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It's The Wizard of Oz meets ... idunno Murderbot maybe. But way better.

Fritz Leiber style sword & sorcery in a world painted by Hieronymus Bosch. 10/10 so far

The main problem in this novel is that we spend too much time with Leto

The "balance & harmony" stuff is beginning to cloy...

These little space monkeys sure do like to eat

Still cringing at the scenes with Leto II and Hwi Noree

So far it feels like this could have been a magazine article.

It's too easy to see Leto II as the stereotypical basement-dwelling man-child. The obese, spicy-smelling worm emerges and trundles into town on his cart. (The image of the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile must not have survived into distant futurity, else his subjects would not stop laughing long enough to fear him.) He meets a nice lady and is instantly infatuated, bemoaning that his life-choices have made him impotent.

Not sure how much more of this worm's bloviating I can tolerate.

Thoughts so far:
1. On one hand the autobiographical bits ring of self-insertion and fiction. On the other hand they portray a very relatable yearning towards the vitality and resilience of plants as an antidote to despair at climatic catastrophe.
2. It's clear that the author is aware of the extraordinary claim implicit in the phrase "plant intelligence"; I sincerely hope to see extraordinary evidence.

If you're writing a pseudo-gothic horror story about a train journey (with elevated, archaic language - even going so far as to call the sleeping car a "Pullman"), why give your characters mobile phones, and then have to make up a reason why the phones can't be used? Or is this the greatest horror the authors can imagine: poor cellular reception?