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By all means, this *should* have been a perfect book for me. I mean, it’s essentially a fever dream, or at least one of those surreal dreams that happen right before waking and you keep remembering bits and pieces for days after. Or at least the pleasantly intoxicated dream of a tree-hugging pacifist hippie who turns the front lawn into a sustainable community garden*.

* Not quite me (because cynicism) but something I can relate to in literature. Usually.

Imagine an infiltration of the Earth with the Seep, a benevolent alien symbiote that very quickly transforms the planet into a hippie paradise, with everyone connected via deep understanding, elimination of disease, scarcity, inequality, need to work for money, with communes of people high on the Seep and life having daily transcendental experiences in perfect harmony, gardening in their front yards, having consensual orgies, not needing money, using moss for carpeting and communing with nature while wearing hippie outfits and making jokes about the few who chose to isolate themselves about this paradise for all. Seriously, it seems to be what the hippie communes were hoping to achieve but failed in the world of capitalism and the notable absence of mind-controlling alien symbiote that makes it “impossible to feel anything except expansive joy, peace, tenderness, and love��.

“Just yesterday Trina had used The Seep to erase a tumor from a woman’s breast. No cutting, no incision, no radiation or chemotherapy, just the power of Seep consciousness speaking into this woman’s cells, telling them how to die gracefully, to let go and become something new. The procedure took twenty minutes, and then the woman went to a hula-hoop meet-up in Golden Gate Park.��

Pass me some raspberry leaves to smoke as I dance around the Maypole, please.

But my brain kept going “Huh?�� pretty much nonstop.

Everything I mentioned above - all the transformation of the world within a few short years - all vaguely happens completely off-page. So if you’re here to see that, it’s not going to happen. It’s more of vague mentions and handwaving and not much else except for stating that it’s life now.

What we get to see instead is the exploration of grief from losing a life partner (the said life partner decides to take a full advantage of unexplainable alien symbiote powers and regress to being a baby, and is pissed that her wife does not want to become a parent to her former wife. Yeah. That.) We see Trina angry and lost, floating through this huggy, dreamy and constantly high world, broken over the loss of her wife Deeba and focusing her grief and anger on random targets in attempt to deny what she is really feels, while the Seep (initially through sentient pamphlets - just roll with it, okay?) tries to convince her that it is necessary to eliminate the feelings of grief and loss and anger since those do not belong in this surreally dreamy Brave New World.

“But right now, I feel like you’re breaking the deal you have with us. We’re supposed to have free will. That includes being unhappy. That includes making the wrong decisions and getting hurt, or even doing something terrible. We’re on this planet to grow and change, and sometimes that can only happen through struggle.��

And all I kept thinking was that addition of this strange unexplained and nonsensical world was completely unnecessary to explore Trina’s loss and grief. It was a confusing background, distracting in its unexplained oddness, like a strange flashy dream �� and that comes from me, a huge fan of weird science fiction. The point seemed to be acceptance of herself and her her feelings and this allowing Trina to finally move on, find new center in life, make peace with all the conflicting emotions and pain that seem to be necessary for humanity. And that’s what the book should have focused on, in my decidedly non-Seepy opinion, explored loss and pain, maybe with injection of a touch of magical realism at most.

“The child disappeared, and Trina found that she was holding herself. She took a deep shaky breath, her arms still wrapped in tight. She had been punishing herself for years, punishing herself for the loss of Deeba and how terrible she felt about that loss, a vicious circle sucking her under. No more. She would still feel sorrow, hurt, anger at that great gaping loss. But she wouldn’t flagellate herself for those feelings. And eventually, eventually, those, too, would pass. She stood up a little straighter. Eventually, Trina would move on.��

But throwing in the mix of sorta-SF half-developed fever dream reality kept jarring me out of Trina’s experiences and emotional turmoil. It kept making me want to actually understand how that world would work (I think the explanation boils down to some “Seep wands��, for all the sense it makes) and why it wouldn’t actually work, and how ridiculous it is to expect all that just over a few years, and what exactly the point of the boy from the Compound is (is he a metaphor??? I’m afraid so) and all that logical thinking stuff that I suppose I was meant to put aside before starting page one.

Logic is not strong here. Chapter 2 �� Trina’s bare feet sink into the moss on the floor, she looks at her reflection in the mirror and sees “old Levi’s, hoodie, ancient leather boots��.

Did those boots have no soles to allow bare feet to sink into the moss???

And all that kept removing the spotlight from Trina’s emotional journey to the detriment of the story’s message, and leaving me feeling a bit disengaged.

In short, a grief story shortchanged by throwing in vaguely messy science fiction �� or a science fiction story suffering from too much underdeveloped vagueness in pursuit of exploration of grief. A strange thought experiment for which I’m not a good match.

In any case, 2 stars. Not for me.