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Precise, necessary—Berols�� Anna’s About Plant House 3 is a curious book of poetry indeed. It’s been said that “in Berols�� Anna’s poetry, all things became completely and self-evidently solid.�� And yet, on further reflection, all that is solid melts into air. Describing a complete year in the life of Plant House 3, from harvest to harvest, this celebrated collection from Amatka’s greatest poet is, in fact, a radical act of creation: for within the mundane happenings of Plant House 3—“among the beets�� and “the long furrows   of chalky earth”—lies the peril, and promise, of a world.

About Plant House 3—though presumably less riveting than the far more popular About Plant House 5—belongs among the great fictional books. Like so many of the precise details in Amatka, it takes on new meaning as Tidbeck’s story unfolds. Considering Berols�� Anna’s challenge—to describe plainly what is true and real, and, at the same time, to describe new worlds�� into being—captures as well as anything the strange duality of fiction itself.

Amatka is science fiction of the first order—subtle, philosophically rich, frequently disarming. Indeterminate, charged with sorrow and hope. Tidbeck eschews easy answers. Offers no clean parable of our own world. Challenges at every turn.