A Wall Is Also A Road

by Annalee Newitz, Jess Nahikian (Narrator)

'A revolution is happening in speculative fiction, and Annalee Newitz is leading the vanguard' Wil Wheaton, actor on Star Trek and Big Bang Theory

Gardenpath is a graduate student in biology who desperately wants to pass their exams with the highest honor a prize given to scholars who discover something truly novel in the universe. Gardenpath also happens to be an amoeba-a slime mold, to be exact-from an ancient civilization that dwells in a vast network of towers between the stars. Seeking their prize, Gardenpath heads to a remote, dangerous planet that other researchers have dismissed as dead and uninteresting. There, they are surprised to discover a complicated ecosystem unlike anything they've ever encountered-including some peculiar, multicellular animals who seem to have language and culture.

To learn more about these animals, Gardenpath changes their shape to resemble one of them. And that's how they meet a creature named Murtis, who lives in a city she calls Pompeii and works in a brothel known to locals as "the lupanar." Unfazed by a visitor who says she's from the stars, Murtis takes Gardenpath into her care, introducing her to the seaside tourist town full of immigrants and shopkeepers who are just trying to get by.
A Wall Is Also a Road is a story about what happens when the alien becomes familiar-and beloved. Gardenpath expected to finish their research, present their discovery, and take their place among the decorated scholars of the floating cities. But when they look at their wild new friend Murtis's sensor bulb, attached to a bizarre electro-chemical control system, they begin to realize there's more to life than academic achievement. They're not sure what it is, but they're going to use science to find out.

From bestselling author Annalee Newitz, A Wall Is Also a Road is a thought-provoking science fiction adventure about the meaning of life and love, seen through the many eyes of an alien grad student studying a familiar backwater planet. Perfect for fans of Ann Leckie, Everina Maxwell and Martha Wells.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Fantasy, Adult, Historical Fiction

Audible Audio

First published October 6, 2026

About the author

Annalee Newitz is an American journalist who covers the cultural impact of science and technology. They received a PhD in English and American Studies from UC Berkeley, and in 1997 published the widely cited book, White Trash: Race and Class in America. From 2004–2005 they were a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They write for many periodicals from 'Popular Science' to 'Wired,' and from 1999 to 2008 wrote a syndicated weekly column called 'Techsploitation.' They co-founded 'other' magazine in 2002, which was published triannually until 2007. Since 2008, they are editor-in-chief of 'io9,' a Gawker-owned science fiction blog, which was named in 2010 by The Times as one of the top science blogs on the internet.

Reviews

[Ricarda · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

I can't believe that this book was so highly academic and also totally horny when the protagonist was basically just a big blob of slime. At least that is what I think the character Gardenpath looks like, but it was quite hard to picture how their race grows tentacles and eye stalks when they need to or how they melt into a puddle with others when they rest. It was fascinating to read about a non-human protagonist like that, especially since Gardenpath is also a very intelligent biologist, currently working on passing the five exams of space university. Their project is all about a planet that is supposed to be dead, but when Gardenpath starts doing fieldwork there, they discover that it's actually full of life. The creatures of the planet are described in such an outlandish way that it took me a while to figure out that I'm actually looking at the human race during ancient Roman times in the city of Pompeii. It was such a wild blend of futuristic sci-fi and historical fiction and I can undoubtedly say that I've never read anything like it before. Gardenpath wants to study the human race more closely and makes themselves a suit to look human as well. They are found and cared for by the sex worker Murtis and start to learn about the human culture. The outside perspective on the human race was very intriguing and I loved how a highly intelligent being like Gardenpath struggled to grasp concepts like gender or hierarchy. At the same time there were surprising parallels between the two races as well and I really liked how the book took its time to explore them both. Gardenpath spends long days on earth but always returns to their academic life in space where they analyze and present their collected data and work towards their exams. They do find like-minded people during their academic journey and it was so wholesome to see how Gardenpath grew to be well-loved as the story went one. Not only in space, but also on earth. The chapters set in Pompeii were unexpectedly pretty romance-focused, but I loved how deliciously queer they turned out to be. When I started reading this book I felt a bit of information overload and only really processed half of it, but I got used to it quickly. The plot even became a bit repetitive later on, because I knew exactly what to expect from each chapter. At the same time there were things that did not play as big of a role as I expected them to. I thought that Gardenpath’s discoveries would really shake their society for instance, that ethical dilemmas would be discussed more in depth or that the Pompeii setting would have a bigger impact. The story moved very fast, covering multiple decades in just 300 pages, and thus situations were often over before they really started. But overall I quite enjoyed this read. It's an unusual idea executed very well and I would recommend it to everyone who wants to read something completely new for a change.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK / Orbit for providing a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Miranda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I get to my review of A Wall is Also a Road, I need to review the marketing. For me, the marketing copy for this book gets an F. There was almost nothing in the marketing copy that prepared me for this book. In particular the comps are malpractice. The marketing copy says “Becky Chambers, Ryka Aoki, and Martha Wells.” I can somewhat see the Becky Chambers from a found family point of view, but I’m sorry the other two are marketing malpractice. Those comps imply a somewhat whacky but ultimately wholesome character focused drama.

However, at its core A Wall is Also a Road is fundamentally a dark academia book. Dark academia is not typically combined with a space based setting, but there’s no reason other than convention for that. But if you consider that our main character is an outsider at a prestigious and highly competitive university, where they have to work on secret projects to play academic politics, and there’s a sexy romantic slimemold love interest--we’re certainly hitting a lot of dark academia sounding tropes (though the sexy romantic slimemold love interest is a new one for me).

Gardenpath is a slime mold, and is a new student at the Memory, the most prestigious institution of higher learning in the space between the stars. Gardenpath wants to study life on a small planet down on one of the outer arms in the galactic core--an area where the academic consensus says there cannot be any life. As Gardenpath discovers, academic politics can be bare knuckle, and not everyone is just here to learn. But as Gardenpath explores Pompeii, its tavernas, and its brothels, they learn about more than foodwebs and biology. They learn about friendship, culture, and love.

I really liked this book--I particularly enjoyed the unique and freshness of the slimemold alien culture. It did not feel at all like Newitz was just porting over bits of human culture--the trappings of Memory really felt like they’d been created by aliens with a completely different biology to humanity. Some of the pacing at the end felt a little rushed, and there were a few things that maybe could have been paid off better. Readers should be prepared that this book has a lot more sex scenes than the marketing copy prepared me for--not bad, just something to know if you’re going in.

So here’s my attempt at some better comps for this book, recommended for fans of Ninth House, Becky Chambers, and T. Kingfisher Hugo Acceptance Speeches.

I received an ARC in exchange for this honest review.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy from Tor Books via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review. Release date October 6th, 2026.

I've read some of Newitz's work before and I've always loved books set in alien cultures, so I was happy to get a chance to read this new release. In A Wall is Also a Road, Gardenpath is an alien slime mold studying for their graduate degree in a distant part of the galaxy. Their controversial thesis threatens the scientific orthodoxy—and a key piece of their data is the city of Pompeii on our own Earth.

Overall, I found this to be a light and charming novel. Gardenpath's people have a culture similar to ours—after all, they have universities and tenure—but their body language is convincingly alien slime mold based. There's lots of extruded appendages and flattening out. The alien culture is a good medium ground for a sendup of university culture where a student goes against prevailing orthodoxy to prove life is possible on Earth. Also, genuine props to Newitz for taking a sincere shot at the slime mold sex scenes. I won't name names, but many respected scifi authors have chickened out at this critical point. Glad to see an author with convictions.

On the worldbuilding side, the scenes set in Pompeii are strongly written, and it's clear that Newitz has done their research. It's a nice touch that Murtis, the human Gardenpath is closest to, was a real courtesan who did actually exist in the period. A lot of the Roman cultural nuances go right over Gardenpath's head, but that just serves to accentuate the alienness of their POV. Gardenpath in general is naive and rulebound, which keeps the story relatively light. A different perspective character might fixate more on the nuances of a corrupt university engaging in war profiteering. But while Gardenpath engages with these elements of the plot, their primary focus is always their research and their degree.

I don't think this story would have worked for me if it featured a human time traveller, but grounding the plot in strength of the alien POV worked well. Overall, A Wall is Also a Road is a light and very readable story in the line of John Wiswell's sweet stories from a monstrous perspective.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I won a free ARC of this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

Also worth mentioning: I was a fan of Annalee Newitz’ work even before reading this book.

Gardenpath is an intelligent slime mold, working toward their PhD. They exist in the space between stars, as all Rational beings do. But their data collecting has suggested the startling possibility that life may exist in the gravitationally dense Galactic plane below. Wearing special gear, they arrive on a small, watery planet near a place called Pompeii … Life, it seems, can be multicellular, but still have language and culture. Altering their appearance to blend in with these creatures, Gardenpath soon meets Murtis, a brothel worker who quickly becomes their guide to this strange new world.

I don't think it's giving too much away to say that Gardenpath and Murtis make a huge difference in each other's lives. The book is essentially about two worlds: Gardenpath's home, a properly alien place inhabited by large but unicellular intelligences, and Earth during the Roman Empire. Gardenpath travels between them, researching food webs for their exams and eventual thesis.

I really liked this book, which, so far, seems to be the pattern for me with Newitz' books. Something about the way her characters approach life with curiosity and open communication, forming friendships and falling in love, just generally figuring out life and collaborating on incredible things … it's just so cool and fun and it just makes me happy to spend time with her protagonists. Her books make me smile, and A Wall Is Also A Road is no exception.

The more I try to articulate the appeal of her work, the less satisfied I am with my efforts. All I can say is that there's nothing quite like an Annalee Newitz book, and you should definitely check this one out.

[Jenn "JR" · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Writing a novel from an alien perspective is a unique challenge, and Newitz handles it with confidence and creativity. Gardenpath, our protagonist, comes from a distant galaxy where gender doesn’t exist. They’re an amoeba — a Rational person — studying at the Memory and hoping to excel in a program that will allow them to become an investigator. Their people experience time differently and use teleportation as a matter of course, so Earth has long been dismissed as a lifeless rock. Gardenpath’s decision to research Earth is already a break from cultural assumptions.

Newitz builds the Memory with impressive cohesion: how Rational people move, communicate, express emotion, and interact feels fully imagined. I especially enjoyed the interpersonal dynamics on campus between Gardenpath and their friends, adversaries, and professors. The academic environment feels lived‑in — there’s genuine competition among students, supportive and wise mentors, and maybe a few corrupt professors, tolerated in ways that say a lot about the institution. These relationships give the Memory a social texture that makes Gardenpath’s ambitions and struggles feel grounded.

As Gardenpath begins traveling to Earth more frequently, Newitz introduces one of the novel’s most interesting structural choices. About two‑thirds of the way through, the narration shifts to she/her pronouns while Gardenpath is on Earth in a female‑appearing body and using the name Peristyle. When the story returns to the Memory, the pronouns revert to they/them. It’s a subtle way of showing how embodiment and context shape identity — and it also highlights Gardenpath’s discipline as a researcher. In fieldwork, there’s always the risk of “going native,” losing the critical distance needed to study a culture. Gardenpath’s best friend, Oriel, and their informal advisor, Column, both warn them about this, encouraging them to maintain boundaries and stay honest with the people they meet on Earth. Gardenpath manages to keep the perspective of a foreign scholar, navigating Earth with curiosity rather than assimilation. Readers interested in this theme might explore identity shifts in field research or gender fluidity in alien narratives.

The Earth subplot provides a strong counterpoint. Gardenpath’s repeated visits to Pompeii, their friendship with Murtis, and their gradual understanding of gender all build naturally on the emotional and intellectual groundwork laid in the campus chapters. Moving between the Memory and Earth creates a rhythm that lets their internal growth unfold across both worlds, and the contrast between settings keeps the narrative fresh.

Gardenpath’s “galaxy suit,” which lets them pass as human by configuring itself to mimic other people, is a great device — especially once you add tentacles. There’s some amoeba sex, people sex, and interspecies sex; it’s not excessive, and it feels like a nod to Octavia Butler’s Oankali in Lilith’s Brood. It fits the story’s exploration of embodiment and identity without overwhelming the plot.

By the end, Gardenpath and their cohort gather enough evidence to permanently oust the toxic professor — a figure who literally injects students with toxins and interrogates them like captives. The students’ decision to found a new institution, New Memory, feels like a natural extension of their growth and opens an intriguing direction for future novels.

I loved the ending, and I’d happily read more about Gardenpath in whatever comes next. This was a fun, imaginative read that balances worldbuilding, character development, and thematic curiosity in a way that really worked for me.

ORIGINAL URL: https://www.livegreenwearblack.com/20...

[David · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

**.5

I loved the setting and basic premise, very creative and a good way to critique The Academy. But then it degenerates into scene after lurid scene of weird aliens having sex with each other and with humans in ancient Rome, alone, in pairs, in groups, in various combinations and positions &c. Using aliens to explore themes of sexuality and gender was clever, but the execution too unsubtle.

It doesn't really work because although the aliens are akin to house-sized amoebas who communicate with smells, their university is organised exactly like ours, complete with dorm rooms, computer lab, cafeteria, final exams, departmental meetings, faculty committees, administration building, student senate, thesis defense, tenure track appointments, etc.
As things progressed, once the excitement of First Contact was complete the sci-fi element all but fell by the wayside, which killed the sense of wonder and discovery and imagination.

The main subplot takes place in ancient Pompeii, and is more historical romance than anything else. There's also a subplot involving weapons development back at the galactic university, complete with a student protest, and it seemed like the author was desperately trying to figure out how to squeeze in a "from the river to the sea" placard without completely giving away the game.

So despite the grand setting, we end up with a bog standard "awkward nerd goes to Uni and makes a friend" story, a cheesy romance, overly detailed historical worldbuilding, and basic "make love not war" message. None of it goes together, and none of it goes anywhere. Much better off with any one of half a dozen Star Trek episodes that grapple with the constraints of the Prime Directive.

[anna b · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

I really liked the concept of this book, but the execution fell flat for me unfortunately. There's something about the emotional stakes that didn't feel high enough, and the threat of tragedy hanging over our heads that sort of fizzled into nothing, and odd language choices that threw me out of the story. Wanted to love this, was sad not to.

[Cori Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark academia sci-fi, where the academics, including our POV MC, Gardenpath, are fascinatingly different aliens, while the subject of study turns out to be rather more familiar -- the residents of a bustling city called Pompeii.

I love a good messy First Contact story, and this book is covering a lot! How hard communication across species from radically different evolutionary paths might be. What scientific ethics look like where everyone is sentient, and study goes on over time periods that allow for the building of deep relationships. Sex and power and gender (and by sex I do also mean various spice). Managing the politics of discoveries that buck the prevailing wisdom of The Establishment. Trying to understand cultural differences that are a bit of a stretch for us today, let alone when explored from a different part of the universe.

For me, this possibly went in a few too many directions; the ending is satisfying, but I didn't feel like some of the threads picked up during the book did resolve, and not in a 'yes we need a sequel' way, but in a 'this wasn't important, it was just cool to mention' way. Given it's quite a short book and pacy read, I would have loved just a little bit more tidying up here and there.

However, overall I did really enjoy the world created and found it a satisfying read.

Rating: 16/20
This review is based upon a complimentary advance review copy provided by the publisher at NetGalley.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peer Review, Pompeii, and Other Forms of Catastrophe
Annalee Newitz’s “A Wall Is Also a Road” Finds Terrible Advisers, Excellent Sex, an Active Volcano, and a Surprisingly Difficult Question About What Science Is For
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | October 1st, 2026

During Gardenpath’s first walks through Pompeii, walls look like architectural dead weight. The graduate student at the center of Annalee Newitz’s “A Wall Is Also a Road” comes from an ancient civilization of single-celled Rational People whose buildings grow, whose paths can be alive, and whose bodies converse chemically. Roman plaster therefore seems almost embarrassingly inert. Then a human mixes mineral pigments and paints a figure surrounded by flowers. Later the same walls acquire advertisements, jokes, obscenities, political messages, names. Nothing about the masonry has changed. Gardenpath has learned to read it. The distance between those two states of attention is where this strange, funny novel does its best work.

Everywhere else, Gardenpath is already excellent at looking. They arrive at the Memory, Rational civilization’s elite scholarly institution, determined to survive a five-stage examination system and reach the optional Fifth Exam, which confers Investigator status on anyone capable of describing something genuinely new. Their dissertation begins with a heresy: Gardenpath has found a planet where prevailing science says meaningful life should not exist. They call it Tentacle, travel there in a pressure-resistant suit, map ecosystems, and eventually encounter beings we recognize long before they do. First-century Pompeians are, for a while, simply the Unnamed. Human history rarely gets to be somebody else’s weird fauna.

Much of the comedy depends on that reversal, but the jokes keep changing jurisdiction. Gardenpath can explain agriculture as feeding behavior and buildings as habitats. Art proves less obedient. Speech is worse. Murtis, the woman who becomes their guide, teaches Gardenpath words, money, sex, status, and eventually writing. Gardenpath assumes a human-shaped body and accepts the name Peristyle, translating their own name into the architectural path around a garden. The alien scientist has interstellar transit; the formerly enslaved sex worker must explain that marks can encode sounds. That exchange is funnier than any declaration about “advanced” civilizations could be, and much more damaging to the hierarchy Gardenpath brought with them.

Even “Unnamed” gradually sounds less like taxonomy than confession. Gardenpath wants categories to record reality cleanly; Newitz keeps showing how a label can also authorize conduct. “Rational” People call other civilizations lower. “Culture” is treated as contamination of biological research. Murtis can be animal, research subject, friend, lover, collaborator, or person depending on which noun makes Gardenpath’s behavior easiest to defend. When Oriel, Gardenpath’s closest friend at the Memory, learns that Gardenpath has had sex with Murtis, their incredulous question does more work than a seminar in research ethics: “You fucked the subject of your research?” Gardenpath’s reply is basically a search for a safer noun.

That search matters because Gardenpath has already crossed a line no vocabulary can disinfect. Early in the relationship, while Murtis sleeps, Gardenpath opens a microscopic aperture in the suit and slips a tentacle into her body without permission. The scene is scientifically ecstatic: inside Murtis they discover a staggering multicellular ecology and the “director cells” coordinating it. It is also a violation. Newitz lets both facts stay hot. The director cells later become medicine, sexual pleasure, academic evidence, institutional property, and the basis for a forced-clustering weapon. Knowledge does not carry its discoverer’s intentions like a warranty.

Reading bodies becomes the richest variation on reading walls. Rational People store memory in gnosomes, exchange information chemically, enter one another’s membranes to speak intimately, and heal through clustering. The biology matters because the same motion can mean radically different things. After the Molecular Exam, Wainscot raises an arm and asks Gardenpath, “May I?” before entering them to speak privately. Plumline, Gardenpath’s adviser, performs nearly the same physical action by force. Newitz does not need to invent a new anatomy for violation. Consent changes the sentence already being written by the body.

If Gardenpath’s education stopped at first contact, the premise would still be unusually nimble. The five examinations make it stranger. Data teaches that evidence does not interpret itself. Spoken teaches what institutions permit evidence to sound like. Molecular makes intellectual scrutiny physically invasive. Hypothetical grants Gardenpath authority just as they are learning to distrust its source. The Fifth, supposedly reserved for unprecedented discovery, becomes almost beside the point once Gardenpath starts asking what kind of scholarly life ought to exist at all. The exams keep promoting Gardenpath while quietly disqualifying the institution from being their final teacher.

Plumline is most convincing before they become easy to hate. At first they offer exactly what keeps ambitious students in abusive arrangements: equipment, access, attention, prestige, the suggestion that exceptional people deserve exceptional pressure. Their private preparation for the Molecular Exam converts that pressure into chemistry. Plumline floods Gardenpath with pain, tears through their membrane, and hunts stored memories. Gardenpath survives by releasing edited experience, pruning away Murtis and the cultural evidence hidden from official science. There is an ugly echo here: Gardenpath protects themself from an extractive adviser by using the same excision that made Pompeii acceptable as data.

Another uneasy strength is the refusal of the comforting split between scientists who objectify and people who care. Gardenpath cares deeply and still exploits. Murtis trusts Peristyle and later consents to a tiny director-cell sample because she believes the work is medical; Plumline and the war engineer Redoubt redirect the material toward forced clustering. Column, a cultural-studies professor and Gardenpath’s secret adviser, can sound maddeningly pleased with their own ethical clarity, but the underlying objection survives. Gardenpath can leave Tentacle instantly. Murtis cannot. Gardenpath can heal illnesses Murtis cannot even name. Affection changes the obligations between them. It does not make those obligations equal.

Perhaps the cruelest unit in the novel is a Rational “journey.” One passes while a much larger portion of human life disappears below. At first the difference is clever worldbuilding. Then Murtis laughs that she may be dead before Gardenpath finishes the Fourth Exam, and the conversion rate turns vicious. A few academic delays for Gardenpath consume years of Murtis’s life. Newitz never needs to announce that ambition has a cost; she gives two lovers incompatible calendars and lets arithmetic do the damage. Gardenpath’s declaration of love comes when the numbers finally acquire a face.

Against that mortal clock, Newitz sets Vesuvius. Gardenpath’s model predicts the eruption, and the scientific formulation is brutally compact: “The mountain would eat the city.” As ecology, the sentence is almost serene. Ash will kill the present system and nourish another one later. But Pompeii now contains Murtis, Julia, Curly, the lupanar, baths, shops, jokes, walls still unread, people who will never enter Gardenpath’s notebook. The words do not change when the moral temperature does. A hypothesis has become a sentence about people Gardenpath loves.

Despite everything Gardenpath has learned, Peristyle’s first impulse after the prediction exposes a harder contradiction. They reach for the pink notebook and think of what remains unrecorded: Oscan, shops, graffiti, customs. The archival instinct is sympathetic and faintly monstrous. What would it mean to preserve a doomed culture perfectly while failing to preserve its people? Column has accused Gardenpath of behaving like a tourist who can collect meaning and leave when consequences become inconvenient. Vesuvius makes that accusation literal without making it entirely fair. Gardenpath cannot stop a volcano. They can warn Murtis. Some people can leave. Others cannot. Prediction has become responsibility, but responsibility still has limits.

Instead of staging the catastrophe as spectacle, Newitz reveals its aftermath through a technical inconvenience: “Those coordinates won’t work.” Gardenpath is trying to return to the familiar landing point when a Transit Hall operator says there is no solid surface there anymore. Gardenpath first assumes an old bureaucratic objection, then a bad reading, then calculates what the absence of ground must mean. Only after that does Peristyle arrive in ash. The sequence keeps widening: missing summit, lost river, buried streets, silence, dead bodies. Catastrophe reaches Gardenpath as bad data before it reaches them as grief. The point of view stays faithful to the scientist and lets that fidelity become painful.

Much of Newitz’s prose works by making perception lag behind meaning. The sentences are brisk, colloquial, and hospitable to dense worldbuilding; their distinction lies less in ornament than in pressure on vocabulary. Stairs are ridiculous if your species climbs walls. Rain is obscene abundance to a creature from elsewhere. Membranes wrinkle, scents sour, receptors open, gnosomes store what characters cannot bear to say aloud. The jokes are often technical before they are social. So are the wounds. Newitz’s plainness is strategic: the prose can turn a measurement into an emotion without visibly changing gears.

In Gardenpath’s relationship with Oriel, that strategy becomes especially clean. Gardenpath has spent years hiding the green photoreceptors implanted during a childhood among photosynthesizers, marks of an origin they have converted into evidence of deficiency. During sex with Oriel, those receptors burst open. Oriel does not recoil. Gardenpath experiences being, in the novel’s wonderfully blunt phrase, “fucked and seen at the same time.” The line lands because its crudeness refuses uplift just as the scene reaches toward it. For Gardenpath, desire is frightening because being legible has so often meant being judged as the wrong kind of person.

The delayed account of that childhood changes the pressure of everything before it. Gardenpath’s spore hatched not among Rational People but aboard a composting vessel crewed by photosynthesizers. An elder named Robust cared for them, implanted the photoreceptors, and eventually hid their failing body aboard a Rational probe that carried them to safety. At Crook-in-the-Road, Gardenpath discovers that many of the science books explaining their existence were written by scholars at the Memory. The institution starts to look like the homecoming they never received. Until Chapter 21, their striving can pass for academic vanity. Afterward, the same behavior looks like a survival strategy disastrously attached to prestige.

Rather than finding one true home, Gardenpath gradually stops requiring home to pass a purity test. Pompeii becomes home, then Neapolis and Tharros. Oriel becomes home without displacing Murtis. Wainscot moves from rival to clustermate to friend. Most importantly, the photosynthesizers Gardenpath once refused to call a first cluster return as family. This is where the adjective “Rational” shows its teeth: a cultural identity has been masquerading as an objective rank of personhood. When Gardenpath finally reveals the hidden photoreceptors during the Fourth Exam and says, “I owe my life to a photosynthesizer,” the confession matters because they no longer need the institution’s language to make that life respectable.

On the page where the title finally appears, Newitz is more careful than the aphorism initially sounds. Gardenpath tells Column that Plumline seems protected by an “impenetrable wall.” Column answers, “True. But a wall is also a road.” “True” refuses the easy version of the metaphor: the barrier exists. “But” changes what can be done with it. “Also” allows obstacle and route to remain true at once. Column gestures to the literal path around the tower, and Gardenpath remembers Pompeian walls that looked barren before they learned to read them. The line is not a motivational slogan about obstacles secretly helping us. It is an argument about literacy: structures acquire other uses when you learn how they work.

Plumline eventually makes that argument less difficult than it ought to be. The early portrait of abusive mentorship is excellent because dependence and opportunity are braided together. Later, chemical coercion, intimidation, stolen data, career sabotage, weapons work, and unauthorized deals all attach to the same adviser. Opposition becomes morally uncomplicated. The students finally find the lever that works when Plumline’s outside collaboration has bypassed the Memory’s technology-transfer interests. It is a sharp joke: student harm becomes actionable once it overlaps with institutional harm. It is also a convenient road around a wall the novel has spent hundreds of pages thickening.

Only at the New Memory does the book ask us to accept a wall before we have seen how thick it might become. Gardenpath passes the Fourth, effectively receives the Fifth, and is offered the laboratory they once wanted badly enough to mistake it for a life. Instead they ask their friends, “What if we . . . left the Memory? All of us?” The new community refuses weapons work and gives culture and science equal standing. As a reversal of the exam structure, the move is elegant. As an answer to institutional power, it remains untested. A novel this alert to prestige, funding, gatekeeping, and self-protection has earned the reader’s suspicion of any institution still young enough to have no disappointing committee minutes.

Uneasy hope survives because the novel leaves several irritants in the ointment. Wainscot stays at the Old Memory. The new institution collaborates with existing ones. Murtis, herself formerly enslaved, later participates in a household that includes enslaved young people and rationalizes the arrangement through comparative kindness. Her suffering has not purified her politics. Gardenpath’s love for Murtis has not erased the asymmetry between their lives, either. Care is necessary here and insufficient. That is a harder proposition than the cleaner architecture of the ending sometimes suggests.

Little more than a name and a sexual designation survives of the historical Murtis who helped inspire Newitz’s character. The Ancient Graffiti Project catalogs a lupanar inscription reading “Murtis felatris,” and archaeologist Sarah Levin-Richardson discusses it in “The Brothel of Pompeii” with due caution. The inscription does not hand us the biography the novel invents, or even secure proof that Murtis herself cut those words into the wall. That uncertainty is useful rather than embarrassing. A mark survives; a person does not. Newitz writes into the space between them, which is also the space Gardenpath keeps mistaking for something measurement can close.

Old assumptions about pure science do not survive Pompeii much better. Gardenpath begins by worrying that culture will contaminate research and ends by seeing how thoroughly culture had already arranged what counted as research. The Memory decides which planets look promising, which lives count as Rational, which questions sound respectable, which collaborations deserve funding, which abuses become legible to bureaucracy. Pompeii does not teach Gardenpath to replace evidence with feeling. It teaches them that methods already carry assumptions about whose evidence matters. That is more interesting than a plea for interdisciplinarity, and much less comfortable.

So I land at 89/100, or 4/5 stars on my Goodreads scale. “A Wall Is Also a Road” is original enough to invent a whole sensory grammar for intimacy and disciplined enough to make that grammar bear on research, sex, violence, and home; it is also eager enough to explain itself that some of its hardest problems arrive at cleaner answers than they deserve. The title supplies the better ending pressure. Column begins with “True.” The wall remains. Bodies remain vulnerable, evidence fragmentary, institutions hungry for self-preservation. By the final pages, Gardenpath can look toward the photosynthesizers who raised them and admit that their first cluster “wasn’t Rational, but for a while, it had been home.” Nothing has become simpler. They have learned how much was written on the wall before they knew how to read it.

[Lara Reading Wild · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I didn’t expect the story of an alien amoeba grad student falling in love with a Pompeian prostitute under the backdrop of the pending Mount Vesuvius eruption to be one of my top reads of the year, yet here we are.

I really don’t want to tell you much about this, but if you’ve ever thought, “What if the Left Hand of Darkness was just a little cozy?”, I think you’ll enjoy this book.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

This is a story where humans are seen with the point of view of aliens. In this case, single-celled organisms that are intelligent, space-faring, and have an academic university that is blinkered by its opinion that only entities like them can be intelligent.

Yeah, it's that kind of metaphor.

Our protagonist, Gardenpath, discovers life where nobody thinks life exists - our solar system. More specifically, multi-cellular life (including us), which they (preferred pronoun) have to elide in their researches so as not to offend the professors. Gardenpath focuses on food webs instead.

Not just any food webs. It turns out Gardenpath lands on Earth in Pompeii, shortly before the famous eruption. Fieldwork leads to interaction (and more) with the locals, especially a woman named Murtis. That's where the book changes tone and moves into erotica. It also becomes clear that we're dealing with gender-fluid erotica where it feels queer and becomes multi-partnered. So it's an alien first contact story that moves into sex play.

This isn't the first time it's been done, there have been lots of stories about aliens having sex with humans, from various points of view.

I'm skating close to spoiler territory. (I won't tell you whether the eruption happens during the story.) The upshot is that the book is part criticism of academic life and abuse by authority, and part alien/human sex and relationships. The story moves back and forth as Gardenpath moves between the academy and Earthly fieldwork.

I like Annalee Newitz's work, but I found this to be more predictable than I wanted. Despite the academic abuse, it reads more like a cozy story than one with significant tension, given the circumstances. This was probably Newitz's intention, but I could have used a story fraught with more weight. Also, as Newitz admits in the acknowledgements, she leveraged her work on ancient cities as described in her non-fiction book, Four Lost Cities, and lavished the book with a lot of description of Pompeii architecture and customs (so far as we know them). She gets away with it because, well, Pompeii is fascinating, and Gardenpath is enthralled with all the strangeness. A lot of it is strange to our modern sensibility too.

I give Newitz credit for creating a plausible (perhaps) form of unicellular life that could interact with humans, but I thought she took the easy route in plot development and tension.

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

A solid inter-galactic allegorical novel about overcoming discrimination, exploitation, and corruption, but also about the complexities and expanded possibilities when it comes to loving relationships, and what it is we mean when we say "humanity." The novel asks us to consider how we define personhood. It builds somewhat on Automatic Noodle in that last respect, but make no mistake, this novel is very different than any of the author's previous work. The world-building is unique, clear, efficiently explained, and absolutely fascinating.  

I felt an immediate tug of affinity and protection for the main character, who must hide their full identity or risk rejection. If you know that feeling, you recognize it right away.

The author's comfortable command of the sciences is evident. I don't think the novel would have worked without that background.

The aliens are presented as not so different from humans, emotionally. The creative ways in which they express themselves are quite charming, even when they show each other disrespect. Hopefully, this doesn't give too much away, but the alien is a bit of a Gallileo figure. 

The way this author writes alien intimacy is so effective, you feel like a voyeur. Both the sexiness and dark academia features were surprising.

The descriptions of what Earth is like, from the perspective of someone from another planet, are simply delightful. 

Several themes evolve early on, most clearly about discrimination against those who are different, but also against immigrants and anyone who bucks the status quo. Those in power want to perpetuate a permanent system with themselves in complete command. This cohort also reminded me of the early Viking leaders who wanted to curb exploration, and insisted that there were "no Lands to the West." They refused any evidence to the contrary of their long-held beliefs, and considered any such challenge to be an existential threat. 

One line seemed absolutely directed at the petulantly unevolved  among us right now: 

. . . 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒓𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆 𝒂𝒔 𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 . . .

Of course, as throughout history up to the present day, it was no small leap for the philosophy of the elite class to eugenics, even among aliens.

Very subtly, Newitz makes the point that diversity of experience causes us to see the whole world differently. 

The novel has at its heart two irrepressible drives: the longing to connect, and the desire to belong, which as many of us know, are two separate things. And some of us have to work a lot harder to reach both of those goals.

Overall, a very good examination of timely themes wrapped around complex characters who, like us, have intense needs and desires and want the world(s) to be better for everyone. A good message, I think.

[Rishali (thecozy.tbr) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I signed up for this one thinking I was going to meet some cute aliens à la Rocky from *Project Hail Mary* and get to explore the fascinating dynamics of alien-human interactions. Maybe I was a little too naive to think it would be that simple.

And honestly? I WISH IT HAD BEEN.

When I first started reading *A Wall Is Also a Road*, I was genuinely enjoying myself. Getting the perspective of an alien observing our world, trying to understand humans, our interactions, our daily routines, and what it means to exist on this planet was SO interesting to me. I loved the idea of seeing humanity through an outsider's eyes and exploring how differently another species might perceive things we consider completely ordinary.

Unfortunately, that excitement didn't last very long.

Because what we get instead is aliens (who, by the way, look like slimes/octopuses and can grow multiple arms and legs) having some VERY questionable sexual encounters. And then we get aliens having sex with humans from... some time period? Honestly, don't ask me when. All I know is that there were moments when I genuinely wanted to BLEACH MY EYES.

The sci-fi elements that initially drew me in gradually took a backseat because our alien protagonist seems to spend a significant amount of time thinking about his love interest back on his home planet and his love interest on Earth. And listen, I'm not opposed to romance in my sci-fi. Give me a good blend of the two, and I'll happily devour it! But here, the romance felt like it was overshadowing the very things I was most excited to explore.

I did find the academic setting interesting, though! The exams, research, and scientific discoveries offered some genuinely intriguing moments, and I enjoyed learning about those aspects of the story. I just wish they had been given more room to breathe and develop instead of getting lost amid all the romantic drama.

Ultimately, this book felt surprisingly low-stakes to me. I went in expecting a sci-fi story that would explore alien perspectives, human behavior, and the complexities of interspecies interactions, but what I got leaned much more heavily into romance than I had anticipated.

Sadly, this one just wasn't what I signed up for!

Thank you to Tor Books for the gifted ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

How to describe A Wall is Also a Road? Giant amoeba-like aliens live outside of the stars in a complex society where they believe they're the only truly sentient people.

Gardenpath is a student at the Memory. As part of their academic research, Gardenpath transits to a planet they call Tentacle – a planet in a supposedly dead part of space – to look for life. The place they land is near a volcano, and not just any volcano - they've arrived at pre-eruption Pompeii. Gardenpath forms connections with the lifeforms there and spends time studying at the lupanar.

There's a lot that's interesting in this. I liked the descriptions of the life forms of the amoeba and how they observed human life and tried to understand it as something completely alien to them. It was also fun and interesting for the time period to be ancient Roman. It made both aspects somewhat alien to the modern reader.

I did like the academic setting of Gardenpath's university but it did perhaps feel too normal, and when they were talking it was too easy to forget they weren’t human until they blorbed and slimed off somewhere (maybe that was the point, I don't know).

I found Gardenpath to be slightly frustrating as they felt quite teenage - self-centred, vaguely oblivious, needed prodding repeatedly to see issues, including the dubious ethics of forming a relationship with a research subject. And on the teenage front, there's a surprising amount of sex in this and whilst a couple of instances worked with the story, most of the time it just felt like horny teenagers. And to be honest, tentacle porn isn't really my thing, but if that's something you're looking to explore, maybe this book is for you.

Also, I think it's easy to expect this story to be cosy sci-fi, and it does have elements of that, but it's maybe more a dark academia. Gardenpath and their fellow scholars have to struggle with a difficult, abusive and corrupt supervisor/ department head and there's a background war going on.

An interesting and unusual story with lots of elements to like but maybe not completely my thing

Thanks to Orbit UK for providing a netgalley arc for me to read and review

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gardenpath is doctoral student of biology trying to make their mark on scholarship of the rational people. They are also an amoebic slime mold from another world. For their studies, they are investigating the life on a planet they call Tentacle, to determine if life there has sentience. What they learn in Ancient Pompeii is an entirely different method of communicating (grunts?! How un-people-like!), but they think they can prove at least some rationality. Gardenpath takes the form of an "unnamed" (human) and befriends one called Murtis, a woman who openly accepts that their new friend is from not Rome. Gardenpath takes on a human identity while traveling for their studies, making excuses to visit Pompeii, and then Neapolis, as often as possible, until it's time to return to the stars and take their next exam.

I'm certain no summary of this book could do it real justice. A Wall is Also a Road is unlike any book I've ever read, and yet also has echoes of Ursula K Le Guin. Annalee Newitz is an author whose willingness to "go there" is something I admire, and here they have developed an entire non-humanoid alien civilization. Aliens analyzing humanity is not a new trope in science fiction, but Newitz gives us the strange amoeba creatures embroiled in their own politics and society. Their reactions are not human, and yet Gardenpath learns to love in both a human and rational method.

The book is tender and caring, harsh and enlightening.

I am going to be thinking about it for a long time.

[Joyfully Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Joyfully Jay review.

5 stars

Author Annalee Newitz’s novel A Road is Also a Wall is an incredible speculative fiction story that pushes the boundaries of science fiction, while blending in themes of romance, self-discovery, and found family. The book is structured around the main character’s schedule of exams.

First of all, the world building in the story was incredible. I loved the clarity with which first-century Pompeii was described, both in terms of the descriptiveness of the physical surroundings and the cultural trappings. From the brothel where Murtis worked initially to the tabernas she later ran, the locations where Gardenpath and Murtis explored their friendship and romance were sparingly but expertly described.

While speculative science fiction might not be everyone’s cup of tea, the emotional journey Gardenpath experiences felt satisfyingly universal to me. I wholeheartedly encourage anyone who likes reading to give this book a try. It will stretch your imagination and encourage self-reflection as you read about how one courageous being found their place in the world by going to another.

[Hannah Samuels · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love when authors write about something they are deeply passionate about. It pays off every time. This book reads as a love letter to cultural studies, archaeology, and anthropology. This is my favorite Newitz book to date. Despite the happy ending I felt myself tearing up as the book neared its conclusion. There is beauty in humanity and being alive. I love to think about all the people (human and non).

[Svea · Rating 3.25 out of 5]

I really liked the entire concept of this book: an alien that doesn't look humanoid at all, basically just a big blob really, as protagonist? Colour me intrigued! Gardenpath is a grad student in a society that focuses primarily on science and academia, with their biggest goal being making it through the tough exams to become of the great minds of their people. For that, they have to discover something new in the universe - but their research can't be about any cultural subjects because noone is actually interested in culture. It's all about advancing their society, in the end. So Gardenpath does endless research and finally discovers something new: A planet that shows signs of actual life where their shouldn't be any life at all.
So they visit this planet, they do their research, and they find a strange new culture they call the Unnamed, which live strange lives with strange traditions and strange genders in a strange city called Pompeii.

I loved the first about 50% of the book a lot. It was fascinating to read from the perspective of this weird relatable alien and how they view humanity. I wasn't prepared for the rather big focus on romance and sexuality, though, and I admit I wasn't the biggest fan of this aspect of Gardenpath's experiences being so prominent. The relationships were interesting, though, and I really liked Murtis, the human woman Gardenpath meets and falls in love with. I liked how time was used in their relationship specifically but also in the depiction of Pompeii and its inevitable destruction.
I also mostly liked the story on Gardenpath's home planet, though I found myself losing interest after some time. Their people basically just spoke like humans after a while and without the descriptions of how their bodies worked and changed in dialogues it would've just read like two people on Earth chatting a lot of the times. And the whole plot is a been-there-done-that one, alluding to a much more interesting conflict behind the scenes than what we got. The world building is rather vague-ish, so the antagonist didn't really blow me away. The stakes didn't feel as high as they could have been. The themes especially surrounding the antagonist's deeds and how they relate to our world are a bit on the nose, but they are important nonetheless.

So in the end? A fun reading experience with one of the most interesting protagonists I've read lately that couldn't quite deliver what I was hoping for nor stick to its intriguing premise and in the end is mostly a strange little romance with an added academic setting. Fun and quick read that can definitely help getting you out of a reading slump because it did so for me!

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story of first contact, sapphic romance, and graduate school.

Gardenpath is one of the Rational People, who are roughly human-scaled single-celled organisms living somewhere on the outermost fringes of the galaxy. Gardenpath has recently enrolled at Memory, the most prestigious graduate school for the Rational People. Gardenpath is planning to challenge two pieces of academic orthodoxy en route toward their doctorate. First is that life cannot possibly evolve amid the heat and radiation of the galaxy proper. The second is that obviously only unicellular life can be sentient. A sentient multicellular being? Preposterous! But as Gardenpath quickly learns, despite their stated devotion to discovery, the faculty of Memory isn’t all necessarily so open to being challenged.

So Gardenpath proceeds carefully, squeezing themselves into the shape of the dominant life-forms on an obscure planet orbiting an obscure sun, and studies both their biology and their culture. Specifically the organisms in a seaside settlement called Pompeii, at the foot of an active volcano, which leads to some truly fascinating food webs. And there is one particular organism called Murtis, who is obviously very highly valued among these people, as many of these organisms pay high fees for her company.

This book is two very different stories. One is going to be familiar to anyone who went to grad school - overbearing advisors, stressed out friends, massive intellectual insecurities, forgetting minor things like food and rest. The other is a story of humanity thriving regardless of social strata.

Newitz knows what they're talking about, both when it comes to life in the Roman Empire and life in graduate school. Both parts of this book felt very real and very (for lack of a better word) human. I feel like they *shouldn't* mesh well, but they really do.

This book is as emotionally striking as it is creative (and I have to say it is extremely creative). I'd also call it cozy-adjacent, at least in vibes.

Obviously Murtis is a sex worker, and so there are trigger warnings for implied sexual violence though none of it is depicted on page. There's also an interaction between Gardenpath and their most shitty advisor that, while not explicitly sexual assault due to differences of biology, is described in ways that are analogous.

My blog.

[Lucia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a cool book! this is why I love sci fi 🤩

RTC

Thanks to Orbit via NetGalley for providing an eARC

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the beginning, the book reminded me of the Orthogonal series by Greg Egan, just because the species of the protagonist is so different in their relationship to the physical world. There's a diagram of the universe, or locality, that they live in. Earth and the galaxy and physics as we know it seemed to be a tiny, mostly overlooked part of that. I barely understood anything about how it worked. But, unlike Egan, Newitz manages to got the reader to like her characters, starting with the main one, Gardenpath. The aliens, despite being basically giant, intelligent amoebas, have a university system much like our own. It's not exactly a school, but it's called Memory, and it is the center for scientific research. It also has not-always-reasonable requirements for students, interdepartmental rivalries, a culture that chooses to ignore or devalue large areas of scientific interest.

Everyone at Memory has to pass four levels of testing to stay there and devote their lives to science. Gardenpath also wants to pass the fifth level and become an Investigator. They also have found a backwater planet (planets are an obscure part of the universe), Earth, that has multicellular organisms that may even be conscious and intelligent. That would be anathema at Memory, so Gardenpath settles on food distribution as a focus for their studies. Still, they end up meeting a woman on Earth and getting emotionally close with her. Sexually too, eventually.

And, because the is Annalee Newitz, historian of lost cities among many other things, this woman lives in Pompeii. So yeah. the volcano is about to blow its top.

So, Newitz gets to riff on what living in Pompeii was like (with a feminist slant) and also academic politics and how protests can make things better. All while building a story of alien and human people with motivations, trauma, and friendships (and sex!). As I expect from her, wonderfully done.

[Savannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Wall is Also a Road is a first contact story where an alien amoeba person travels to Pompeii to investigate food maps there. I really enjoyed the weird body mechanics and societal structure, and I did find my enjoyment of this book benefitted from having read Newitz' non-fiction Four Cities. I got a bit lost with the weaponized technology stuff which I could've done without, but overall it was a good experience.

[Caitlin Ford · Rating 5 out of 5]

give me more books like this PLEASE

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

I haven't quite reached the point where I drop everything when this author has a new book, but mostly because I know I can get their book from the library quickly enough. As expected this was original and different. Alien aliens. But also academia. And not being part of academia, I don't know how much of this would be expected in that world. And Pompeii. Which for aliens isn't where I expected to be. But given the author's nonfiction works, really they could choose to set their book anywhen and it would be believable enough. And gelatinous cubes. Which I think this may be my 3rd book or so to star gelatinous cubes. There is sex, there are ethical questions. And as typical, I'm looking forward to re-reading some day.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Netgalley provided me a DRC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

I adored Automatic Noodle, so I was excited to get an advanced copy of Newitz's new sci-fi adventure. An interstellar slime-being falling in love with a human? Sign me up.

Unfortunately, the story felt a little disjointed. Gardenpath, a slime-like being fighting their way through the competitive academic world on their planet, discovers life on a distant planet in an area that their people consider dead. Spoiler alert (but not really): It's Earth. But this is not a modern-day time traveling adventure...we're talking the rowdy brothels, bars, and parties of pre-Vesuvius Pompeii.

And that SOUNDS so interesting. But reading about two cultures that are SO alien (no pun intended) to one another was jarring at times. Trying to wrap my head around a blob-like-creature with crazy technology wearing a fancy human suit and interacting with an actual human 2000 years ago made my head spin at times.

I kept reading because despite the story feeling a little clunky, everything happening--both in Gardenpath's world and on Earth--was quite interesting. Unethical and corrupt academia on one hand, the looming threat of a volcanic eruption on the other.

[Gaia Amman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not normally read steamy alien romance and was not aware this was one from the description. That said, I loved this story. The writing flowed beautifully, and the characters felt three-dimensional and relatable. Having spent many years in academia, I found that storyline to be accurate and relatable. I enjoyed the historical aspect as well. Also, I am nonbinary and loved how gender identity was approached indirectly and with great tact, raising questions without being on the nose. Overall, this novel felt emotional, engaging, and informative at the same time. I truly enjoyed it and would highly recommend it.

[Peter Baran · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's an anecdote that a friend of mine who was doing a PhD in Archaeology at the University Of Oxford, tells about her first day. She was studying Modern Archaeology, using archaeological techniques to throw light on the recent past, where we still lack certain bits of evidence. She was, therefore, a bit of a black sheep in the department; Modern Archaeology was looked at as not proper archaeology by those working with antiquity, and this made her feel a little out of place, though she did wonder, when she realised that well over half of her cohort were studying Pompeii and Herculaneum, if there was much more to be found in the foothills of Vesuvius that justified their confidence. A Wall Is Also A Road reminded me of this story, despite being about super-intelligent slime-mold studying in a University in the stars. Our lead, Gardenpath, is also a bit of an iconoclast and has discovered what seems to be sentient multicellular life. But when going to research it is strongly suggested to not rock the boat, to perhaps talk around the subject that would otherwise disturb their tutors, that multicellular life exists, and has a complicated society and social interactions.

It is not really a spoiler to identify that Gardenpath has discovered Earth, and that their skinsuit can mimic being human really rather well. There is a central theme throughout the book about research ethics, Gardenpath's eventual supervisor is a bully, steals students' research and is developing unethical weapon systems for what seems to be an ongoing racial war. Neitz doesn't hold back on how terrible this mold is, and perhaps there was room for more subtlety, but it is always hard to say when the majority of your protagonists are amoebas with a totally alien bonding and social situation how much any analogues work. Certainly she brings this alien society to life, all the better to contrast with Gardenpath's interaction on Earth - which from a research ethics point of view is much, much worse.

Gardenpath's adventures of Earth, and how it empowers them to stand up for themselves and their friends back at the college, hits that sweet analogy spot that good sci-fi can do. It is fundamentally completely alien, and we can merely get the process of individuals melting into each other, and extruding individual tentacles where required, described to us. But how that interacts with an Earth society, and how it hits some hot-button topics of research ethics, bullying and racism is all very well done. And of course, Newitz has studied Pompeii a lot.

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love scifi books that have non-Earthling characters, and this book features one who is studying life on Earth, where humans are classified as alien life.

Gardenpath is a slime mold who comes from a society where academic knowledge is valued above all else, and they and their cohorts are studying to take the exams that will determine the rest of their lives. Gardenpath is eventually led to pre-eruption Pompeii on a journey to study food webs on what we know as Earth, and this evolves into their horizons being broadened in more ways than one.

The world building was done so well as we travel back and forth between ancient Pompeii and Gardenpath’s home. I love that one of the humans, named Murtis, was a real courtesan who was documented to have lived in Pompeii at the time. Through her we come to understand a lot about the culture and societal structures of the time period, but because so much of it goes over Gardenpath’s head, the tone remains fairly light despite there being slavery, human sacrifice, and rampant mistreatment of people.

We also have degrees of terrible behavior from Gardenpath’s people, with war profiteering and university corruption, but most of the plot focuses on the research and relationships central to Gardenpath’s academic career. While the book is solidly scifi, there are elements of dark academia and historical fiction woven in because of this.

One criticism I often have of space books is that the aliens seem so much like humans in a different setting, but Newitz writes them as wholly separate beings in so many ways. Yes, they have learning institutions and concepts like professorship, but most aspects of their lives are vastly different. I loved delving into the social structures of their people and how humanity was such a culture shock for Gardenpath. (*Note that there is spice, which I wasn’t expecting for a book with an amoeba protagonist, but it did make sense to the plot and wasn’t there just to make the book spicy.)

Overall I really enjoyed the book, as well as the author’s note about Murtis! Thanks to Tor/Forge for the advanced ebook!

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meet the Rational People, living in the Dome of our galaxy. They are one celled, size of a villa, have a sensory membrane that injests nutrients and allows friends to reach inside to share deep thoughts and pleasant chemicals. Born as ejected spores, they may travel widely and few survive. As they have no family, a position is earned by work or study. Time is measured in journeys, a day for them, 4 journeys are a year for us. They rest by gathering a few in a bowl-like structure. All of their rooms are spherical globes in stacks and built of fibers from previous generations. Is it strange that names are structural? Attic, Arch, Balcony, Casement, Column.
Gardenpath is ambitious, planning to pass 5 levels of study to become independent. Has a scent of life in the 3rd arm of the Spigot Galaxy, names it Tentacle, with humans called Unnamed. She has proposed study of their food web, so cannot admit culture. Traveling in a suit that allows her to conform to Earth, she makes a friend, Murtis, and assumes the name Peristyle. Walking is initially difficult, instead of globbing along, she must extrude 'arms'. Also learn Latin. She is able to warn them about Vesuvious, and Mirtus moves out, along with Julia her beneficiary and BF. Besides romping with them, Peristyle reaches inside to clear toxins and parasites, leaving them with superior health. In turn, they teach and share ideas, very similar to Gardenpath's BF, Oriel. Back in Memory's University, students rebel against Plumline who seems to have 'an impenetrable wall protecting him'. Professor Column tells that a wall is also a road, meaning that they can find another way to defeat the cheating head of science.

[Charlotte · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

A single celled being from a galactic civilization who don't believe in multicellular intelligent life is stunned when their graduate research takes them to Pompeii. As tensions, both personal and academic (a truly vile, unethical department head), grow, our protagonist becomes more and more immeshed in the lives of the multicelled, especially the life of a woman with whom a mutual love is developing. Although there were parts early on before the Pompeii part really gets going that dragged somewhat, the last half of the book really grabbed me. If you like alien science fiction mixed with steamy romance mixed with the Roman empire mixed with screwed up academia, I wholeheartedly recommend it! I am going to Pompeii for the first time in March, and now have meaningful landmarks to look out for, which is nice for me.