What do you think?
Rate this book
More than One
The trees will die...over Quin's dead body.
As the last tree-whisperer left on Earth, Quin Lafleur interfaces with trees and downloads their knowledge into her mind. But when the environment starts to collapse, the trees find themselves missing something crucial. Quin sacrifices everything to keep her saplings alive and spread more to colony planets. But she is wearing down and burdened by secrets—an old love she can’t let go of and the daughter she gave away. When Quin falls mysteriously ill, the touch she uses to communicate with saplings and fight their decline sickens and kills them, as well as the mushroom that translates tree-language for her. Now, the survival of tree-kind—her life, her sanity, and her relationship with her daughter... are all at stake.
As the last tree-whisperer left on Earth, Quin Lafleur interfaces with trees and downloads their knowledge into her mind. But when the environment starts to collapse, the trees find themselves missing something crucial. Quin sacrifices everything to keep her saplings alive and spread more to colony planets. But she is wearing down and burdened by secrets—an old love she can’t let go of and the daughter she gave away. When Quin falls mysteriously ill, the touch she uses to communicate with saplings and fight their decline sickens and kills them, as well as the mushroom that translates tree-language for her. Now, the survival of tree-kind—her life, her sanity, and her relationship with her daughter... are all at stake.
484 pages, Hardcover
Published November 30, 2025
1 person is currently reading
4 people want to read
About the author
C.L. Fors
18 books7 followersAn artist of multiple mediums with a myriad of interests, CL Fors—Cherrie to her friends—is a modern day renaissance woman, author, illustrator, publisher, artisan dragon who creates to defend and uplift a world of hope and infinite possibility for all.
She has lived a half-dozen lives as an actor, military intelligence linguist, midwife and doula, mother, and creative dervish. Currently she spends her days writing, illustrating, studying, raising three sons and a daughter, and engaging with the art community at large. She has a Masters degree in Publishing and is currently working on a Masters in Genre Fiction.
She and her husband, Jason P. Crawford, founded Epitome Press publishing in 2015 and together publish works of speculative fiction.
CL is author of the Primogenitor series, a four book science fiction epic of humanity stolen and reclaimed, has two more novels in the works, and is actively illustrating Orion’s Flight—a graphic novel about a genetically engineered bat-winged piglet.
Watercolor flows from her brushes in sanguine vibrancy, genre-bending fantasy, science-fiction, and horror, challenging the viewer to dig deeper than surface impressions. She paints life, texture, and flesh in unexpected colors but is equally skilled with ink, digital, acrylic, and graphic design. Find CL Fors on most social media platforms.
Website: http://www.clforsillustrator.com
Website: http://www.clforsauthor.com
https://www.facebook.com/Primogenitor...
https://www.instagram.com/c.l.forsaut...
Subscribe to her newsletter here: tiny.cc/clforstaproot
She has lived a half-dozen lives as an actor, military intelligence linguist, midwife and doula, mother, and creative dervish. Currently she spends her days writing, illustrating, studying, raising three sons and a daughter, and engaging with the art community at large. She has a Masters degree in Publishing and is currently working on a Masters in Genre Fiction.
She and her husband, Jason P. Crawford, founded Epitome Press publishing in 2015 and together publish works of speculative fiction.
CL is author of the Primogenitor series, a four book science fiction epic of humanity stolen and reclaimed, has two more novels in the works, and is actively illustrating Orion’s Flight—a graphic novel about a genetically engineered bat-winged piglet.
Watercolor flows from her brushes in sanguine vibrancy, genre-bending fantasy, science-fiction, and horror, challenging the viewer to dig deeper than surface impressions. She paints life, texture, and flesh in unexpected colors but is equally skilled with ink, digital, acrylic, and graphic design. Find CL Fors on most social media platforms.
Website: http://www.clforsillustrator.com
Website: http://www.clforsauthor.com
https://www.facebook.com/Primogenitor...
https://www.instagram.com/c.l.forsaut...
Subscribe to her newsletter here: tiny.cc/clforstaproot
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 14, 2025
More Than One is a unique piece of speculative sci-fi set in a near
future where Earth has long ago spread out into the universe and
established colonies but is struggling to establish and restore the
population of trees that once thrived here on Earth. For years now,
particularly the last 16, Quin has fought to teach the newest trees
their mother memory through her own memorization and learning of it
through a mycelium bond created with a sentient mushroom/ mammal
hybrid named Synesis that rests at the back of her neck and head. She
has done the work, she has established many groups of trees in many
locations across the colonies, and even established a group of young
apprentices with their own symbionts to help her with the process, but
somehow she has watched over and over again as these groups begin to
adapt the message of their elders as conveyed to them by her and
grow-only to quickly fade and begin to die off before her eyes. Quin
is steadfast, wise, and aware of so much of the process by which the
trees should be growing but somehow, in spite of years of effort, none
of it is working. What can she do? How will she get the Earth
Restoration Force to allow her to continue to do her work if she
cannot produce the results demanded of her?
Isolated from the other human beings because of the symbiotic
relationship she has with her mushroom and their fear of it, she
struggles to resolve the sense that she has failed to do the one thing
she has thrown so much of herself into doing with her life- up to and
including having had to set aside the child she carried as she learned
the knowledge of the trees. A child she conceived with a former
project member who, along with several other project team members, was
forced to abandon her own symbiotic mushroom in the aftermath of
Quin’s near death, and set out for a colony where she would switch to
establishing animal life- leaving Quin to complete her work alone.
Nearly grown at age 16 and having been raised almost entirely alone by
her second mother, Chase, Lumina grapples with her mothers’ past and
current relationship, a thing ill defined in her lifetime and strained
by years of infrequent connection and the distance between the colony
where she grew up as Chase established whales on Genti-6 and Quin
attempted to preserve the lives of trees across several colonies and
her home base on Earth. Now she also struggles to understand her own
connection to growing things and how she can get Quin to help her with
this complex gift and connect with her other mother in a more
meaningful way than she’s known all her life.
Time is running out as the last of the universe’s trees begin to fade,
the faith and the support of the ERF dying with them, all as Quin’s
world and that of her daughter Lumina go spinning into a wide arch of
dread and uncertainty that seems as if it will end in destruction.
What can Quin do if this is the end? How can she help her daughter if
she can’t save the trees and feels helpless to save herself?
C. L. Fors is an author who sets out to write books that convey the
complexities of humanity, interpersonal relationships, and society as
they unravel and begin anew. Her Primogenitor series focused on a
colony getting established on Mars after Earth had survived a terrible
outbreak and fought to recover enough to start over under a regime
that was killing humanity with its need to control, and this book
focuses on humanity’s connection to the lifecycle of the universe and
their place in that cycle. In many ways I think I appreciate her most
when she’s being honest about how we human beings can get trapped in
our heads and hearts when maybe we should be learning the ways that we
are already a part of the things we’re struggling to adapt to and
listen to our intuition more. This book is just as great as the
Primogenitor series, it has a lot to say about its characters and
humanity as a whole and leads us in another direction I’m happy to
follow along with. A lot of sci-fi gets caught up in patriarchal
paradigms about leadership: masculine military centered culture,
science that excludes and creates a hierarchy for man over nature, and
a perspective that puts humanity in a position of fear and uncertainty
that doesn’t allow it to mingle with and become a part of things
outside of itself- and possibly worst of all- often treats women as
something more akin to accessories to society instead of working and
quite capable parts of it. Fors absolutely rejects those ideals and
instead gives us something that creates a feminine centered and
matriarchal take on our interaction with each other and the universe.
Here women lead equally with men and men aren’t afraid to consider
deferring to a woman’s leadership when she makes good calls, nature is
important and worth immersing ourselves in even when the nature we
find is foreign and new, science works best when it works inside of
nature and heeds its own very important understanding and lessons, and
women’s complex feelings about childbirth, relationships, and
parenthood have a much needed voice. Her writing offers a fresh
narrative in sci-fi and speculative fiction and I really get a kick
out of seeing what she does with it, this book was no exception.
future where Earth has long ago spread out into the universe and
established colonies but is struggling to establish and restore the
population of trees that once thrived here on Earth. For years now,
particularly the last 16, Quin has fought to teach the newest trees
their mother memory through her own memorization and learning of it
through a mycelium bond created with a sentient mushroom/ mammal
hybrid named Synesis that rests at the back of her neck and head. She
has done the work, she has established many groups of trees in many
locations across the colonies, and even established a group of young
apprentices with their own symbionts to help her with the process, but
somehow she has watched over and over again as these groups begin to
adapt the message of their elders as conveyed to them by her and
grow-only to quickly fade and begin to die off before her eyes. Quin
is steadfast, wise, and aware of so much of the process by which the
trees should be growing but somehow, in spite of years of effort, none
of it is working. What can she do? How will she get the Earth
Restoration Force to allow her to continue to do her work if she
cannot produce the results demanded of her?
Isolated from the other human beings because of the symbiotic
relationship she has with her mushroom and their fear of it, she
struggles to resolve the sense that she has failed to do the one thing
she has thrown so much of herself into doing with her life- up to and
including having had to set aside the child she carried as she learned
the knowledge of the trees. A child she conceived with a former
project member who, along with several other project team members, was
forced to abandon her own symbiotic mushroom in the aftermath of
Quin’s near death, and set out for a colony where she would switch to
establishing animal life- leaving Quin to complete her work alone.
Nearly grown at age 16 and having been raised almost entirely alone by
her second mother, Chase, Lumina grapples with her mothers’ past and
current relationship, a thing ill defined in her lifetime and strained
by years of infrequent connection and the distance between the colony
where she grew up as Chase established whales on Genti-6 and Quin
attempted to preserve the lives of trees across several colonies and
her home base on Earth. Now she also struggles to understand her own
connection to growing things and how she can get Quin to help her with
this complex gift and connect with her other mother in a more
meaningful way than she’s known all her life.
Time is running out as the last of the universe’s trees begin to fade,
the faith and the support of the ERF dying with them, all as Quin’s
world and that of her daughter Lumina go spinning into a wide arch of
dread and uncertainty that seems as if it will end in destruction.
What can Quin do if this is the end? How can she help her daughter if
she can’t save the trees and feels helpless to save herself?
C. L. Fors is an author who sets out to write books that convey the
complexities of humanity, interpersonal relationships, and society as
they unravel and begin anew. Her Primogenitor series focused on a
colony getting established on Mars after Earth had survived a terrible
outbreak and fought to recover enough to start over under a regime
that was killing humanity with its need to control, and this book
focuses on humanity’s connection to the lifecycle of the universe and
their place in that cycle. In many ways I think I appreciate her most
when she’s being honest about how we human beings can get trapped in
our heads and hearts when maybe we should be learning the ways that we
are already a part of the things we’re struggling to adapt to and
listen to our intuition more. This book is just as great as the
Primogenitor series, it has a lot to say about its characters and
humanity as a whole and leads us in another direction I’m happy to
follow along with. A lot of sci-fi gets caught up in patriarchal
paradigms about leadership: masculine military centered culture,
science that excludes and creates a hierarchy for man over nature, and
a perspective that puts humanity in a position of fear and uncertainty
that doesn’t allow it to mingle with and become a part of things
outside of itself- and possibly worst of all- often treats women as
something more akin to accessories to society instead of working and
quite capable parts of it. Fors absolutely rejects those ideals and
instead gives us something that creates a feminine centered and
matriarchal take on our interaction with each other and the universe.
Here women lead equally with men and men aren’t afraid to consider
deferring to a woman’s leadership when she makes good calls, nature is
important and worth immersing ourselves in even when the nature we
find is foreign and new, science works best when it works inside of
nature and heeds its own very important understanding and lessons, and
women’s complex feelings about childbirth, relationships, and
parenthood have a much needed voice. Her writing offers a fresh
narrative in sci-fi and speculative fiction and I really get a kick
out of seeing what she does with it, this book was no exception.
December 4, 2025
Fresh, imaginative take on sci-fi with great characters, immersive world-building and mechanics grounded in science. I loved how imaginative this was -- I mean, mushroom symbionts grafted with tree-whisperers, and t
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews