The reception to the book has been positive. Elizabeth Day of The Guardian praised the complex characters, calling "Alma's journey a universal one, despite anchoring her protagonist's life in a different time and sending her to the furthest corners of the unexplored earth."[2] Barbara Kingsolver of The New York Times labelled it "a bracing homage to the many natures of genius and the inevitable progress of ideas, in a world that reveals its best truths to uncommonly patient minds."[3]