Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood Ness

Annotation

Hauntingly beautiful Anthropocene fable from the bestselling author of Underland and The Lost Words. What happens when the land comes to life? Somewhere on a salt-and-shingle island, inside a concrete-and-iron structure called The Green Chapel, a figure called The Armourer is leading a black mass. He plans to detonate a thermonuclear missile. But something is coming to stop him. Five more-than-human figures - or forms, or forces - are traversing the landscape, moving steadily towards a point where they will converge and become Ness. Ness is the land awakened. Ness is lichen skin and willow-bower bones, condensing mist, tidal drift and deep time. Ness has hagstones for eyes and Ness speaks only in birds, firecrests in the day and swifts after dusk. And Ness has come to take this island back.