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Oh this was lovely - I picked it up because it had a nice cover :D

What I wasn't expecting was a magical tour de force of how a tree tells its story and presents it for anyone to see - for those who can read it. So many little things I've seen in trees and not thought on, or not realised must have a reason to be so.

It's full of gems of knowledge that in hindsight seem self evident, and as Gooley himself says, once you see it, you will never unsee it, and will appreciate nature on a deeper level. His passion and clear joy in what he does comes through the page and transforms what some might say woud only ever be a dry, academic subject.

I loved how some elements of modern life such as road design or architecture that I assumed were trial and error and human design is just us copying trees.

Trees are the emperors of time

I can't wait for my next long walk.

As a collection of short stories it's difficult to give an overall review. I found it quite incohesive and I struggled to keep focus on it.

You can't dispute the atmosphere and formative themes of the cyberpunk genre. You can see the seeds of neuromancer, the matrix, and a few other more modern cyberpunk episodes. I'd suggest it for fans of the genre, but certainly not as an entry point or taster.

Johnny Mnemonic was probably my favourite - I didn't realise it had a film so I'm going to need to watch that now. It follows a data courier who stores sensitive information in his brain - you can probably guess how that goes.

A bit of a return to form for this series for me, after how much I enjoyed the previous.

I thought the general scale of this book was off a bit - I didn't really like the core mystery, it felt way more amateurish than the other adventures.

Bright spots again were the characters opening up and developing more organically now that we know them a bit more. Seeing Elizabeth deal with her continuing grief, and learning more about Ibrahim were also compelling threads.

I enjoyed this one a lot more than the rest in the series. The characters have come into their own and less time is spent developing them - instead they are just given space to breathe.

I thought the mystery in this one was also better - drugs, antiques, plot armoured pensioners...

Osman's dealing with Stephen's dementia was a well handled emotional core to this book with the mystery of a certain letter being particularly potent. I enjoyed that this gave Elizabeth a bit of a back seat, allowing us to see more from other characters.

There's something sad about this series though - with its story of Coopers Chase and older people playing at dangerous games and somehow avoiding any serious repercussions. I know it's a conceit of the series and I'm not really complaining - but it does make me think of all the real people in care homes or end of life care who do not have "adventures" or constant social stimulation.

I struggled a bit with the style of this novel. The fragmented approach and, to my mind, uneven pacing meant there were too many lulls in between the sections that I did enjoy.

It's one of the few dystopian novels I've read that isn't based on some far future or technological trope, and this made me want to find some more to read.

I enjoyed the historical lecture type section at the end of the book - I would perhaps have preferred more of that throughout for context.