My thanks to Penguin Books U.K. for an eARC via NetGalley of Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Underland: a Deep Time Journey’ in exchange for an honest review. Robert Macfarlane takes us on a journey into the worlds beneath our feet. He travels to various locations throughout the world recording his experiences and impressions in notebooks. Among the many areas covered within ‘Underland’ are: the underground networks of trees (wood wide web), dark matter experiments, undercities and catacombs, urban explorers, starless rivers, caves and sacred sites, ancient and recent history, burial rites, rock art, natural and unnatural disasters (many heartbreaking to read), hollow Earth stories, ice-core science, chambers cut into the earth to house radioactive waste (with warnings for future generations to not investigate). There is also a fair amount about climate change and the Anthropocene, the name for our current epoch of immense and often frightening change on a planetary scale. Macfarlane incorporates many anecdotes of his travels in a poetic style that proved very readable. In his travels he connects with fascinating, eccentric people. This is nature and science writing at its finest. This book was guaranteed to be a good fit for me. Since childhood I have been drawn to myths, legends and stories about the underworld whether it be multiple readings of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alan Garner’s Alderley Edge series and exploring myths such as the descent of Ishtar, the Eleusinian Mysteries and Arthur’s raid upon the Celtic Underworld. I am now very keen to read Macfarlane’s other works on landscape. ‘Underland’ is one that I will buy in hardback in order to savour it again at a more leisurely pace.

I love MacFarlane's writing. He has a knack of allowing his own enthusiasms to bubble off the page and embrace you. He teaches you without it feeling forced or preachy and you find yourself learning so much in such a delightful way. I think this is my favourite of all his books so far. I was very lucky to have been given a review copy of this book from NetGalley. I devoured it over a couple of days. I genuinely couldn't put it down. It's totally fascinating. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the ground under our feet. I particularly loved the chapter about trees and how they communicate using their roots and fungal spores. The pot holing sections and the parts about underground rivers were also very compelling. This is one of my best books of 2019 to date.

“Into the underland we have long placed that which we fear and wish to lose, and that which we love and wish to save.” As he has done with his previous works, such as The Old Ways and Landmarks, Robert Macfarlane takes us on an emotive and fascinating journey through the landscape — only this time, we’re traveling underground. Like our ancestors before us, we’re “making journeys into the darkness”, reaching deep into the Earth to better understand our world, ourselves, and our place within it. Blending history and myth, geology and environmentalism, reflections from his travels and psychology, Macfarlane gives us a book that is both rich and dark. We are enticed by landscapes both above and below ground whilst simultaneously struck by the poignancy and urgency of a planet in peril. The book is separated into three parts — Seeing, Hiding, and Haunting. We descend into caverns and catacombs, seek out underground rivers and glaciers, and explore the interconnectedness of nature that goes far deeper than the topsoil of a land. We encounter humankind’s influence on the land beneath us: nuclear storage, mining, fossil fuels, pollution, and more. We get a sense that we, as a species, are leaving behind the worse kind of legacy in the strata of this land: death, destruction, and decay. This theme of legacy weaves in and out of the book as Macfarlane explores our ancestors and the ways they left their trace on the world, and connects with people who are deeply connected to the land today. It is all too easy to forget that our actions have consequences, and not all of those consequences are good ones. How we work to seek to interact with, and preserve, this beautiful planet for the future generations should be the work we do now, as we journey onward to become ancestors ourselves, and one day return to the arms of Mother Earth. Powerful, essential reading. I received an e-ARC from the publisher, Hamish Hamilton, through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Robert Macfarlane is the master of poetic prose. His latest book Underland follows in the same flow as Landmarks, The Old Ways and The Lost Worlds. It is hugely far reaching from the past to the future from the underground communications between trees to world vision. His voice is very lyrical and mystical and quite old fashioned to a gloriously rich manner. It is a book to be savoured slowly and allow the words and thoughts to seep into one whole body and soul. I found it perhaps a little too poetic for me and found it difficult to pull away from the sensation of the beauty of the words to appreciate, if that is the right word, to read the message behind those words. Nevertheless I would recommend taking this on a long walk, a very long walk, and stopping at night in the middle of nowhere and pulling your copy out to appreciate the world around and below you.

Totally riveting, amazing, uplifting ,magical and astounding . I felt I knew nothing about anything when I read this book , one to change you for life !! *****