Book Review: The Deep

Image: The cover of the book shows a light blue seascape. In the foreground near the center is a mermaid. She has dark brown skin and long black locks and float behind her head. The bottom half of her body is a dark blue shark-like body and there is webbing between her fingers. Behind her is a large whale and smaller fishes and whales in the background. Across the top is the title of the novel. "The" is in dark blue and overlaps with the word "Deep" in almost white blue. Across the bottom, in white capital small letters says "Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs William Hutson Jonathan Snipes."

When I first saw that Rivers Solomon was putting out a new novella, I immediately added it to a top priority book to read. I had the chance to read and review their debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and it became one of my favorite science fiction books. I admit, fantasy is not usually my realm of choice for reading material. But, given my love for this author, I was excited to give this a go anyways.

I first want to say that this book gets an A+ and 5 stars for effort and creativity. The process of an author collaborating with musicians is a really interesting and cool idea. Solomon took a song and turned it into a larger story while giving credit to and including those who created the song. Great care was taken so that everyone was given attention for their work which is also something I like to see. That said, the story itself was about average. Solomon is a beautiful writer and I adore the way they take important and painful political and historical themes and include them in their writing. My issue with this book is that it seemed unfinished. It reads a little like an initial draft of ideas before the characters and world building were fully fleshed out

One of my biggest issues with the book though is this: I would have preferred to be more surprised by parts of the wajinru's (the mermaids) story. Our protagonist- Yetu- is a historian, forced to live through a painful origin history of her people via memories over and over. There is a reason I am being vague and not revealing much about the wajinru. The way this was written, the reader would have slowly realized where the wajinru came from. It could have been a real wow moment for me. But, going into the book, I already knew because the blurb gives it away. That said, the information in the blurb is a huge draw for the book. So, I see why they decided to reveal so much. But, I would have preferred to find out in the book itself.

There are some really cool parts of the book that, if fine tuned a little more or expanded upon, could have carried it further. There are LGB/I characters and interesting discussions of the differences between the wajinru and the two-legs (humans, of course.) There are interesting discussions of how home and history can be both destructive and critical to preserve, always under threat. There is so much potential in this novel. I wonder if some day, they will come back to it and make it a larger book. I also wonder, as I said before, if my general preferences got in my way. Fantasy is not my forte and this is a very fantastical book.

Even though I have not given this book a perfect score, I still encourage people to read it as much as I would a 5 star book. The creativity, writing style, and collaboration are really interesting and great reasons to give it a try anyways. Being a novella, it's short. So, you can experience it in a short amount of time. The story itself is still interesting and entertaining despite it's flaws. I will forever keep an eye on Solomon's work and am very excited for what they do next.

This was also posted to my goodreads.