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I really appreciated the pessimistic premise and I recognise many of the thoughts and predicaments that Boyd is struggling with. Ultimately, I don't even mind the lack of answers. There's only a direction. It's not a bad book for people who are struggling with the climate crisis. But I, personally, missed some focus and maybe more forceful, combative attitudes.

Low fantasy novel full of descriptive scenes set in a sprawling, dripping, ancient castle complex, Gormenghast. Full of idiosyncratic characters, with their own patterns of speech, mannerisms and roles to play in the complex ritual existence of the castle and the Groan lineage, the story is a labourous study in pure conservatism in its strictest meaning. While the concept is sound, the whole exercise in describing the minute changes cascading through the book didn't do that much for me. There's no real conclusion to the book (although it's the first in a trilogy) and I get that it's part of the ideas about stand-still, but this makes it of limited interest to a wider audience.

At the back of their personal troubles, hopes and fears, this less immediate trepidation grew, this intangible suggestion of change, that most unforgivable of all heresies.

Great essay in the Leninist tradition. Malm truly fuses Marxism, ecology and anti-colonial struggle with a strong historical materialist analysis. To my eyes, this is a milestone for the anti-imperialist eco-socialist tradition that is the future of the left.

That parts of it are dated by now, was to be expected. But even so, while some of the basic premises and observations - summerized as Big Tech is a threat to democracy - are valid, the critique stays very much on the surface level. Worse still, at many points Bartlett veers into an uncritical fanboy of certain technologies, functioning as an unthinking mouthpiece for certain tech-interests (the whole chapter on crypto is glaring in this regard).