Warning: Minor spoilers for Arborescence 

Arborescence by Rhett Davis is a work of speculative fiction set in a future Australia uncomfortably close to our own. Bren the protagonist works for a strange, opaque company that assigns him tasks without explanation—tasks whose purpose continually eludes him. His girlfriend, Caelyn, yearns for meaning in a world that has grown stagnant, where movement feels illusory and progress hollow.

The story begins with a disturbing idea that starts to spread in society. What begins as an isolated act quickly takes hold, propagating like a contagion. People choose to stand motionless, trying and sometimes succeeding to becoming trees. The metamorphosis gains a name, Arborescence. One of the characters Caelyn, embraces this transformation, drawn to the promise of permanence and purpose. While Bren recoils, fearful of what is being lost. As the phenomenon deepens, both are forced to change and evolve in opposing directions.

Arborescence is a peaceful idea, but the change is anything but for the people around them. There transformation disrupts the world as people plant themselves in ovals, streets, shopping malls, even active roads. Emergency services are delayed, movement grinds to a halt, and the threat of death hangs heavy in the air. Though the desire to plant yourself does not fade from the narrative despite these disasters and losses. Rather it grows with its awareness.

The pull people feel toward becoming trees reminds me of the short manga The Enigma of Amigara Fault by Junji Ito; a huge earthquake struck a prefecture in Japan and on the face of the fault line is people shaped holes. People who see the holes look for the one that are shaped like them and they feel a call to slide in and go through the mountain. It’s not an uncontrollable urge, more of an intrusive thought that twists around them until they are dragged into the darkness and transformed. Arborescence evokes a similar unease: the choice appears voluntary, yet feels inevitable, as though society itself is quietly pushing people toward surrender. This naturally creates friction as people are divided. Is this transformation death or a new form of existence, giving to the world rather than taking? That ideological split is embodied most clearly in the central relationship between Caelyn and Bren.

One of the novel’s greatest strengths is the relationship between Caelyn and Bren (they have one of the more healthier hetero relationships I have ever read about in fiction). Bren supports Caelyn in unemployment as she goes back to university and tries to bring to light that people are turning into trees. Their relationship initially functions as a refuge from the novel’s wider instability. Yet this balance is not immune to pressure. As Bren’s patience erodes and their economic roles reverse—Bren unemployed, Caelyn the breadwinner—their partnership begins to fracture, revealing how even the most caring relationships are vulnerable to material strain.

This erosion mirrors Arborescence’s broader critique of capitalism, which operates as an invisible but omnipresent force throughout the narrative. Economic precarity is not merely background texture; it actively reshapes intimacy, support, and identity. Its omnipresence is keenly felt throughout the novel, entwined with artificial intelligence. This is not the AI we know—ChatGPT does not hold a candle to these “alternative intelligence agents”, whose sole purpose is to sell. What they sell is unclear. For whom, even more so. Purpose itself becomes abstracted into endless transactions. Just as Bren and Caelyn’s relationship is strained by shifting economic roles, meaning across the novel is continually hollowed out and repackaged, until survival—emotional and financial alike—becomes a form of participation in the same system that erodes it.

Yet in this world, there is little fear of AI domination, because the forest grows faster. Without human labour, maintenance, or consumption, these systems decay. Capitalism, stripped of its workforce and consumers, remains standing but inert—looming, hollow, and waiting for its inevitable death.

To me, Arborescence, steeped in climate grief and the violence of late-stage capitalism, is only a hop, skip, and a jump from our own world—an alternate reality to our own to be close enough to be both pleasurable and unsettling. Arborescence doesn’t present a resolution or a clear outcome—this is a novel for people that can sit with discomfort, ambiguity, and stillness. 

I give this book four out of five stars and would recommend borrowing it from the library.