Forever Wandering by Emilie Ristevski is a photography and travel book rather than a conventional narrative, and that distinction matters. There is no plot to untangle, no protagonist to follow and certainly no carefully planted mystery waiting for you to solve. Instead, Ristevski takes the reader through a collection of landscapes and ecosystems photographed across the world, from the deserts of Namibia to Greenland's glaciers and the Australian outback. The book's real subject is wonder, specifically the kind that makes you stop scrolling and remember that the planet is considerably stranger and more beautiful than your daily commute suggests.

Ristevski's photography belongs to the dreamy, highly atmospheric tradition of contemporary travel photography. Her images favour immense landscapes, muted tones and a sense of solitude. The effect is deliberately escapist, but the book is not simply an expensive collection of pretty scenery. Ristevski also uses short pieces of writing to frame the photographs around ideas of nature, travel, environmental fragility and our relationship with the places we inhabit.

The strongest aspect is the visual consistency. Ristevski has a clear eye, and the photographs feel like they belong to the same artistic world even when the geography changes dramatically. That is harder than it sounds. A book containing deserts, ice, forests and coastlines can easily become a photographic version of someone emptying their holiday camera roll onto the dining table. Here, there is a discernible mood holding everything together.

The weakness is that the accompanying prose can sometimes drift toward inspirational language without offering much that is particularly surprising. There are plenty of sentiments about reconnecting with nature, finding yourself through travel and appreciating the fragility of the planet. All perfectly worthy ideas, obviously. Also ideas that have been printed on an awful lot of tote bags.

That does not make the message insincere. In fact, the sincerity is part of the book's appeal. Ristevski clearly wants the reader to slow down and pay attention, and the photographs make that request considerably easier to accept.

Compared with the grand tradition of landscape photography books, Forever Wandering is less concerned with technical documentation or geographical scholarship than with emotional atmosphere. It wants to make you feel small in the best possible way, standing somewhere vast and beautiful with absolutely nothing to achieve for five minutes.

As a coffee table book, it is undeniably lovely. As a meditation on travel and nature, it is gentler and more familiar. Its ideas are not especially revolutionary, but the images do not need revolutionary ideas to work. Sometimes a book's greatest achievement is simply reminding you to look up, look around and notice that the world is still there.