An Unkindness of Ghosts
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Average rating4
Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world. Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South.
For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war.
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This book is fascinating; at its core, it's a book about modern slavery (drawn along U.S. historical lines) in space. I loved that Solomon incorporated strong, detailed nonbinary and genderqueer characters in the book, and the plot itself felt reminiscent of an Octavia Butler book.
I liked the idea of a strong caste-system being enforced on a generation ship, which launched from a post-apocalyptic earth with no destination. Planets are, in some ways, just generation ships, but it feels more claustrophobic in a ship, and therefore less room for idealism. I liked Aster and the deuteragonist, Theo a lot as part of a complicated, diverse and neurodiverse cast. And I also liked that for once in a dystopian setting, Solomon really explores the psychological impact of trauma in a way that is unflinching but still leaves room for sympathy.
But while the first half of the book was fascinating and driven by a compelling mystery, the denouement of the central mystery around page 150 requiring a bunch of pseudoscientific babble broke the metafictional agreement of mysteries (i.e. that before they are solved the reader at least has heard of all of the core components necessary to solve them; no fictional toxic heavy metal elements at the last minute.) And following that, the pacing really lagged into a series of upsetting but ultimately irrelevant oppression scenes. And ultimately, I wasn't sure what Solomon was trying to say about American slavery by telling a very conventional slavery narrative in space. I wish they had used the setting to advance the narrative.
