“Cade’s strength shines in her beautiful descriptions … This thoughtful work is a reminder of humanity’s connection and responsibility to the natural world.”
— Publishers Weekly (link)
“Reading about the Grief in the wake and waves of the global pandemic and lockdowns, I find it hard not to link the current virus with the sickening of the lands around us: the fires of Australia, California and Turkey; the floods of Germany; the hurricanes of New Orleans and New England. And this is what Cade is trying to outline in her story: the synchronicity—Jung’s ‘acasual connecting principal’—that connects us to the land and seas we inhabit. Cade is warning us through The Impossible Resurrection of Grief that we too will become ghosts if we continue to turn our Earth and seas into a graveyard. In this way, her speculative fiction begins to feel not so speculative.”
— Shana Chandra for the Landfall Review Online (link)
“There’s no denying that The Impossible Resurrection of Grief is both provocative and disturbing, and often quite powerful. I even found myself wondering if the idea of the Grief itself is optimistic, or pessimistic, or both. If climate change mitigation simply fails, will we at least be crippled by our sense of cumulative loss, as Cade suggests, or will be just watch things die and let them die, the way we seem to be doing so far?”
— Gary K. Wolfe, for Locus Magazine
“Uncanny, unsettling, brilliant, etcetera; as well as the thylacines there are jellyfish, robots, rock wrens, rats, and a new kind of psychological devastation that flourishes and evolves as everything else collapses. Called simply “Grief”, it is contagious, and hard to spot, and it feels like a creature that’s already here.”
— Catherine Woulfe, The Spinoff Book Report (link)
“The novella is tense and strained, leaving the reader on edge. Cade’s compact prose delivers plot turns like punches to the gut. (I audibly gasped at an unexpected flash of violence in the novella’s first chapter.) As Ruby confronts resurrected organisms, scientists driven to drastic action by the Grief, and numerous life-threatening encounters (accompanied by her soon-to-be-ex-husband George), she finds that there are no easy answers to facing climate crisis, or the emotions that accompany it. This refusal to fall into black-and-white, good-and-bad is one of the novella’s many strengths.”
— Shelby Brewster, PhD, for the Ancillary Review of Books (link)
“Echoing Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation and Rita Indiana’s Tentacle, Cade pushes climate fiction deeper, asking the reader to reflect, consider, and repent. A heavy, but necessary read, The Impossible Resurrection of Grief pushes us to continue to question our motives and our positions in the climate crisis. Are we too insulated from climate change? Do we see these effects now? What steps are we taking to slow or hasten our planet’s death? How compassionate am I towards the other living things that inhabit my neighborhood? These questions and others hint at what the Grief could be asking us. What might strike as hope, but also sorrow, is that there is no clear answer. Cade implores us to both meditate and act, so the world of The Impossible Resurrection of Grief does not become our own.”
— Alexander Pyles for The Chicago Review of Books (link)
“The Impossible Resurrection of Grief is short enough to read in an afternoon but the ideas it explores will haunt you well after you’ve finished. An examination of the emotional resonance of extinction through well-wrought characters of depth and complexity, the book’s themes of connection and loss and the crushing burden of really caring are revealed by Cade’s signature lyrical prose in an all-too plausible near future. There are no easy answers to be found here, but Cade offers a glimpse toward a way through the grief of both everyday and extraordinary losses.”
— Nebula Award finalist M. Darusha Wehm, author of The Voyage of the White Cloud
“In this novella—equal parts a touching meditation on our relationships with the natural world and an exciting thriller—Cade plumbs the emotional depths of climate change and the planet’s declining biodiversity. The Impossible Resurrection of Grief is a warning and a testament that there’s no going back to easier times, and that those of us drowning in sorrow and guilt are as short-sighted as the oil companies. And underneath the gripping story is a tiny whisper of … could it be? Yes: hope.”
— Wendy N. Wagner, author of An Oath of Dogs
“The Impossible Resurrection of Grief is deceptively complex, a work of the imagination that skirts uncomfortably close to our collective future. Layering together robotics, fairy tales, genetics, psychology, and more, it grapples with not just the destruction capitalist society has wrought on the world around it, but how we as individuals confront guilt over what is lost, and how we might attempt to make it right. For all the despair it engages with it’s a vivid, colourful, and intensely relevant story, underpinning moments of horror with a deep love and fascination for the natural world, and the creatures we once had a chance to live alongside – and may do so again. “
— Andi C. Buchanan, winner of Sir Julius Vogel Award 2020 (novella/novelette category) and author of From a Shadow Grave