Reviews and Comments

"Naturekind" is an essential book that, were it not a bit academic writing, should be one of these all-time famous nature writing book. It lays out the case how much of human-non-human (chicken, horses, bees, plants) interactions are true communication. Honestly, so many times I thought - well this is going a bit too far but the examples just hit the mark. I think the warm feeling of someone expressing what I intuitively feel just is why I consider this book a paradigm changer. I'll leave the academic detail to the linguists, but sometimes it felt like their concept of "structural biosemiotics" was (a) poorly explained and (b) applied a little too generously, but that doesn't take away from the message: That humans are part of nature and all its residents, and that we truly communicate across species in myriads of ways. I also enjoyed the focus on time and place context as the driver of meaning.

This was a hard rating to find. In its best moments, this book is brilliant and deeply moving and cute and funny. But unfortunately, it is for the most part idea driven, and while a lot of those ideas are good and important to be in SciFi, they also make most of the narrative very tedious and wooden. I was still going for 4 stars, but then realized my biggest qualm: People place Emrys as the new LeGuin, but she most emphatically is not. LeGuin presented her ideas and then immediately let the story break them and show what could go wrong. And though Emry's idea of eco-anarchist communities moderated by clever technology is fantastic, she puts it on a pedestal and breaks narrative integrity to keep it squeaky clean. Also, the glorification of religious nonsense is almost grotesque in comparison to the embrace of diversity and standing up to power and control the rest of the book presents.