In the high Yemen Book

This really wasn't worth a four star rating, but I gave it four stars anyway. Why? because the cover is pretty. It features pictures of butterflies that are patterned to mimic dead leaves. I love that. You want to get an extra star from me, put pictures of butterflies camouflaging themselves as dead leaves on the cover. Or a picture of a carnivorous plant. Or a bioluminescent insect. I love those topics. That said, beyond the pretty cover, this book was only a three star effort. Good enough, but I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. It had been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read for some time. In June 2017, its time arrived.

So, it's about this thing called the Wallace line, named after a 19th century explorer named Wallace. He noticed that in Indonesia, amongst all the small little islands, that some islands had "nature" that had a decidedly Asian character about it. And on some islands, sometimes just a few miles away, nature abruptly took on an Australian character. He mapped out the dividing line between the islands that exhibited these different characters and that line became known as the Wallace line. It's important in biology and evolution. And it's really interesting....which is why I bought this book. But I guess I wanted this book to be something else.

I was hoping this book would be more of a narrative about Wallace and his discoveries. It is, to a certain degree, but it's really more about the underlying science of the Wallace line. That's interesting too, don't get me wrong, but the author kind of ran into a few problems for me.

Problem #1: Fact-o-rhea.
What's fact-o-rhea? That's presenting too many facts. The Wallace line is about Asian critters over here, and Australian critters over there. The author decides to not just scratch the surface on that concept, but to go deep in explaining why creatures are distributed the way they are in this region. That's a good thing. But it turns out to be complicated. Really complicated. Some islands were once part of Australia. Some were once part of Asia. Some sprang up out of the ocean and have never been part of anything. Asia and Australia were once part of Pangea. Everything is moving around. There were ice ages. Some islands are big. Some are small. Some are in shallow water. Some are in deep water. Some are old, others young. Elephants can swim. Cicadas don't like to travel. Big cats don't like small islands. Large sections of the text are a recital of raw information about geology and animal distribution. Better take notes if you don't want to get lost!

Problem #2: conclusion-oxya
What's conclusion-oxya? That's a lack of conclusions. The author (as noted above) presents lots of facts, and clearly indicates that from them, a conclusion can be drawn. But the author often doesn't actually present that conclusion. We get to the 1 yard line a lot, but often don't seem to make it into the end zone. There's a lot of cliff hangers like "....Wallace was close to the answer, but if he'd only taken a second look at the fossil something-or-other, he would have known the answer was much more subtle".....without ever giving us the subtle answer that we apparently now know! Is it possible I'm just not smart enough for this book?

At any rate, I know a lot more about the Wallace line than I did in May 2017, and I certainly understand it a whole lot less. Perhaps not at all. But, the cover has got some great butterfly pictures. And, you will know a country by its Cicadas. Remember that: cicadas....they're key.