The Lattice Beneath

I wanted to love this more than I did. The opening images are gorgeous — the taste of dust, the pear tree in a barrel — but the plot leans a little too hard on familiar YA tropes: the scrappy teenage fixer with a relic that will obviously save everyone, a faceless coalition that mostly functions as a convenient antagonist. Pacing drags in the middle; after Wren dies and the stakes are established, the narrative stalls in expository beats about the cistern ledger and convoy routes instead of developing the coalition’s motives or internal tensions. The descent into the ruins and the relic disc’s capabilities are hinted at rather than shown, which left the solution feeling under-explained. Still, the prose is often lovely and the community details land; with tighter plotting and fewer conveniences, this could’ve been great rather than merely good.

Nice — like a slow-burn indie film where the protagonist fixes a pump and sparks a revolution between scenes of people hanging their underwear like flags. The writing has a dry wit that sneaks up on you: Wren “coughed and spat” like an old dog and then betrayed everyone, and Gale’s oil-drum percussion is peak rooftop punk. I laughed at the little human touches and then got teary-eyed when the moss’s dew could keep a baby alive. The relic disc and the drone give it a bit of shiny mystery, but the real joy is in the tiny, practical rebellions: teaching people to listen, patching leaks, sharing a ration. Sort of like if The Martian learned to compost and organize a union. Delightfully sly and humane. 😊

Measured and moving. The author trusts silence and small rituals — dew-gathering moss, a communal table ledger, Tamsin’s patient hands — to carry the weight of the plot. I liked how the stakes are practical (a month’s water in the cisterns) and how the rebellion is framed as teaching people to share rather than seizing power. The descent into ruins promised in the blurb is teased here with enough texture to be tempting. Not a flashy read, but the quieter moments linger.

Smartly constructed worldbuilding and economical writing. The premise — water as currency in a vertical, fractured city — is handled without info-dumps: we learn through details like the communal ledger, tanker convoys rerouting, and Wren’s last wheeze. I appreciated the engineering-flavored intimacy with technology; Tamsin’s relationship to seals, gaskets and a sputtering pump grounds the larger stakes. The relic disc and small drone are intriguing MacGuffins that promise a clever solution rather than deus ex machina, and the political setup (coalition hoarding wells) frames believable conflict. Pacing is deliberate: scenes like Gale banging an oil drum or laundry lines as “flags for the living” are small beats that build atmosphere and community stakes. If you like SF that privileges practice (farming, fixing, listening) over explosions, this is for you. Tight, thoughtful, and quietly ambitious.

I cried in the courtyard light-reading this. The prose is quietly devastating — that opening paragraph about tasting the city’s dust is one of the best lines I’ve read all year. Tamsin feels lived-in: her copper-stained hands, the pear tree in a barrel, the moss that can keep a baby alive — these details make Hearthquarter feel like a real, fragile place worth fighting for. The scene where Wren coughs and dies on the parapet is small but gutting; you can feel the scrape of loss and the literal shrinking of options. I loved the way the story treats rebellion as a patient thing: teaching people to listen, coaxing community rather than staging a fireworks coup. The relic disc and the drone add just enough tech-mystery without overpowering the human center. Hopeful, tender, and stubbornly clever — a quiet, resilient rebellion indeed. I’ll be thinking about Tamsin and her rooftop garden for a long time.