Other Sellers on Amazon
+ $3.99 shipping
88% positive over last 12 months
& FREE Shipping
98% positive over last 12 months
FREE Shipping
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Appleseed: A Novel Hardcover – July 13, 2021
Purchase options and add-ons
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK · A PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER BEST OF THE YEAR
“Woven together out of the strands of myth, science fiction, and ecological warning, Matt Bell’s Appleseed is as urgent as it is audacious.” —Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and national bestselling author of Get in Trouble
A “breathtaking novel of ideas unlike anything you’ve ever read” (Esquire) from Young Lions Fiction Award–finalist Matt Bell, a breakout book that explores climate change, manifest destiny, humanity’s unchecked exploitation of natural resources, and the small but powerful magic contained within every single apple.
In eighteenth-century Ohio, two brothers travel into the wooded frontier, planting apple orchards from which they plan to profit in the years to come. As they remake the wilderness in their own image, planning for a future of settlement and civilization, the long-held bonds and secrets between the two will be tested, fractured and broken—and possibly healed.
Fifty years from now, in the second half of the twenty-first century, climate change has ravaged the Earth. Having invested early in genetic engineering and food science, one company now owns all the world’s resources. But a growing resistance is working to redistribute both land and power—and in a pivotal moment for the future of humanity, one of the company’s original founders will return to headquarters, intending to destroy what he helped build.
A thousand years in the future, North America is covered by a massive sheet of ice. One lonely sentient being inhabits a tech station on top of the glacier—and in a daring and seemingly impossible quest, sets out to follow a homing beacon across the continent in the hopes of discovering the last remnant of civilization.
Hugely ambitious in scope and theme, Appleseed is the breakout novel from a writer “as self-assured as he is audacious” (NPR) who “may well have invented the pulse-pounding novel of ideas” (Jess Walter). Part speculative epic, part tech thriller, part reinvented fairy tale, Appleseed is an unforgettable meditation on climate change; corporate, civic, and familial responsibility; manifest destiny; and the myths and legends that sustain us all.
- Print length480 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCustom House
- Publication dateJuly 13, 2021
- Dimensions6 x 1.45 x 9 inches
- ISBN-10006304014X
- ISBN-13978-0063040144
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now
Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you
From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Review
"An ambitious, time-bending take on climate change." — New York Times
"Appleseed is a work of incandescent imagination, at once an eco-horror story about human greed and a regenerative new myth. I loved the soaring possibilities seeded throughout this wild novel, which pushes its readers to imagine 'new ways of dwelling' in and with non-human nature. Bell's book is a chrysalis inside of which I could feel my mind changing, preparing for new flights." — Karen Russell, author of Orange World
“Rambunctious....made me think of Jeff VanderMeer and his Area X trilogy, chilling the spine while engaging the heart. Then too, Appleseed’s pervading concern for forest ecology recalled Richard Powers and his phenomenal tree-text, ‘The Overstory.’ Comparisons like that raise problems—the two older authors are miles apart—but they drive home my point: that Matt Bell has brought off a novel as exciting as any in recent years.” — Boston Globe
“A gripping meditation on manifest destiny and humanity's relationship to this endangered planet, making for a breathtaking novel of ideas unlike anything you've ever read.”
— Esquire
"Provocative....You can take Mr. Bell’s book as warning or vision of hope, as myth or blueprint for the future. Either way, it’s everything sci-fi should be." — Wall Street Journal
"The reason you’ve never read a book like Appleseed is that there’s never been a book like Appleseed. The scary thing, though, is this is a world you might recognize. This premise, this content, this form, this language—only Matt Bell could have given us this novel." — Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians
"A meditative thriller with an ethical heart." — NPR.org
"Woven together out of the strands of myth, science fiction, and ecological warning, Matt Bell’s Appleseed is as urgent as it is audacious."
— Kelly Link, Get in Trouble
“There’s a particular thrill reading a book that has such certainty of vision, one that guides every page and allows us to truly picture the connections between our past and our future. We see the naturalist’s mind placed in the realm of the imagination as a way to try to grasp what’s happening to our planet right now. It’s a beautiful tribute to what fiction can do, and these characters and their visceral struggles will remain with me for a long time.” — Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade
“[An] ambitious speculative epic and striking take on climate change.”
— USA Today, Summer’s Hottest Books
"Myth meets science; fable confronts existential crisis. In its bountiful prose, gleeful genre-hopping, and the sheer scope of its storytelling, Appleseed points toward hopeful futures for literature—and the planet." — Sam J. Miller, Nebula-Award-winning author of Blackfish City
"Matt Bell's Appleseed expands in the most entrancing manner to encompass everything from the hidden hoofs of fauns to the pending doom of the planet. What a sui generis feat of imagination and scope this novel is." — Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew
“Bell’s terrifying yet deeply humane novel of ideas is both an awesome work of imagination and a stirring ecological call-to-arms—a reminder of what the best genre-bending books can achieve.” — Literary Hub
"Appleseed incorporates myth, sci-fi, and satire into its dazzling high-wire act....Bell executes a kind of literary daredevilry, making carefully controlled storytelling feel treacherous and delightful." — Philadelphia Inquirer
"Appleseed plays on the dystopian climate disaster genre, deftly weaving threads from Greek mythology, magical realism, and America’s settler-colonial folklore to create the parallel universe its characters inhabit. ... Unpredictable to the last page, Appleseed ties these disparate narratives together with a rich network of symbolism and sharp prose." — Los Angeles Review of Books
"Enormously ambitious...Bell not only radically shifts tone between [the] three timelines, he confidently hops genres as well." — Locus
"Employs myth, magic and science to give a damning account of the narrative of American exceptionalism and the relentless post-conquest exploitation of this country’s vast natural resources....formally ambitious but still deeply humane....Bell has achieved something special here... timely, prescient and true." — New York Times Book Review
“Rich and complex… This is a terrifying, beautiful book…Bell has given us an urgent vision of a possible future, and a story that could lead us onto a better path if we just pay attention.” — Tor.com
"Raises challenging questions about interconnection, complicity and ecological stewardship...Appleseed's mix of hard sci-fi, folkloric elements and ethical issues make it appealing for Neal Stephenson fans and readers who long to safeguard the wild....Daringly imagined." — Shelf Awareness
"Part tech thriller and part reimagined legend, Appleseed is a thought-provoking and mysterious read that explores climate change, manifest destiny, and corporate versus family responsibility. One of those books where every time you try to put it down, you inevitably say, 'Okay, just one more chapter.'" — Fort Worth Magazine
"Gorgeous and weird...vivid, sharp, and sensual." — Philadelphia Inquirer
About the Author
Matt Bell is the author of the novels Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, as well as the short story collection A Tree or a Person or a Wall, a non-fiction book about the classic video game Baldur's Gate II, and several other titles. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, Conjunctions, Fairy Tale Review, American Short Fiction, and many other publications. A native of Michigan, he teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.
Product details
- Publisher : Custom House (July 13, 2021)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 480 pages
- ISBN-10 : 006304014X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0063040144
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.45 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #861,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,321 in Genetic Engineering Science Fiction (Books)
- #8,803 in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (Books)
- #40,519 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Important information
To report an issue with this product or seller, click here.
About the author

Matt Bell’s latest novel, Appleseed, was published by Custom House in July 2021. His craft book Refuse to Be Done, a guide to novel writing, rewriting, & revision, will follow in early 2022 from Soho Press. He is also the author of the novels Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, as well as the short story collection A Tree or a Person or a Wall, a non-fiction book about the classic video game Baldur's Gate II, and several other titles. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, Conjunctions, Fairy Tale Review, American Short Fiction, and many other publications. A native of Michigan, he teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.
His novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods was a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award and an Indies Choice Adult Book of the Year Honor Recipient, and was selected as the winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award, among other honors. Both In the House and Scrapper were selected by the Library of Michigan as Michigan Notable Books.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Appleseed is a sprawling epic weaving together strands of science fiction, eco-horror, fabulism, and even classic mythology into a truly sui generis whole. It is told through three interweaving, interconnecting timelines, each timeline shining a light on the beauty of the natural world, the damage done to it, and what its future may hold. We simultaneously follow two brothers—one faun, one human—as they traverse eighteenth-century Ohio planting orchards; a former bioengineer at the end of the climate-ravaged twenty-first century as he attempts to infiltrate and dismantle the “eco-friendly” megacorporation he helped build, and finally, a thousand years in the future in the midst of a new ice age, we follow a piece of biotech as it undertakes a journey to what may be the last bastion of human civilization. Each story connects to the other in ways that steadily become more apparent as you continue reading, with the complete, epoch-spanning story unfolding like a puzzle revealed as each piece is added to the whole.
That’s not to say this novel is all plot—perhaps what is most impressive about Appleseed is the way Bell centers the novel on his characters. It’s fascinating characters like Chapman the faun (I dare you not to fall in love with him), bioengineer-turned-eco-vigilante John Worth, and the far-future biotech creature known only as C, that keep us invested as we turn each page, jumping back and forth between past, quasi-present, and future. Most importantly, it’s these characters that allow us to really understand and internalize what we, as a species, have done to this planet.
Bell’s prose is beautiful, too. He writes long, flowing, lyrical sentences that are just a pleasure to read, and it’s not surprising that I was reminded of Ursula K. Le Guin’s sparkling prose, as Bell frequently lists her as a major influence. And while these wonderfully meandering sentences are certainly dense, they’re never a chore: each sentence is its own world, its own story to get lost in. Appleseed is very much a book that asks you to spend time with it, sit with it, soak it in. And what a gift that is, in our modern culture of now, more, now.
Like VanderMeer’s Hummingbird Salamander, Appleseed is a timely novel in every sense of the word. It grapples with big questions about manifest destiny and stewardship; it dissects our culpability in the diminishment of the natural world, our tendency to consume by warping what we want into what we “need”; it questions why we allow those in power to keep that power when they’re only making things worse, and; it asks us what it means to be truly human, asks us to examine our relationship not only with the natural world, but with each other. If anything, Appleseed’s point is not that we don’t matter—the book, I think, argues unequivocally that we do matter, that what we do or don’t do matters—it’s that we’re not the center of the universe, and if we truly want to stop harming the world around us, we need to come to grips with that.
Ultimately, what I loved most about Appleseed is that it’s a novel filled to the brim with hope: hope for our world, hope for each other, hope for the future. And in these uncertain days, a book like this is truly a joy to read.
A combination of climate catastrophe, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, a hint of Persephone and Hades, Adam and Eve, and a whole lot ofJohnny Appleseed.
Told in 3 vasty different timelines, the novel is epic and ambitious.
Timeline 1 is frontier Ohio, following 2 brothers, one human, one a faun, seeking to stake a claim and encourage the taming and improvement of the land. A story of Manifest Destiny, of the battle to tame that which is wild, to subjugate it to man's use.
Timeline 2 is the near future, post climate disaster, following John as he seeks to restore the broken and abandoned west to its wild state. Labeled an eco-terrorist, riddled with guilt, John finds himself lured back to help his corporate-visionary girlfriend to complete her drastic final solution to save the world.
Timeline 3 is far future where a lone cyborg struggles across a glacier, seeking to stay alive to complete its final mission. A mission it doesn't really remember.
This promised to be amazing story but fell completely flat, like its concept was too big for itself. Also, its omniscient narrative voice felt distant, detached, and expository, and often preachy. The connections and plot points came off as predictable but also vague and tenuous. I wanted to like it much more than I did.







