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Book Summary and Reviews of Terrestrial History by Joe Mungo Reed

Terrestrial History by Joe Mungo Reed

Terrestrial History

A Novel

by Joe Mungo Reed

  • Publishes:
  • Apr 8, 2025, 272 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A family saga following four generations on a time-bending journey from coastal Scotland to a colony on Mars.

Hannah is a fusion scientist working in a cottage off the coast of Scotland when she's approached by a visitor from the future, a young man from a human settlement on Mars, traveling backward through time to intervene in the fate of a warming planet.

Roban lives in the Colony, a sterile outpost of civilization, where he longs for the wonders of a home planet he never knew. Between Hannah and Roban, two generations, a father and a daughter, face down an uncertain future. Andrew believes there is still time for the human spirit to triumph. For his rationalist daughter Kenzie, such idealism is not enough to keep the rising floods at bay, so she signs on to work for a company that would abandon Earth for the promise of a world beyond.

In exploring the question "What if you could come back to the past and somehow change it with technology?" Joe Mungo Reed has written an immersive story of hope, hubris, and sacrifice in the face of a frighteningly precarious present.

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This information about Terrestrial History was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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More Information

Joe Mungo Reed is the author of the novels Hammer and We Begin Our Ascent. He teaches creative writing at the University of Cambridge and lives in London.

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