50books_poc | Three reviews

Three reviews, as I'm trying to catch up on writing these up!

'Blonde Roots' by Bernadine Evaristo

Before reading 'Blonde Roots' I had it described to me as an alternate history novel, set in a world in which Europe was colonized by the Africans. Having read it, I'm not sure that's what it is at all. I mean, it is on the surface, but the world is (as others have said) not really coherent. Even the opening scene, of Bwana and his family celebrating Voodoomass doesn't make a lot of sense, as voodoo is specifically a faith tradition created from a fusion of African and European beliefs, in the crucible of a European dominated society. Surely a culture in which African beliefs had been dominant would not have had to adapt in that way? There are other oddities too, but that all makes sense when you stop trying to make sense of it as a coherent world and view it just as a satire.

Everything is basically a neat inversion of the history of the Atlantic slave trade, designed to make people re-examine everything they thought they knew. One thing I really liked was the very detailed description of the main character, Doris', home life in England, which pointed out quite painfully that a working class existence in 17th and 18th century England was really exceptionally poor, brutish and very easy to describe as 'uncivilized'. The descriptions of how rough Afro-centric beauty standards were on the Whyte slave women were also very powerful, and reminded me of a couple of articles I've seen on the net.

As ever, Evaristo's language is lovely to read, with a real flow, and I even managed to follow the story to the end, even though it was quite unremitting painful in places.

'Silver Phoenix: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia' by Cindy Pon

'Silver Phoenix' is a gorgeous Young Adult fantasy novel, set in a kind of magical medieval China. It is wonderful, and easily one of the best books of its genre I've ever read. The world was a fantastic alternative to the standard European/Tolkienien setting, the characters were in depth and the lead character in particular was fantastic. It was also alarmingly effective as food porn, and I spent about a week craving dim sum after reading this book.

About my only very mild issue with this novel was that I really wished at times that the hero was stronger. I mean, I loved the fact that the heroine was very tough and did drive the story forward, but at times her love interest seemed a little bit like a damsel-in-distress, and I did wish that she had someone a little bit stronger, just to provide a more equal pairing. She says at the end 'you saved me', in a conversation with the Hero, and I honestly was a little unsure what she was talking about.

There is a sequel coming out this year, which I'm very excited about and looking forward to no end.

'Beyond the Stars' by Steven Barnes

This is a novelisation of a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode in which Benjamin Sisko begins to have dreams of being a Black man in 1950s Harlem, who is dreaming of a space station with a Black captain in the future. I remember the episode, and I remember liking it a lot (as is the norm for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes) but was a little apprehensive at there being a novelisation. In general, I'm not a fan of novelisations of TV or films, and tend to find them lacking in some odd way. However, despite my fears, I really enjoyed this. It actually went a step further in developing the story and fleshing out both Benny Russel, the 1950s version of Ben Sisko, and Ben Sisko and his relationship with the prophets.

The only issue I had with this novel was the sexism. I was unsure if it was deliberate or not, as most of it came from Benny Russell, who was living in the 1950s after all, but it did occasionally bug me. I wasn't too keen on the character of 'Jenny' in the 20th century story, who was horribly under-developed, and seemed to only exist in order to die tragically after kissing the young Benny Russell, and I was hugely vexed by Benny's angsting over whether or not to marry Cassie, with one of his issues being 'man was made to do, woman to be. Home, marriage, family, security, those were core parts of a woman's being, but Benny could not be satisfied with that'.

Y'know, I think Cassie's desire to run a restaurant kinda counts as doing something too, Benny! I think I assumed firmly that it was just a 1950s man talking, as Ben Sisko had none of the same hangups about Kasidy, his partner, being a kick ass independent captain of a space ship.

However, these niggles aside, I did really enjoy this - far more than I was expecting - and I really loved reading Steven Barnes' short essay at the end on what Star Trek, and Deep Space Nine in particular had meant to him as a PoC. Plus, the novel reminded me how fabulous DS9 was as a show, and that's never a bad thing to remember.