Fleeing into the woods

The Marrow Thieves
by Cherie Dimaline

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

A dystopian world. Climate change, melting ice caps, floods, torrential rains, no electrical power left, no running water, polluted rivers and lakes, collapse of society, the whole nine yards. And that is just what happens before the beginning of the book. Most people have lost the ability to dream.

“The only people still able to dream are North America’s Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world.“

French has lost his family, but finds a new one. They flee the cities and treck north through the woods, hoping to find a safe place.

That‘s pretty much it for the first half of the book. Running, hunting, minimal plot. Plus a little backstory in the shape a few origin stories of some of the members of the group. More backstory would have been nice. Slow build-up and glacial pace after the initial intro to the story and world.

This had—at least in parts—the feel of magical realism, without the magic, if that makes sense. The grimness of the schools and the marrow thieves was mostly in the off, hinted at and not really explored. This was more about the relationships of those that survived and their decisions how to live and where to go from there. If the characters and their budding relationship are the point of the story though, more character development would have been nice.

So, whilst the idea of this story was a good one, it wasn‘t really my cup of tea.

Content warning: several fairly foggy mentions of rape, one not so foggy one. Murder, genocide, medical experimentation and more.