit of depth but that doesn't mean that I didn't like them. I was, however, more disappointed to finish the book than I thought I would be which goes to show I really enjoyed it. A good read all in all

Very enjoyable fantasy / sci-fi / political novel.

Val is a journalist who becomes involved in a mystical / supernatural happening which changes her perspective as well as that of all the other witnesses. This brings about an alarming sequence of events with far-reaching consequences. The main characters are reasonably interesting and developed and the plot moves along at a good pace. It’s a very different experience which I enjoyed and would recommend. This is the first in a series and I look forward to whatever is going to happen next. There are quite a few poor reviews but I accepted this book just as a bit of fun.I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This was a really disappointing read.  The premise was really interesting but the book just did not live up to it at all.  The characters are all completely flat and two-dimensional, I didn't care about any of them.  The plot is seriously thin and so full of holes.  It's also really lacking in any kind of explanation whatsoever.  I didn't understand what was going on and it felt like huge chunks had been missed out.  The writing style was really clunky, and the large amount of short sentences and paragraphs broken up with ellipses made it difficult to read.  It read very much like an extended film treatment and I could certainly see it as some sort of sci fi action film. 

The author describes some of the characters using particularly offensive and seriously outdated terms - one character is referred to several times as 'Oriental' and another character who appears to be Jewish is nicknamed 'the Rabbi'.  There's a small section focussing on a young boy with autism, and some of the opinions and information given in it are either outdated or incorrect.  The main character displays surprise that he was taken on a trip, and later on asks if he was 'cured'.  There seems to be a huge amount of author bias included there. I just could not believe that these dated expressions and information were being used and published in 2023.  I almost stopped reading at that point; the only reason I continued was because I felt obliged to do so in order to review it.  I really had to force myself to finish it and can not recommend it at all. 

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an advance copy to review.

It started well, then I had to plough through a tedious frew chapters before it really caught my imagination then I was hooked, I couldn't read it fAst enough. A really well thought idea, could have done with a bit more detail at times and there are a few gaps, but then I found out why. There's more to come! I was devastated. Please put us out of our misery soon.....

I really enjoyed this. I read it all in one sitting. I liked that there was an unknown about the tree. I liked that there was enough of a chase for it to be exciting but not too much that it got annoying. I liked the characters, it felt plausible even for science fiction. I willf definitely read the next one(s). The only thing I didn't really like was the way, many times women were referred to as the lady. I found it annoying as it felt repetitive

My thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book, opinions are definitely my own.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! I'm not going to spend much time on this, having wasted several hours of life-force on reading The Rowan was quite enough. In short: bland, unconvincing, and very poorly written. I've given it 2 stars merely because it would be helpful to readers with insomnia (if it doesn't enrage you so much that you hurl book/device across the room). Mostly, I feel sorry for the trees that will be sacrificed to this man's hubris.
The characters are so one-dimensional as to be almost interchangeable, the plot has more holes than a sieve, and there is not a single detail that is in any way plausible, let alone convincing.
Definitely an airport/beach read, preferably with alcohol involved.

Far too much unexplained in this book with far too much detail of irrelevant minutae.
When you have to imagine exactly what the story is about, then the book isn't doing it's job.
This book is trying to be all things to all people, sci-fi, urban fantasy, futuristic, thriller, political and misses all.
Was not for me.
Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC in return for my unbiased review

Thank you to NetGalley and Severn House for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

"The Rowan" sounds so interesting: a magical tree, government cover ups, and an investigative journalist at the center of it. It sounds so good on paper. Reading it was a completely different experience. I really wanted to like this one, but right from the Prologue, Bunn's writing just did nothing for me. In simple terms, this book was boring, simple, and just uninteresting. Which is wild considering the blurb but Bunn's writing just doesn't really do any of the blurb justice. The characters, especially the main lead, Val, were all so unremarkable and boring. The world building? Non-existent at this point. And the narrative just lacked SO MUCH in terms of how Bunn progresses the plot, how things are revealed, and most importantly, how Bunn responds to the question of "WHY SHOULD WE CARE?" Generally it felt like Bunn himself didn't care enough about anything to make it more than a static, 2D thing. There were also just some problematic language in this, which if you know me, I generally don't care if the writing and/or story is good but since neither were and since it's 2023, there's really no excuse for racist and sexist language (he literally refers to a Thai woman as Oriental...um...yeah no). There was also so much page space wasted on very creepy descriptions of characters (especially the woman). I won't even get into the autism bs that Bunn forces you to read.

Overall, this was such a massive disappointment. From the lazy and unimaginative writing to the racist and sexist language I wouldn't recommend this to anybody.

Thanks so much to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC copy of this book!

I have scheduled promotional posts around release day for this book and I will provide a full review on my Instagram once I am able to get to this read.

Rating 5 stars on Netgalley as a placeholder for me to update later once the review is complete.

Will also complete a review on Goodreads once read.

Thanks again!

A dun and interesting supernatural fantasy. This was well paced with an interesting premise tat draws you into the story, especially with wanting to find out what's behind the tree and the history of the supernatural. I did find this to be repetitive at times and didn't completely 'gel' with the writing style at all but overall I found it to be an okay book.

Wow, this did not work for me. As always, I really wanted to like this book, and the blurb made it sound like I might, but this was a complete fail.

This story follows Val, an investigative journalist who is assigned the job of finding and figuring out what is happening with a mysterious tree in Kunashir Island, Russia. Her client? An old acquaintance, working for the vice-president of the US no less. What’s more, the CIA is involved as well, and the agents that have made the trip before have returned changed, though all insist nothing happened.

‘Bland’ and ‘unfocused’ are what come to mind, from characterization, to world-building, to plot progression. The time jumps at the beginning didn’t help, as they just further muddied an already confusing start. Honestly, this book read as though it wanted to be a script for a Hollywood production, with the weird banter (and overused “Good. Very good.”), and cardboard-cutout characters waiting for an actor to use their charm and charisma to bring said characters to life.

And that is without getting into the whole business of ‘healing’ autism and how it’s described here, or a Thai person being described as “Oriental”, or “Rabbi” being the name chosen for a Jewish-coded character… It’s 2023, there are plenty of resources online (not to mention sensitivity readers) for matters such as these.

I will be shocking nobody when I say I won’t be continuing the series.

Might be for you if you like:
- Political thrillers with a dash of paranormal elements
- Stories about unlocking the human brain’s potential

Many thanks to NetGalley, Davis Bunn and Severn House for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

1/5 Stars

TL;DR - A bland, contrived mess that spends way too much time creepily describing character’s physical appearances and what kind of cars everyone is driving, and spends only fleeting moments on the sci-fi element that’s never properly explained, only to end in an abrupt and yet boring cliffhanger. The epitome of “The Audacity of This Man”.

Big thanks to Severn House and NetGalley for providing the ARC for this book in exchange for an honest review!

'The Rowan' by Davis Bunn is a "sci-fi" book about a magic tree that elevates human consciousness...or something. More on that below. It follows Valentina Garnier, a journalist who receives a tip about a big story from a former contact that leads her to a remote Russian island, and the experience changes her and (allegedly) the course of humanity's future.

I was going to writing a big long rant review, but this book is so genuinely terrible that I’m going to save us all time and headaches by being as brief as possible.

The beginning is all heavy-handed, boring exposition. Characters are over-described in what I can only call, “man pretentiously describing flat characters to prove how cool he thinks he is”. We get paragraph after paragraph of the history of a building or whatever for no reason other than, you know, the author has to let us know how smart he is and how much he knows about stuff. This goes on and on for the whole book. Bro, I don’t care how cool and intelligent you think you are, move on.

This book was filed under sci-fi/fantasy on NetGalley, but it’s barely that. Mundane things are over-described and then the titular tree gets a few pages of vague nonsense before the book devolves into a political “thriller”. Fantastical elements are just…there. Never described in more than a passing way, and only ever “explained” in vague, pseudo-scientific jargon that tells me nothing about anything at all. The connection between the magic tree and the futuristic technology people come up with after encountering it is never explained, other than “being from another dimension tells us how”, and even then that’s me inferring the connection because it’s never explained. Furthermore, the link between the tree and this being is, again, never explained.

Characters are flat, boring, and nearly interchangeable. And they are described in the creepiest, most superficial way. Everyone is sexy, or a “hunk”, or a geek, or whatever - just caricatures that all speak like they’re in some soulless, testosterone-driven action film. Everyone is shallow and vague, just like the rest of this book.

I honestly have to question if the author has ever interacted with another human being in his life because the characters either speak like AI-generated captions or complete juvenile morons, even when they’re supposed to be ivy-league scientists and career politicians. No conversation reads like a real person is speaking, and it’s laughably cringe-inducing.

And then there’s the just…complete disconnected audacity of the author. A Thai character is called “Oriental” repeatedly and a Jewish-coded character nicknamed “the Rabbi” is high up in the government and responsible for ending careers of enemy politicians through subterfuge and espionage. Excuse me, sir? What year did you crawl up out of to write this shit?

And then there’s the absolute garbage nonsense about autism. This book was written within the last 3 years as it mentions Covid, and the book talks about kids with Asperger’s, which has been a defunct term since 2013. And then there’s a lot of really strange and incorrect language used when talking about autistic people - “autism scale”, “along the Asperger’s-autism line”, “mildly autistic”, as well as harmful misunderstandings and stereotypes - the main character questions why parents would dare to take their autistic kid on a vacation, and another insinuates that all autistic people are self-absorbed. Then, of course, the implication is made that nearly everyone flocking to the magic tree is autistic or have a family member who is, and they come back “cured”. Like, first off, gross. Second, as an autistic person myself (who also had an autistic best friend for close to 15 years), I can tell that this man a) knows nothing about autism except for vague (harmful) stereotypes, and b) had the audacity to just write whatever the fuck he wanted and did no research on it whatsoever. Clearly no autistic sensitivity readers were hired, either, because, simply-put, yikes.

To top it all off, this book is BORING. Like, endless chatter, endless descriptions, but no real plot. Everything has this false veneer of tension, but it’s just the author shouting “THERE’S TENSION!!!” and then, like, never doing anything about it. I started skimming at 37%, skipping over massive paragraphs of superfluous descriptions - I don’t care what they’re eating, what they’re wearing, what kind of car they’re driving. (Which, by the way, is this book sponsored by Honda? I ask because it’s only ever mentioned EVERY SINGLE TIME a car or boat is on-page.) People just know things, but it’s never explained how they know them, and at a few points, this unexplainable knowledge is a major plot point. So much useless info, so little substance. This book is only 192 pages, but it feels like a week has passed.

And then, the book just ends. Like, abruptly. Nothing is resolved. There was no plot arc, no climax and resolution. It just ends, and we get the first chapter of the next book, which I didn’t read because I don’t care what happens.

Final Thoughts:

In as few words as possible: Utter garbage.

I don’t know anything about the author other than he’s supposedly a prolific and successful writer and currently in-residence at a university in the UK, to which I have to ask - how? Why? Who does he know and whose money and name did he use to get there? Because I refuse to believe someone read his writing and thought it was anywhere close to good. Truly a mystery /s

I will not be reading anything by this author ever again. No thank you.

I was excited to see this new book by Davis Bunn, especially on such an intriguing topic. International intrique, Russia, supernatural elements? This sounded different and I knew Davis Bunn could pull it off. The Rowan is a tree that appears to have supernatural powers. Val is a writer given the chance to visit an island in Russia and see the rowan tree and find out the truth and why so many are coming to visit it.

That's all you know when you start reading, and the prologue decides to give you a deep dive into orienting you in this world before chapter 1 takes a step back and lets you catch your breath. The reason for my lower rating is because I couldn't finish. From the first page the writing was more difficult for me to get through. I read about 20 novels a month from quick romance to 600 page heavyweights. I am open to all kinds of writing, but the amount of description was distracting and the large amount of time on physical attributes and what felt (to me) like too much telling (characters informing each other or just the narrative) made it hard to stay in the story.

Ultimately I decided it wasn't one I wanted to invest time into finishing.

This was a book with paranormal elements and a great plot. I particularly liked the character of Val. It was very well drawn. Overall I enjoyed the novel. Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for giving me a copy of the book.

Thank you to the publishers – Severn House and Canongate Books.– for giving me access to this book as an E-ARC via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

I think I can see where the author wanted to take this story but unfortunately for me it was a miss. I pretty much only finished it because I don’t like to DNF books I’ve been granted access to on Netgalley. The blurb sounded very interesting and with a beautiful cover to boot.

The story starts straight off with unnecessary description of the characters so when I read the first chapters I just knew that this wasn’t going to be the story for me but I trudged on because of the above mentioned reason.

I’m sure this story has an audience out there, sadly, I wasn’t a part of it.