The Chthonic Cycle / Una Cruickshank

We all used to be something else, and we will all be something new again in the world to come.

Written in an effort to ward off existential dread, and to find new understandings and consolations for those similarly afflicted, The Chthonic Cycle is an eccentric and brilliantly curated tour through time, in which fascinating objects glint and spark and the transcience of humanity flickers.

At the heart of Una Cruickshank's debut are Eath's interlocking cycles of death and reuse. The blood of a billion-year-old tree emerges from the sea as a drop of amber; 4,756,940 pieces of Lego float towards the Cornish Peninsula; a giant squid's beak passes through a whale's intestines into bottles of Chanel №. 5. The violence of colonisation underpins some of the transformations illuminated here, as we follow wave after wave of ruin and remaking.

This is a rare kind of writing, both galaxy-sweeping and microscopically specific. The Chthonic Cycle reminds us to be chastened and scared by our world—it's mind bending age, the insane complexity of its systems, the violent upheavels and mass extinctions—as well as to be awed.