If you’ve never read linked short stories, or assume you won’t enjoy them, give this book a try because Sequoia Nagamatsu leans into what I love most about this kind of collection. It’s not just the Easter egg moments of recognizing characters or timelines from one story in another, but it’s the sometimes deep, sometimes subtle, always meaningful connections between distinct storylines that gives me a thrill. Without hitting me over the head with it, Nagamatsu reveals the domino effects of our actions and the echos of our elation and grief across time and even space.

The story begins where this collection’s climate-related pandemic begins, in the otherworldly Arctic Circle where a young researcher’s death compels her grieving father to pick up where her research left off. We follow the course of the pandemic’s unleashing and its growing impact not in a straight line but through the lives of individuals alive in this suffering world. These characters work through issues both science fictional, such as working at a theme park for terminally ill child victims of the disease, and common to the human struggle, such as aching with loneliness and finding love. The pandemic almost becomes background noise, always there and hurtling us toward some great climax, but under the surface of daily life and deeper internal machinations. Because the characters are so well-realized and we feel the impact of their lives, their small and big decisions, at work beyond the chapters dedicated to crucial moments in their lives, their stories coalesce into a richly woven tapestry that captures generations and stretches across a breathtaking timeline.

I’m happy to report that at the end of it all, there is hope.