Book Review: Environments of Empire

Image: The cover of the book is a light tan background with a very light grey partial illustration of the leaves of a plant extending across the upper left section. In the center of the cover is an old illustration of a pygmy hippo facing to the right side. They are standing on a tan ground sparsely populated with light green grass patches. Their flesh is a reddish brown. Across the top of the cover in reddish brown is the title of the bbook in capital letters, the word "empire" being larger than the others. Below that in smaller blue-green letters is "networks and agents of" in capital letters and "ecological change" in italicized text. Across the bottom are the editors' names in smaller, black, capital letters of the same font.

There is a very specific audience targeted by Environments of Empire: Networks and Agents of Ecological Change. This is not necessarily unusual for an academic text, but I found this one had an exceptional amount of specificity in its focus. I am not an ecology historian PhD and I felt that while reading this book. I found that many of the essays would be far better understood by someone with an already longstanding, comprehensive understanding of worldwide colonial history. I do not. This does not make the book automatically bad. It was just not for me, and I do read academic works semi-frequently that are outside my field of education. It did not meet my expectations of the information I expected to find until the very last section.

My interest in this book came from wanting to know more about how imperialist colonization affected animals and others in various regions of the world. This book does make it clear that European imperialism and colonialism have resulted in environmental change and damage via the introduction of non-native and invasive species. It was just presented in a very Eurocentric manner. One of the writers reminds us that not everything can be defined by Western colonialism. Yet, I found that this book was defined by it. This could be from my own lack of education, so take that opinion with its source in mind.

What was not clear from the blurb is that this book is a collection of papers first presented at a 2015 conference at the University of Kassel, Germany. As I said, very specific. The authors are overwhelmingly white (passing, at least) and I am not sure if any of them are indigenous people. This may or may not be the reason that I found most of the essays to center the imperialist colonizers- often focusing on a single man's travels- rather than centering those negatively affected- the native people, nonhuman animals, and native plants- by said colonizers. The first two sections fall into this category whereas the last section- Animal Agency- finally started giving me what I came for. The rest were a slog to get through and the book reads far more like a journal than a book. That is not to say that there isn't huge overlap there in academic texts. But, most academic books I have read do not feel as if I am reading a periodical in sequence.

That said, once I got to the last section in the book, I did find myself interested in what the author's shared. "Animal Skins" details how colonialism and exotic animal trades negatively affect both indigenous human and nonhuman animal behaviors and populations. "Adapting to Change in Australian Estuaries" manages to make the intersection of settler colonialism and oyster prevalence interesting. "Brumbies as Colonizers" offers an example of how a non-native species can be more ethically accommodated and viewed after being non-consensually introduced into a non-native environment. I found all of these interesting and closer to what I was hoping to learn from this book.

Overall, this book is for academics with a very specific focus. It was not composed or written with a wide audience in mind- especially not the layman. On top of that, it is very specific in its sources both in author demographics and the original presentation of the papers at a single conference 5 years ago. That is not to say that the book is not necessary nor useful for those it is targeted at. It simply did not work very well for me.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: The Return

Image: The cover of the book is mostly a hot pink and black version of a black and white photo. It is a view of a hallway with vertical striped wallpaper that goes halfway up the wall. On the back wall, two fancy light fixtures sit partly obscured by the hallway's end. To the left at the ent of the hallway is an upholstered dining chair and next to it on the floor a dark shadow of a person can be seen standing there. Across the top in large black letters is the title. Above that in small letters it says "her friend disappeared, a stranger came back." Across the bottom in large pink letters is the author's name: Rachel Harrison.

I won a copy of this book from goodreads giveaways. I don't often enter fiction drawings unless I know the author, but I admittedly judged this book by it's excellent cover and decided, "Why not?" I feel that I can describe The Return by Rachel Harrison with a food analogy. If I am eating french fries from a frozen bag that I baked at home, I know they are not fine cuisine, but they're still fun to eat. This book is not a book I would say is written well and parts of it lack much originality. Yet, I found myself generally immersed and enjoying myself while reading it much of the time. It follows 4 female friends as they go on a vacation and a bit of a friendship reunion. One friend has recently returned after being missing for 2 years with no recollection of what had happened. It's a horror novel, so, you can imagine that things don't go very well on this vacation.

At first while reading the book, I almost gave up. It was just not drawing me in and mixed with the writing and organization, I thought I was wasting my time. I decided to stick with it anyways and did get pretty into it, especially during the middle, most suspenseful sections. One of my biggest issues though even with this section was how poorly written the most supernatural scenes were. To avoid spoilers I won't give details, but Harrison creates a decent amount of suspense and unease and then at the times where what we are waiting for happens, it's as if she rushes through them. They could have been created as longer, more eerie and unnerving scenes but every single one fell flat. When I reached the ending, I was disappointed again. I will, again, avoid spoilers. But, let's just say that the tropes involved were unoriginal, tired, and not at all in line with what I was hoping for from this cast of women characters.

Would I read something else by this writer? Likely not, unless the next book showed promise of being much better than this one. But, Harrison is a new novelist and many first novels have lots of issues. She has some creativity and ability that can be honed into something better. So, I am open to seeing what comes next, but won't be holding my breath.

This was also posted to my goodreads.