Review: “The Deep” by Rivers Solomon

Release Date: November 5, 2019
Publisher: Saga
Genre: Fantasy

Description

“Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.

Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.”

My Thoughts

Solomon’s story is centered on conflict: between slave traders and Africans, between wajinru and the Historian, between Yetu and her two-legs companion Oori, between the apex predators on land and underwater, between the roiling ocean and the calm tidepools, between remembering and forgetting, between the past and present and future. The tension between knowing too much and not understanding enough crisscrosses the plot. It’s what drives Yetu to abandon her post for the surface and to bond with the intriguing Oori. And it’s what forms the center of their fledgling relationship…

To read the rest of my review, head over to Tor.com.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy.