Reviews and Comments

A novel and ambitious concept, but I felt it might have worked better in a full full length novel, everything felt a little cramped and under-explored in a novella.

A fun, rambling read, rather less about orchids than I expected and more about Floridan history.

A very smart, wry take on the mad scientist trope. I wish I'd known when I started reading that it was in the middle of a series, but it stands on its own well too.

I have to admit that having loved Simon Dawson's previous book, this one felt like a bit of a disappointment, but I think my reading of it was colored by my mounting discomfort at one of the relationships portrayed in it. This was between a teenaged boy, often shown in the text to be very immature, and a woman in her thirties - the boy was sent to the farm by his parents because they were concerned about this relationship but the attitude of the narrative seemed very "Whahaaay, go on son!" There was an author's note at the back saying some of the characters were fictionalized and I really hope this boy was.

I must admit I was a bit disappointed - it was an engaging idea and raised some interesting moral questions about whether everyone would degenerate into psychopaths if actions lacked long term consequences, but it then rather shied away from trying to answer them. I also felt the plot rather dragged and there were some rather graphic torture scenes I wasn't expecting, so all in all I was rather glad to finish it.

I loved this book - it somehow managed to be both an incredibly profound reflection on our relationship with farm animals and the feelings brought up by slaughtering livestock, and still have me laughing till I struggled to breathe at descriptions of various accidents involving electric fences (I don't want to spoil the details for anyone). It also managed to be very real - so many of these books claim to be an honest account of a self sufficient life but this is one of the best I've read at conveying just how grindingly miserable not quite having enough money to get by on is, while still staying funny.

rather more basic than I was expecting tbh