I had read a short story or two by Cristina Jurado a couple years ago, and while I was a bit wary that she can lean more toward horror than I prefer, the blurb of ChloroPhilia caught my attention, and I’ve been intentionally looking for more novellas outside the Tor ecosystem, so I thought I’d give Sue Burke’s 2025 translation a try.

ChloroPhilia takes place after dust storms raging across the face of the Earth send people scrambling underground, into bunkers and eventually constructed domes. The lead is the last human child born in his own domed civilization, and faced with a rash of miscarriages that threaten the very end of humanity, his doctor uses him as a test subject, splicing in plant genes in hopes of turning him into something that can survive in the new world.

If I had to pin down ChloroPhilia, I would probably call it a coming of age story of a human/plant hybrid in a post-apocalyptic world with no next generation on the horizon. But I expect a coming of age story to dig deep into the lead’s perspective, and ChloroPhilia really didn’t. In fact, the lead isn’t even introduced until a quarter of the way into the story, after a prologue from the perspective of the dust storm and a zeroth chapter following the doctor as he navigates a brutal underground world rife with violence and more than a little cannibalism. And when the story does settle into the lead’s perspective, it only provides a handful of scenes—keep in mind, this is a very short book—showing a little bit of school trouble and a long conversation about the old aboveground world before abruptly shifting to the climax.

It’s a structure that so thoroughly did not work for me that I wonder whether I’m just missing something. I have read and enjoyed Jurado’s stories and Burke’s translations before, so I can’t write off my struggles as simply the work of an amateur author or translator. It’s possible that some of my complaints are personal preference, as I tend to enjoy the tighter perspective common in contemporary speculative fiction than the zoomed out style that provides over-the-shoulder perspective on major events. It’s also possible that I’m missing some sort of essential cultural context. I’m not sure what that would be, but it is a translation from a language I barely understand from an unfamiliar country.

But whatever the reason, this one didn’t work for me on either the micro or macro levels. The distant perspective made the individual scenes feel like box-checking that had little emotional impact, to the point where I made it 80% into the book still feeling like I was reading the first couple chapters that give the basics of the world and characters before the story as a whole begins. But then the climax came so suddenly that the larger plot felt disjointed, with big reveals and a fairly graphic scene of sexual misconduct that felt like they should be shocking but instead mostly found me puzzled as to why the story had taken such an abrupt turn and whether I was supposed to be emotionally invested in the characters involved. The themes of exploring a hybridized, posthuman world are theoretically interesting, but neither the individual scenes nor the overarching plot brought them out in a way that I found compelling.

I’ve been putting scores on everything I read since I started blogging, but I’ve never really had to get a sense of the lower end of my range, because if I’m really not enjoying a book on any level, I usually DNF. This was a bit of a perfect storm, because I had enough confidence in the author to press on past an uninspiring opening, and by the time I became truly confident that I wasn’t going to grow into an appreciation of the story, the slim novella was already over.

So don’t worry too much about the specific score. This book didn’t work for me, but it clearly has worked for other readers. I won’t be recommending it, but if you enjoy stories that are willing to get fairly dark and don’t mind the over-the-shoulder perspective, there’s no harm in checking out a sample to see whether the style works better for you.

Overall rating: 7 of Tar Vol’s 20. One star on Goodreads.

Firstly, this is a translation from Spanish, and I have to think that the translator did a good job here. It doesn't have any clunkiness or strangeness that sometimes translations have.

The novel is short, only 140 pages, and I read it in one sitting. The story follows a doctor who is escaping underground during a cataclysmic sandstorm which is forcing everyone to live in the subway and sewers. This part is rather brief, and shifts to a boy named Kirmen, who is slowly being turned into a plant. Kirmen's story is somewhat engaging, though most of it is him questioning people and hearing their answers. There's a rather long segment that's just him and the doctor talking back and forth.

The entire story is dystopian, but really only hints as these things and lets the reader work them out. I think there's good bones in this story, but it really does suffer from its length. I feel as soon as we become connected to the young Kirmen, it shifts to him aging and his transformation. Ultimately, it's an interesting story but it feels disjointed and far too brief to have a lasting impact.

Thank you to Netgalley and apex books for the ARC of Chlorophilia by Christina Jurado.

I don’t know that I completely understood this book to be quite honest. It starts off really promisingly with a doctor in a sand-storm infested world, where people have moved into the subway tunnels to escape the wind, most turning to cannibalism in order to survive. Then one day he is approached by a man who has a safe community. He goes.

Then it switches to Kirmen, a boy in only the loosest sense as he’s undergone so many “treatments” that he is more plant than human. His bark-like skin is described often, as well as his long limbs, but the treatments are never explained, nor is the goal for these treatments. Kirmen and his girlfriend (?) Jana were the last babies to be born in the “Cloister” which is described as many domes that are self sufficient to keep humans alive and out of the storms. They have miniature trees and animals. The story loosely follows Kirmen through his last few treatments until he reaches his final (?) form.

Unfortunately, this novel just was maybe too confusing for me to follow, though it had some really cool ideas. The beginning was interesting with the subterranean cannibals and the doctor fighting for his life but it was very short. And then I think it’s the same doctor later on, but he becomes so odd and off putting, at one point becoming a sexual predator.

Speaking of, there are a lot of strange sexual acts, innuendos, and descriptions that were off putting to me. I guess it’s supposed to be Kirmen coming of age, but as he’s basically a tree, it was strange. I also didn’t understand the ending. There was so much flowery language that I really didn’t know what was going on. So this book is getting a 1/5 stars from me. Maybe other people will enjoy it, but it is not my cup of tea.

I didn't realize how short the book was until it was too late— I was thoroughly absorbed and then, all of a sudden, *boom* it's the end! I would have happily read more because the plot was fascinating!