"The Canopy Keepers"

The Canopy Keepers by Veronica G. Henry

Amazon First Reads

Pages: 363 Genre: fantasy

Rating: 3 Stars

Kindle Highlights

As a child, Syrah Carthan lives through the unthinkable: a forest fire and a terrible accident lead to the loss of her parents and the disappearance of her brother. Decades later, Syrah is a firefighter who feels an almost-personal desire to protect wildlife. She takes the job as the first female fire chief Sequoia National Park — the same place she lost her family. After she sanctions a prescribed burn that goes wrong, though, she quits. Later, she gets pulled back in to an out-of-control fire, where she accidentally stumbles onto a hidden world built around the forest’s complex root system. This society is divided between their benevolent leader and a man who seeks to wreak havoc on humankind. Syrah finds herself stuck in between her desire to protect the human world and the natural world, as both of them are set to change forever.

I loved the concept of this book. The idea of a hidden tree society that is now fighting back against human carelessness is really cool, but unfortunately it wasn't executed as well as it could have been.

The start of the book was captivating. I liked seeing Syrah at her firefighter job, and we hopped between time and place in a way that I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, as the book went on, the writing lost some of his charm. Syrah's narration became repetitive and circular, where she would go over the same points and realizations constantly without any real catalyst moving us forward. It almost felt like the author was forgetting the stuff that had been written previously, which made a lot of the plot unclear.

None of the characters were as dynamic as they should have been. Their motivations and desires weren't explored that deeply, despite having fascinating concepts. Particularly Syrah and the leaders of the Canopy Keepers. I wish the author would've played around with their different perspectives on more than just a surface level. Everything just was, which is a shame in a book that is so deeply entangled in a lot of engaging ethical questions.

My biggest issue with the book was the way the nature topics were debated amongst the characters. The villain was incredibly short-sided, and I believe that was intentional (we love an anti-hero), but Syrah never really brought forth a more logical stance. I don't want to spoil it, but in a book that forces us to reckon with humanity's crimes against the planet, pretty much the entire ethical debate boils down to "murder is bad." I kept wishing we'd dig more into the issue and acknowledge some of the nuances involved in each character's arguments, but we never did.

I suppose that was the book's biggest flaw. For as interested as I was in the story, we never explored anything beyond its most basic form. Nobody put forth an argument that was new or particularly compelling beyond its inherent stakes. I really just wanted more.

As far as the writing itself, I go back and forth. I praised the book a lot at the beginning for its unique metaphors and illustrative prose, but by the end it started to feel somewhat gimmicky. Individual passages were beautiful, but as a whole it was too flowery (pun intended).

This book was not bad. I wanted to keep reading, and the roots (hehe) of the story were good. I just wish the execution had matched up to my expectations. However, I still enjoyed my time reading.