I hate to do this with an ARC but I’m going to set this aside for now. I’m about 50% through and not gelling with the writing or narrative voice. 😕

I’m so disappointed this didn’t work for me. The cover art is beautiful and I was keen to deepen my understanding about oil in Colombia. It’s so important that we tell these stories and I deeply hope other readers are able to get more from this than I did.

At the beginning of this book, the author say it isn’t a report, but a memoir. But it’s got such a reportage writing style: it’s all telling; told in a flat style with dry, corporate language. Like reading legal brief or meeting minutes. I couldn’t get a good sense of place or people. What I usually love about memoirs - heart and emotive writing - wasn’t present for me in this book.

Slight aside: The style here reminded me of a few other social justice books I’ve read and my time working in a climate think tank. These spheres tend to have the same shared inaccessible language and style that they cling to without understanding how alienating and pompous it comes across to the average person. If we really want to drive understanding and change, we need to educate people through plain language and emotive writing so they can truly understand the problems. Bring them with us, so to speak. Being academic or exclusionary about it isn’t going to reach the curious or unconvinced.

Anyway.

Overall, the book feels disorganized. We jump around in time a lot with no warning. The chapters don’t feel intentional and some sections repeated verbatim. Some characters aren’t introduced, they just show up like we’re expected to know who they are. As a reader, I didn’t feel welcomed into the author’s world; instead, it felt like I was trespassing on private moments or trying to read an academic textbook.

There are a lot of new age / spirituality themes that didn’t work for me as a reader who requested this based on the climate science angle.

This could work for folks who enjoy a reportage writing style, have existing context about the time and place, and don’t mind spirituality themes.