Premee Mohamed

In post-climate disaster Alberta, a woman infected with a mysterious parasite must choose whether to pursue a rare opportunity far from home or stay and help rebuild her community The world is nothing like it once was: climate disasters have wracked the continent, causing food shortages, ending industry, and leaving little behind. Then came Cad, mysterious mind-altering fungi that invade the bodies of the now scattered citizenry. Reid, a young woman who carries this parasite, has been given a chance to get away -- to move to one of the last remnants of pre-disaster society -- but she can't bring herself to abandon her mother and the community that relies on her. When she's offered a coveted place on a dangerous and profitable mission, she jumps at the opportunity to set her family up for life, but how can Reid ask people to put their trust in her when she can't even trust her own mind? With keen insight and biting prose, Premee Mohamed delivers a deeply personal tale in this post-apocalyptic hopepunk novella that reflects on the meaning of community and asks what we owe to those who have lifted us up.

The Annual Migration of Clouds

HanaKyle Moranz

I loved this. I super appreciate Premee Mohamed's futurism. I recommend this wholeheartedly to everyone.

Brutal post-apocalyptic (climate and fungal pandemic) tale with a hopeful ending. An infection that tries to keep you safe, a society built for survival, extreme weather and the disasters that follow it. A letter promising a bright future to one young woman, difficult choices and relationships. Something about the writing which is so clear, so swift and bright and sharp that you enjoy the book as much for this as the tale it tells.The undertow of an environmental message as the remains of humanity camp on the detritus of its past. Very highly recommended.

David Burrows

Janice Hopper

A lovely, sad novella of a time after climate collapse, when people are doing the best they can with a bad situation.

Reid, the main character, gets invited to a university that may or may not actually exist. It's a once-in-a-million chance. But to go, she has to leave all she's ever known - her mom, her friend Henryk, and everyone else that is pretty essential to life in the world that's left after civilization as WE know it is over.

Beautifully written and thought-provoking.

Amy Grieve

I really wish I could have rated this higher because the entire concept was so interesting and it did start off really well. For the first half of this story I was intrigued and wanted to know more about this new world, but by the end I felt like the entire thing dragged on, which is something that shouldn’t happen in a novella. 

I wish we got more development about cad, the disease that has sprung up in this new world, because I feel like it was just added to add another science fiction element to the story.

Sunyi Dean

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a free copy. 

I did that thing which reviewers probably shouldn't really do, which is go through and read other reviews before writing mine. However, in this case, I did so for a very specific reason: I had a suspicion about how this book would land, and I think I was mostly right. 

A good friend of mine who is very much a litfic fan once gave me a beautiful definition for literary fiction (the genre) as opposed to commercial fiction with a literary quality. She said that both litfic and commercial genres ask certain questions, but genre fiction must provide an answer to the questions it asks within its story, whereas litfic tends to be more concerned with the exploration of the question itself. The endpoint is less important than the journey, and so on. 

That tendency sometimes gives litfic its reputation for books that meander, have unusual structures, or end without concluding (the narrative seeming to trail off or finish abruptly.) More commercially oriented readers are sometimes put off by those aspects, and if you're used to other genres then it can be genuinely frustrating. (I found Handmaid's Tale frustrating, for example: it just stops at a semi-random endpoint.) 

Migration of Clouds is a beautiful, thoughtful, and eerie musing, and I'd feel comfortable classing it as literary fiction (a tag it won't get labelled with in all likelihood because of the highly speculative setting.) I realise there's a degree of subjectivity there, but that's my take on it. A lovely, evocative, sensory, thoughtful, and multi-layered novella. 

But I think it might get a slightly cool reception from the SFF crowd because of its litfic structure, and might not suit genre fans looking for a more tangible, more 'defined' grasp on those speculative elements. I didn't mind the structure but did find myself wishing it was a little bit longer, because I was quite interested in knowing whether the university was real. Hopefully the author will put out more novellas in the same world some day.

The Annual Migration of Clouds

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