Eleven-year-old Veronica “Nick” Sixsmith and her mother, Theodora “Theo”, are traveling arborists, tending to the groves of ironwood trees whose magic-infused wood enables much of their world’s technology. When a blight begins attacking the trees, however, Nick and Theo go back to the city of Mistwood, home of the ancestral Heart Grove and of Theo’s family, whom she left many years ago for reasons Nick doesn’t know.
Nick is awed by Mistwood’s enormous trees, towering waterfalls, and lively markets, and by the sub-community of Underhill, whose people live underground in caves created by the trees’ roots. Underhillers often show visible effects from living so close to the trees, and are sometimes shunned by other Mistwood residents for their colorful skin and other distinctive physical traits.
But the actions of the Forestry Company controlling the use of ironwood become more secretive and restrictive, and some people in the city have suddenly disappeared. Nick wants to know why, even as she continues her search for the origins of the blight. She’s joined by her cousin Oliver and an Underhill youth named Lizard (who happens to be nonbinary). As the three seek answers, however, they uncover plans that would endanger the most vulnerable citizens and create an environmental disaster that would ultimately affect all.
The lessons about environmentalism, social inequalities, and the perils of corporate greed are clear but not pedantic; this is an obvious fable about how we treat our own world and the communities and people in it, but woven into a captivating tale with strong worldbuilding. Author Kali Wallace has carefully constructed a system of trees whose powers and effects are the heart of the world’s trade and technology, and her descriptions of flora and geography are lush and evocative. Despite being a fantasy, the book talks about observation, use of data, and drawing conclusions in ways that should delight STEM-minded readers (and perhaps create new ones).
Indeed, I wonder why the trees’ power is called “magic,” when it is really just the natural way of this world. The book even explains, “Every method for using the magic in ironwood relied on the trees’ natural defense mechanisms”; elsewhere, Oliver is told to debate the properties of magic “with the other scientists.” If the science of the world is based on magic, isn’t magic just part of science—that is, a force like gravity or electromagnetism? Still, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with calling this particular force “magic,” especially if it captures the spirit of the creative, flourishing world that Wallace has built (and if it gets readers thinking about the forces at work in our own natural world, which can sometimes seem like magic).
Nick, Oliver, and Lizard are well-drawn and likeable, and Nick’s curiosity about the world around her is infectious. Lizard’s nonbinary identity is introduced without fanfare or questioning; at one point, too, Nick thinks about those who ask if she has “a father or a second mother,” indicating that either option would be valid and that LGBTQ identities as a whole are a non-issue in this world. One of Nick’s aunts is chosen family.
With a richly detailed and intriguing setting, a clever protagonist, and incidental queer inclusion, this is a recommended book that should find many fans. I hope it’s not the last we’ve seen of this world.
Nick and her mother read as White; Oliver has light brown skin.
