[3] After climate change decimates the existing social order, most people lose the ability to dream.

She chose a teenage boy as the narrator because of the emotional intensity she could envision the character feeling and expressing in his actions.

[5] Dimaline treats the difficult topic of genocide as she wanted readers to know that such events happened to Indigenous people in the past.

Dimaline said that she wants readers to come away saying “I would never let that happen again.”[6] The author incorporates issues of climate disaster and political turmoil into the novel,[7] which takes place approximately 40 years into the future.

The novel received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, which stated "Though the presence of the women in the story is downplayed, Miigwans is a true hero; in him Dimaline creates a character of tremendous emotional depth and tenderness, connecting readers with the complexity and compassion of Indigenous people.

"[9] Writing for Quill & Quire, Jessica Rose wrote that Dimaline's book "thrusts readers into the complex lives of rich and nuanced characters forced to navigate a world that too closely resembles our own."

Rose also praised the novel's treatment of the "heavy subject matter," stating that the author's "graceful, almost fragile, prose ... provid[es] a beautiful undercurrent to a world that seems to have been damaged beyond repair."

The reviewer also praised book’s coming-of-age narrative, most notably Frenchie’s budding romance Rose.

[10] In The Globe and Mail, Shannon Ozirny wrote that "Dimaline takes one of the most well-known tropes in YA – the dystopia – and uses it to draw explicit parallels between the imagined horrors of a fictional future and the true historical horrors of colonialism and residential schools" and called the book "beautifully written as it is shocking and painful.