Everfair

Everfair #1

by Nisi Shawl, Nisi Shawl

From noted short story writer Nisi Shawl comes a brilliant alternate-history novel set in the Belgian Congo.



What if the African natives developed steam power ahead of their colonial oppressors? What might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier?

Fabian Socialists from Great Britain join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's owner, King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated.

Shawl's speculative masterpiece manages to turn one of the worst human rights disasters on record into a marvelous and exciting exploration of the possibilities inherent in a turn of history. Everfair is told from a multiplicity of voices: Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex relationships with one another, in a compelling range of voices that have historically been silenced. Everfair is not only a beautiful book but an educational and inspiring one that will give the reader new insight into an often ignored period of history.

Genres: Fantasy, Steampunk, Fiction, Science Fiction, Historical Fiction, Alternate History, Africa

384 pages, Paperback

First published August 16, 2016

About the author

Nisi Shawl is a founder of the diversity-in-speculative-fiction nonprofit the Carl Brandon Society and serves on the Board of Directors of the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop. Their story collection Filter House was a winner of the 2009 Tiptree/Otherwise Award, and their debut novel, Everfair, was a 2016 Nebula finalist. Shawl edited Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars (2013). They coedited Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler (2013).

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5ish stars.

Ever read a book that you respect more than love? This is that. It's a sprawling, epic, majestic beast of a novel that spans 30 years. It takes place in a beautifully unique setting chronicling the formation and history of the fictional country Everfair. Although it’s shorter than 400 pages long, it feels like the page count is 3,000+. It's also serious, intelligent steampunk, who would have thought? I've got to give Nisi Shawl props for ambition alone. And even if it was super difficult to get through (I rejoiced when I finally finished) it's still super impressive.

While technically linear in structure, it's more episodic than traditionally progressive which is equally interesting and frustrating. Each relatively short chapter provides a small vignette from various (like 50) PoVs at different points in time (although each chapter moves forward in time). The problem is that at some points I would get sucked into a chapter; I'd be panicked for or fascinated by a character, sometimes it would end on a cliffhanger and then... 8 months later in a completely different part of the world, a completely different character is doing something completely different while I'd get a brief bytheway explaining what had happened since the last chapter.

And while maybe I'd be super invested in the dynamic character arc of the last chapter's PoV, he wouldn't get another chapter until 10 years later. So while it must be admired, it must be done so at a distance without any serious emotional pull.

It's got an incredibly diverse cast, explores some important themes, and provides some fascinating historical speculation. I think everyone should read it. But then again eh... I also wouldn't blame anyone for giving up after 30 pages.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, this is a book full of flaws, but underlying all of those flaws is also a book I really, really want to appreciate.

Why? Because it's a story of the Belgian Congo under an alternate history banner that strives and reaches for its independence despite atrocity and thanks to technology. No more millions dead in unsung tragedy. Rather, we've got nation building in a rather fresh and ambitious undertaking.

Pretty, no? And the themes and the problems explored is also quite impressive, tackling head-on the issues of both racism and nationalism sometimes together and other times in stark contrast. Again, quite beautiful and quite exhaustively characterized, developed, and world-built. We've got a historian on board as well as someone firmly rooted in speculation in the author.

So what's wrong? Maybe it's just my poor brain, or perhaps it's just that the ambition is greater than the execution. I don't mind that we've got decades'-worth of world-building going on. I don't *theoretically* mind that we've got a literal ARMY of PoV characters.

I do mind when that army of PoV characters don't grab me emotionally, or I should say, some do, some don't.

I do mind when a lot of time passes and motivations change and we as readers are left in the lurch. Such things can happen off-page and can be quite interesting if we're either scholars pouring through the text OR we've been following a very limited cast over a long time, giving us the emotional investment to CARE why they change their minds. Unfortunately, I wasn't given either the investment or the pre-existing knowledge of the Congo's history or possible mitigating factors. It was left out of the book.

Are these deal-breakers? Not at all. The overriding sense of the nation is clear and I love the available kinds of interactions with America and the kinds of cross-cultural exchanges, learning, and even religious meshes that have developed over time.

All-in-all, it's a book worth appreciating... from afar. After the fact. As a purely intellectual exercise. My heart never quite got into it... and that's a shame because I wanted it to.

[Bookwraiths · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally reviewed at Bookwraiths.

Blending alternate history, steampunk, and fantasy elements as well as tackling difficult social issues (colonization, racism, religious tolerance, and gender intolerance), Everfair sets out to tell an epic story of the Congo from the era of Belgian control (circa 1885) to post-World War I. Featuring a diverse cast, Nisi Shawl crafts her narrative to allow readers to see through the eyes of every one of the characters, as these diverse persons experience important events in their own unique ways. And, overall, the author succeeds in crafting an entertaining story set in an inventive setting, which also happens to educate readers in many ways.

The title of this book is taken from the central local of the story: the imagined colony of Everfair. In this alternate timeline, a group of well-meaning westerners with socialist beliefs (the Fabian Society) found a colony in Africa. Willingly giving sanctuary to escaped slaves from the tyrannical Congo ruled by King Leopold II of Belgium, the Fabians speak of equality and acceptance for all people, but they do not even perceive their own hidden racism, as they impose western customs on all the colonial inhabitants. But, somehow, someway, the Fabians and their fellow Everfair citizens must find a way to bridge their differences, accept all people for who they are, and overcome the many obstacles in their path to create a utopian society in the heart of Africa.

Obviously, the most captivating feature of Everfair is the concept itself. A four decades long struggle to create, defend, and firmly establish a new country with enlightened ideals is one most every reader will crave to experience firsthand. That Nisi Shawl is able to tackle the social issues, cultural clashes, and horrors of European colonization of Africa while still mixing in steampunk and fantasy elements only adds to the intrigue of this novel. And to top it all off, Everfair is set in a very realistic, well developed alternate history setting, which does not disappoint in its use of real historical people and events. All of which means the premise for this story and its goals are ambitious and worthy of notice by readers everywhere.

Like all things, however, this novel also has its fair share of missteps, flaws, elements which failed to excite but disappointed or puzzled. The most glaring example being the actual structure of the narrative itself. Here Nisis Shawl uses short, snapshot-like chapters to tell her story. These brief glimpses focusing on different characters, shifting from place to place, and skipping substantial periods of time. Many of the most important events in the tale taking place in between these chapters. Readers having to be satisfied with a quick exposition of what had happened when they were not looking. Many of these events major plot points. The lack of focus on them, the failure to allow readers to experience them firsthand, a real disappointment.

Everfair is a book which aims high and comes so tantalizingly close to completely reaching its optimistic goals. Without a doubt, this book made me analyze my own views and caused me to reflect upon the nature of humanity and our propensity to harm when we mean to help, while also entertaining me with a highly realized alternate history world with precise touches of steampunk and fantasy. However, I have to admit being disappointed by the structure of the narrative, as most of the major events happened offstage and were merely summarized for me after the fact. But this is definitely a book worth reading, especially if the premise itself appeals to you.

I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. I’d like to thank them for allowing me to receive this review copy and inform everyone that the review you have read is my opinion alone.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

My experience of reading this ambitious, odd, intriguing novel was akin to spending time gazing at an ambitious, odd, intriguing painting in a museum. There was much to admire about Shawl’s technical skill in crafting sentences, and their ability to never let me get ahead of the story they were creating. There was much to admire about their willingness to take on the immense themes of colonization, racism, war, and espionage, and imagine an alternate history of an Africa that was affected by these things but never succumbed to the fullest terrible weight of them. I just wanted to feel more let in on the moment-to-moment beats between her many and varied characters. But I’m glad to have read this, even though I never fell fully in love with it.

[Carly · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of Everfair is utterly fascinating: an alternate history that takes place in the Congo starting under the reign of the tyrannical Belgian King Leopold II and ending several decades later. As Shawl notes in the forward:

"At least half the populace disappeared in the period from 1895 to 1908. The area thus devastated was about a quarter of the size of the current continental United States. Millions of people died."

It's a story not often told, and all the more important for it. The story centers around a colony set up by a mixed bag of colonists, each who come to Africa with different aims from religious freedom to a socialist utopia. The story mixes everything from a few steampunk elements such as the mechanical replacements for the hands chopped off during Leopold's tyrannical reign to mystical elements such as interactions with gods and mind-riding of animals.

While I was captivated by the concept, my feelings about the story itself are unfortunately rather more mixed. Writing a book that spans multiple decades and dozens of characters is a tricky art, and unfortunately, at least for me, Shawl didn't quite manage it. Given that the preface provides a list of "Some Notable Characters," well over a dozen of which turn out to be perspective characters, apparently even Shawl realized her cast was overwhelming. Not only that, but given that the short character descriptions in the preface turn out to be serious plot spoilers, it's clear that Shawl expects confused readers to flip back and refresh their memories with her list. To me, that expectation already indicates a serious problem in execution.

When I got to the story itself, I was even more perplexed. The short chapters are effectively vignettes told through the perspective of a whole host of third-person-limited narrators and spaced evenly across the four decades that the book encompasses. We are given short glimpses of the characters' lives in turn, but most of the major events of the story--the crises, the character development--happen offpage. The multi-month and multi-year time jumps don't help, either. It seemed to me that the book was stuck in a constant state of exposition, always stuck summarizing all the dramatic events that occurred since the last vignette. My inability to actually experience the events that shaped the characters gave a distant, detached feeling to the story. I heard what the characters of the previous section did, but not how they felt or why. I never felt like I knew or understood any of them, and their choices and described emotions were a perennial surprise. The characters' actions seemed to me to be driven by narrative expediency-- or to put it more generously, by whim. For example, take Martha, who marries a teenage boy she scorns out of expediency to get him to act for her. She appears to find his love letters embarrassing and tedious. And yet the next time we see her, she's apparently passionately, almost obsessively devoted to him and jealous over every woman he talks to. When did that happen?

Or take Daisy. We only get Daisy's perspective again years after her daughter's death, when she thinks: "In truth, nothing did much matter, since Lily's death." What, not her other kids? Sure, her pain is described, but nothing about her perspective makes me feel her grief. And Jackie and the other son just wander off the page, never to return. Plus, why is Daisy apparently so devoted to a cause she doesn't really believe in, to the point of sacrificing her children? She seems mostly passive, yet she stays in Everfair, despite all of the problems she encounters. Given her own rather extreme racism and deep fear of miscegenation, I really just don't understand what motivates her.

Or what were Lisette's motivations that brought her so far, and why did she suddenly decide to quit, only to be blackmailed back into the fold? What is with these people and these whims? I don't feel like I know any of the characters, if there is indeed anything there to know.


What I loved about the book was the way it tackled the clash of cultures and all of the wide-reaching ramifications of colonialization. The Fabian Society, a bunch of well-meaning Westerners with a socialist slant, decide to start a colony in the Congo. They purchase land and provide refuge to escaped slaves from Leopold's brutal reign, but while they speak of equality, it's not something they can really even comprehend. They impose their language, their names, and much of their culture upon the Africans they build their society with, and cannot even understand the insidious racism that colors their actions. They may call the Africans "equals," but they still find miscegenation unthinkable. They may believe they respect the languages and cultures they interact with, but of course English and Western custom must be the standard for the colony.

The perspective characters include everyone from a local king and his queen to workers who escape Leopold's vicious regime to an engineer from Macau. Much of the book deals with the rising tensions caused by the Europeans' lack of comprehension, but it also portrays characters who escape this mindset and become shaped by the world they inhabit. Overall, it's a fascinating and thought-provoking look at the inherent problems of colonialisation: even the definition of utopia is shaped by the colonists. As one character thinks:

"That was the problem. The settlers of Everfair had come here naively at best, arrogantly at worst. [...] By their very presence they poisoned what they sought to save. How could they not? Assuming they knew the best about so many things-- not even realizing they had made such assumptions-- they acted without considering other viewpoints and remained in ignorance in spite of the broadest hints."

Daisy's insistence on creating a national holiday for Jackie Owen's death is utterly jaw-clenchingly awful. Even Matty's Wendi-La is still a white man telling the story. His admission that he never even considered the possibility of Fwendi refusing him is wince-inducing. More interesting to me was Thomas, who finds himself the converted rather than the converter.

Everfair definitely made me think. I just wish it had also made me feel. For me, the series of vignettes gave the book a stilted, disjointed feeling that in turn hindered my ability to relate to the characters. Most of the big events and character emotions happened offpage and were summarized via exposition. However, if the structure appeals to you more than it did to me, Everfair is well worth a look.

~~I received this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, in exchange for my honest review. Quotes were taken from an advanced reader copy and while they may not reflect the final phrasing, I believe they speak to the spirit of the book as a whole.~~

Cross-posted on BookLikes.

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading a few short stories by Nisi Shawl, all of which I enjoyed very much, I was eager to read her debut novel.

'Everfair' is a steampunk-flavored alternate history. The 'what if' moment is: What if, during the horrific regime of Leopold II over the Belgian Congo, a group of free-thinkers/socialists and abolitionists had purchased a large tract of land on which to found a new, utopian state? The country in question is dubbed, 'Everfair,' and the novel follows the course of this social experiment/endeavor.

What I liked most about the book was the well-thought out nature of it. It borrows a lot from the actual history of Liberia, I believe, but really considers a lot of details regarding the different ethnic and social groups that would be attracted to - or end up in - the country, the complexities of their interactions, the various ideals and prejudices that they would hold, affecting both interpersonal and political motivations. I also liked the characters, and found them interesting and appealing, although to a certain extent they fell into seeming like "representatives of types."

What I didn't like about it: The book felt like it was assembled from a much, much longer work, one that had rather randomly had huge chunks excised from it. Again and again, I would be drawn into the action, feeling invested in what was going on... and then suddenly the narrative would jump years ahead and focus on a different character. The plot spans several decades; and though I understand that the goal was to tell the entire history of this imaginary country in one volume, I felt like I would rather have read several smaller-scale, tighter stories, each set in the country and focusing on a narrower portion of the history.

However, pacing issues aside, I feel that this is a very promising debut, and would gladly read more from the author.

Many thank to Tor and NetGalley for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinion is solely my own.

[Charlotte Kersten]

“By their very presence they poisoned what they sought to save.”

So What’s It About?

Everfair is a steampunk alternative history of the Belgian Congo in which Fabian socialists and black American missionaries band together to buy land from King Leopold and establish their own colony, meant to be a utopia and haven for their own people as well as the native people of the Congo who flee Belgian enslavement and violence. They band together with a local king to fight against Leopold’s atrocities, and the book follows the colony and its people from inception through triumph and defeat and more.

CW for colonialist violence and a mention of sexual assault.

What I Thought-

Everfair‘s premise is a brilliant one, but unfortunately I think the premise’s strength was only partially throughout the story. I think in some ways the book is defeated by its own ambition: it covers the fate of a colony and its many inhabitants over decades. Inevitably such a story requires the author to handle its scope properly, and while I can absolutely see others being fine with it I didn’t especially like Shawl’s way of handling that scope.

For one thing there are massive time jumps throughout the story and they seem to routinely skip over some of the most crucial events and information: essential battles, outcomes of wars and crucial instances of character development are declared almost as an afterthought and a significant part of the book involves rote summarization of what has happened since the last time jump. It felt like a huge part of the book was spent with people traveling from one place to another on air canoes, and I would have loved to see more of Everfair’s history play out on page instead of being summarized for me afterwards.

By its nature the story involves a massive cast of characters, and none of them ever felt to me like real living people. By and large they all felt very flat and because of the small amount of time spent with each of them their emotional beats and relationships never felt genuine. Again, the time jumps play a big role in making things feel disjointed here: Mrs. Albin disdains George’s affections but then suddenly she’s smitten; Jackie and Daisy date offscreen and she spends a large portion of the book’s ending trying to name a holiday after him; Tink vanishes for years and years at a time only to come up with convenient new inventions and grieve unconvincingly for Daisy’s daughter.

While I’ve made it clear that none of the character work landed very successfully for me, I will say that I appreciated Shawl’s determination to write about such a broad range of identities co-existing in the late 19th and early 20th century. There are queer relationships and multiracial relationships; characters from all walks of life and experience, and I did appreciate that a lot.

I did enjoy other significant parts of the story- Shawl’s depiction of the Congo under Leopold’s rule is really done with all manner of touches that ring true, even more so after I read King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild shortly after finishing Everfair. Black American missionaries were some of the first people to raise humanitarian alarm at the colony’s atrocities and I really enjoyed the plot featuring Thomas Jefferson Wilson and how he eventually “goes native,” a real phenomenon that continually exasperated the colonizers who were trying to achieve the opposite by getting Africans to assimilate to European standards. I also loved the revolutionary use of steampunk technology here -one of the Congo’s most famous atrocities was the method of cutting off laborer’s hands when they failed to meet rubber-picking quotas, and in this book a genius inventor designs elaborate metal prosthetics for the laborers who escape to Everfair.

I think Shawl has something really brilliant to say about the spirit with which Everfair is founded, and to me it relates to one of the most interesting things I learned in King Leopold’s Ghost: many of the most fervent activists who worked tirelessly to bring an end to Leopold’s despotism in the Congo did not actually take issue with the notion of colonialism itself. Rather, they only objected to Leopold’s extremes of violence and inhumanity. E.D. Morel, for example, worked tirelessly to bring an end to Leopold’s actions but turned around and spoke glowingly of his native Britain’s own empire. He did not understand the violence inherent to the project and mindset of colonialism itself.

The Europeans who help to found Everfair represent this same mindset to a tee, I think – it’s easy for them to oppose slavery and rape and brutal killings and but they don’t understand that what they do by buying the land that Leopold stole and coming to settle there with their civilizing mission is still wrong. They still perpetuate colonialism’s entitlement and paternalism, its disregard for native life and culture and Africans’ right to their land and self-determination. It might not be explicit, traditional violence in the literal sense of bloodshed but the insidious violence of superiority and entitlement is no less real. It's an incredibly important point and one that I am so glad that Shawl addressed in this book.

[Danika at The Lesbrary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an incredible, complex book. It took me a while to read, because every chapter switches points of view, and there are tons of point of view characters. It spans decades, tackling politics, war, espionage, grief, love and betrayal.

The alternate history of the Congo was fascinating, and although the steampunk element was more subtle than I was expecting, there was so much going on that I didn't notice. For the huge cast of characters, it's incredible how many get developed arcs.

Also a fantastic surprise: there is significant queer women in this! At least three of the point of view characters are, and some more minor characters. I would argue that the relationship between two of them is at the core of the book. They definitely don't have a simple, sweet romance. It's complex and deeply flawed, but it's also passionate, genuine, and loyal.

Despite feeling like it took me forever to read (those short chapters with switching POVs meant I rarely read a lot in one sitting), I would highly recommend this one. It isn't a book I would pick up lightly: it deals with heavy topics and has a huge scope. But if you're willing to dive into something far-reaching, definitely try this one.

On second read: I love how ambitious , strange, and unique this is. It goes in so many different directions. The middle dragged a bit for me, which is why it's not a five star, but it's definitely still a favourite. Onto the sequel!

[Eilonwy · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the early 1890’s through the aftermath of WWI, a group of Europeans, USAmericans, and African refugees from the horrors of Leopold’s Belgian Congo try to establish a semi-utopia in Central Africa in a very slightly steampunk-ish alternate universe. But vague historical details, a cast of far too many, and too much jumping around in time turns what should have been a fascinating re-imagining into a colorful but non-cohesive mess.

Oh, what a disappointment! This book sounded so good -- go read the official blurb, and look at that gorgeous cover! -- but none of those promises actually materialized in my reading experience.

Nisi Shawl can definitely write well, so that wasn’t the problem. The book is set out as a series of vignettes, and they’re all interesting events involving interesting characters, vividly depicted and emotionally resonant. For the first half of the book, I was completely rapt, because each scene is individually so good.

But around the middle, the problems with the story became apparent, and only grew more so as I plodded to the end. There’s a lot of little-picture focus in the book, but not much big-picture. I never got a real sense of Leopold’s domination or what the Everfairers wanted to achieve. Because so much time keeps getting skipped -- one event would often be followed by another happening a year, sometimes more, later -- there just wasn’t much tension or continuity. Something earth-shattering would happen, but by the next chapter, it would be ancient history. I didn’t feel much sense of direction, either for the book or the characters in it. Many of them wander in, and then just wander out. There’s a cast list at the front of the book, but all it does is take some of the tension out of the story, since some (but not all; it’s very inconsistent) characters are given birth and death dates, so as a reader I knew none of the characters with dates were in much danger.

And then in the end, the intended through-stories seemed to be two love stories, both of which seemed far too slight as presented to warrant this entire book being written around them.

I think the most frustrating thing for me was that I was expecting a genre novel with a plot, but this is much more a literary endeavor, and reads like beads on a string, but not quite a necklace, if that makes sense. Each bead is a work of art by itself, but is too separate from its neighbors to create a satisfying whole.

I’m going to try Nisi Shawl’s book of short stories to see if they work better for me. And if she writes another novel, I’ll definitely check it out, with hopes that it feels more like a continuous story with tension and stakes to me.

Check out Bookwraith’s review for an emphasis on what the author was trying to say with this book, which I've sadly skipped over in my review.

[Lata · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I heard about this book several months ago, I knew I had to read it. An alternative history where King Leopold's atrocities in the Congo were fought against, where a diverse set of individuals set up a sanctuary (Everfair) in Africa for former US slaves and for those who could escape from King Leopold's rubber plantations.

Each chapter told of Everfair's founding and maintenance from a different character's perspective (in third person) so it was possible to get a sense of the enormity of the undertaking to set up a functioning country, in essence, and the many voices and brains and hands necessary to make it happen.

I found that this was story was a little hard to read. Not because the text was difficult. Rather, there were a lot of characters to keep track of, and each chapter did a little time jump, sometimes a few months, sometimes a year, sometimes more forward in time. There were a few characters that gradually emerged as fairly important to Everfair's survival: Lisette, Fwendi, Thomas, King Mwenda and his favourite wife, Josina, Tink, and Daisy. The author followed these characters over the years, and you see their struggles, their desires, and how hard they care and sacrifice to make Everfair work. But, I also found that it was a little hard for me to get a feel for the characters, because of the character and time changes from chapter to chapter. I had to get several chapters in before I began empathizing with particular individuals.

The alt-history aspect is interesting; People are motivated to work together, people who normally would have been prevented from doing so, either by geography or societal conventions, or who simply would not have because of intolerance. Also, because of this coming together, there are also technological advances well before they would historically have happened. I enjoyed the engineering advances (I really liked the multifunction prosthetic limbs).

Though I'm glad I read this, I can't say that I loved this book. At the moment I'm giving it 3-3.25 stars.

[K.J. Charles]

A big beast of an alternate history novel with steampunk, taking on the Belgian Congo. That monstrous abomination is a hell of a topic, but Shawl pulls it off to a large degree, reimagining an alliance of Congolese people and variously skilled and motivated immigrants (Chinese, American, French, English, lesbians, socialists, scientists) fighting back to drive the Belgians out with a combination of advanced tech and local knowledge. This could be really superhero-comic in the wrong hands but this book shows how racism, colonialism, sexism, homophobia and religious extremism still work to destroy even this hopeful intersectional state from within (the way the white and non-native 'founders' of Everfair slip into a colonial mindset is heartbreaking and very powerfully done, as is the inevitable catastrophe of global politics when Everfair is dragged into the Great War, very reasonably taking the side against Belgium).

It's told episodically, which is necessary for the huge cast and twenty-year span, but can mean we drop in and out of stories and issues rather than feeling entirely immersed. Nevertheless, it's absorbing and very powerful. Worth all the plaudits, for sure.

[Shomeret · Rating 5 out of 5]

A frequent objection to utopian literature is that it's boring. Fiction relies on conflict. There is no conflict within a perfect society. One way of dealing with this problem is to develop external threats which the utopians must combat. Yet the big question that undermines the very existence of utopia remains. Is it possible for a society that intends to be utopian to be perfect for all those within its borders?

Everfair by Nisi Shawl is an alternate history that approaches utopia honestly by attempting to address that big question. I received a free copy from the publisher via Net Galley in return for this review.

One thing that I noticed about the Fabians in Everfair is that they were continually assuming that allies or settlers in Everfair with very different cultural backgrounds shared the same attitudes and goals as they did. Without a certain Chinese inventor who evidently wasn't a pacifist like the Fabians, Everfair wouldn't have survived for very long. I think that the Fabians were a catalyst for change in the Congo, but they weren't the actual changemakers.

The Fabians seemed to have perceived their purpose in Africa as benevolent. Obviously, they weren't conscienceless killers like King Leopold, but they were still European occupiers of African territory. So what was a utopia to the Fabians, very definitely wasn't one to the characters who were persons of color.

I value Everfair for its originality, its insight and the moving stories that it told about a number of well-developed characters. I consider it a strong candidate for the finest novel that I read in 2016.

For my complete review see http://shomeretmasked.blogspot.com/20...

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

I gave this 100 pages (105 to be exact). The writing was lovely and I quite *wanted* to like it, but unfortunately I found it boring and lacking in any character I cared about.

Those 100 pages were told through probably half a dozen characters, none of whom stuck with me very well. And there was a very odd structural build to the narrative. We never *saw* anything actually happen on screen. Instead, character A would be standing in the ashes of some raid opining on all that had been lost. Did we see the raid? Did we see the people who made the raid coming to that decision? Did we see any previous evidence that character A cared so deeply about what they had supposedly just lost? Did we even quite remember who character A was supposed to be, again?

Nope.

Or: this. Character B is ruminating on how much they love character C all of a sudden. Have we ever actually seen characters B and C interacting on the page? Well...maybe, but I can't actually remember a single scene of them so much as exchanging names. Suddenly they are great lovers torn apart?

Okay.

I failed to connect with a single character in this narrative. I've already forgotten most of their names. And as far into it as I did get, there was basically no steampunk technology as implied by that dynamite cover. A couple of times they talked about 'hardened tears'--which I guess was rubber? But it didn't even feel like an alternate history world; if you didn't know certain things didn't actually happen, it would just read like a kind of convoluted historical fiction.

anyway, tl;dr, it's not you, it's me, I wish this book had been better.

[Rachel (Kalanadi) · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's with some sadness and regret that I have to say upfront... I very much anticipated Everfair, but it ultimately did not reach the potential I thought it had. It has great qualities and some weaknesses, which I will tackle in turn.

In Everfair, Shawl excellently uses steampunk in a new and exciting way. She explores how history might have been different for the Congo if the native people had had access to steam-powered technology, to give them an advantage against the brutal, horrific rule of Leopold II. Going into this book, I didn't know about this time period: from 1885 to 1908, King Leopold II of Belgium decimated the Congo Free State in Africa, enslaving, mutilating, and killing the people there to obtain the area's natural resources. I can't believe I had never learned about this part of history before. And in Everfair, Shawl asks how might life have been for the indigenous people, if they had had more advanced technology and if a few other historical events had gone a little differently.

The Everfair of the title is a country in the Congo. It is founded by a diverse group of people, some white and some black, who are seeking freedom (of ideology, religion, race, etc.). Everfair becomes not just an experimental colony, but also a haven for people escaping Leopold's cruelty. The book focuses on three wars: Everfair's fight against Leopold, their involvement in World War I, and then their own internal crisis.

Where Everfair shines is in its concept. It is strongest in the ideas it wants to express about colonialism, race, gender, religion, sexuality, and technology. As a tiny example, one of the things I liked the most, one of those many "what ifs?" peppered throughout, is the prosthetic hands. A number of characters lose one of their hands (Leopold II and white colonialists were real bastards). An Everfair resident invents steam-powered prosthetic replacements. How these prosthetic hands are used and described was really great. This is absolutely what I expected to see in this book: steampunk melding with the real history of this place.

But then I have to come to what this book doesn't do so well. I was interested as the characters were introduced and Everfair was founded... but then it didn't quite proceed as I hoped after the setup. And it's this: I don't think Shawl has successfully told a story in this book.

If this is intended to be the story of Everfair as a state, then it doesn't hit the mark. It reads like a timeline of events. Which may be appropriate for a history textbook, but it isn't a smooth story. The chapters are short; they read like snippets or vignettes cut from a much bigger (more interesting) narrative. The jumps between chapters are huge - from a couple of months to a couple of years. Most major events, from political deals to interpersonal crises, happen off screen. They are infodumped or hazily referred to in the next chapter... leaving me frequently asking, 'What just happened?"

If this book is the story of its characters, then it also stumbles. There's a very large cast, many of whom have points of view. Most of them don't get that much page time. Everfair spans 25 years in the lives of at least a dozen people, but you're never in any one person's head for long enough to get deep under their skin. I was seriously in doubt for most of the book about characters' feelings and motivations. Many of their choices don't stand up under scrutiny because they exist in an information vacuum.

Any single one of these characters could have had an entire book devoted to only their story, and it would have been fascinating! A book only focusing on Lisette and Daisy's strained love affair. Or only on Tink, exploring his enslavement, his escape, his inventions, his love, his family back in Macao. Or Josina, the king's wife, and how she helps manipulate the political and social landcape of Everfair. Or the King Mwenda himself, as he struggles with war, consolidating power, balancing the many issues of his kingdom. Or Fwendi, the spy! She was my favorite character!

Clearly, at least, the characters are interesting, which is why the lack of development is so disappointing. I get excited just thinking about what could have been. But instead Everfair only gives you a small taste of each character. And tied together as the history of Everfair, it feels choppy and disjointed.

I wanted a lot more from this book. I will emphasize its good points though: it has an imaginative premise that is well-worth reading for. It tackles important subjects. It achieves a wonderful, deft use of steampunk . And the language, the writing, is very good. I only wish there had been more of it.

[Ashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was realllly looking forward to this book. I mean, come on. An alternate history exploring what it would have been like if the Congo Free State (shudder) never existed due to the invention of steampunk-like technologies. Instead, and I'm gonna steal from the blurb here,

"Fabian Socialists from Great Britain join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's 'owner,' King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated."

That just fires my imagination right up there. A story that has the potential to imagine a better world for thousands, perhaps millions of people? To imagine correcting one of the worst human atrocities in history? There is SO MUCH possibility built into that premise. And on top of that, Shawl's story is populated right from the start with voices of people who have historically been silenced. Not only the Congolese people, but women and other POC, as well as LGBTQ+ people. (Guys, um spoilers, but there's a lesbian love triangle in this book, and how often have you seen that in a fantasy story?)

And yet.

I was almost immediately disengaged from this book. Shawl's prose is fine. Sort of beautiful, even. But it also felt emotionally empty, largely because of the way she chose to structure her narrative. This is not an immersive story set in a fantastical or historically detailed period. It's a collage of timehopping events spread so far out both over time and emotion that it's almost impossible to actually care about what's going on. Just as you get your bearings in a scene/setting, she ends it and fast-forwards you five years. I also thought the worldbuilding was very weak. The supposed technology that made this alternate history possible was barely there. In fact, I almost missed it. There was no focus on how it changed the world. There was no focus on how Everfair came to be. There was no focus on the details of how this new state affected people's lives. In other words, none of the stuff that made me so intrigued in the premise. It was almost detached, a historical view of a fantasy history, told in fragments. I had to force myself to finish it.

So yeah, just really disappointed in this one. I'd be curious to see if it worked better for others.

[Christina Pilkington · Rating 2 out of 5]

*2.5 stars

When I first heard of this book, I was hesitant to pick it up because the story didn’t seem like something I would be interested in. But I wanted to read all the Nebula nominees this year, so I gave it a shot and read it.

Let me tell you…it was a rough book to get through.

I’ll start off by saying that I have to give credit to Shawl for attempting such a wide-ranging story, a story that spans 1889-1919, all within 381 pages. It was certainly an ambitious goal. It was also ambitious to tackle the subject of the story… the horrible atrocities committed by King Leopold II of Belgium in his colonization of the Congo and the murder of millions of African people.

If I was rating this book on bringing an important period of history to light that is often ignored, and having the vision to imagine what would have happened if the Congo had steampunk technology to help them, and the historical research and often gorgeous writing that went into crafting this book, I would have given it 5 stars for sure.

But, unfortunately, the size and scope of the book didn’t match up, and so the book was disappointingly underwhelming, which is a shame because given the time and space to tell this story properly, this could have been an amazing book.

We’re introduced to about 8 POV characters, which wouldn’t be that bad in a 1,000 page fantasy novel that takes place over the course of a year or two, but is problematic in a book under 400 pages that takes place over 30 years. There is no time to get attached to any of the characters. Even more frustrating is having to flip back and forth to see how much time has past since we last heard from a certain POV character,and, if you’re lucky, get a few sentences of summary of what happened to that character over the last maybe 5 years.

The book really felt like a historical narrative highlighting the big events that happened and filling us in on some of the key players that helped form that history. Even the steampunk elements felt like a backdrop to the story instead of adding something new and interesting.

So while on an intellectual level I could appreciate what this book was doing, while reading it I was never engaged with the story on an emotional level or ever pulled into the plot. However, I do think that Nisi Shawl is a talented writer with a unique voice, and I would love to read something more from her in the future.

[Allison Hurd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. A sort of scifi imagining of the formation and evolution of a Congolese nation akin to Liberia.

CONTENT WARNING: slavery, ageism, racism, homophobia, torture/body horror, loss of a child, loss of a loved one, diaspora.

Things to love:

-Honesty of the exercise. There isn't really more plot than the author's attempt to envision what it would take to form and continue a society of people without human violations, in a time when white supremacy was even more accepted than it is today, with the back drop of the world wars and so on. I think that Shawl was as thorough and thoughtful in her scenario building as any of the great SF world builders.

-The research. The knowledge of the times, the humanity, the struggle between wanting to grow, accept change and provide shelter to the rootless and also the pain of watching the people you welcomed overstay that welcome. While I don't know much about the formation of Liberia or the local religions or customs in Congo, the intricacy and empathy displayed make it at least feel very lived in.

-The relationships. I think this is where it really switched gears for me. We see all sides of all the interactions, and understand why everyone is doing what they're doing, even if we hate it. Like the first white immigrants to this area as well as the locals, the only thing we all agree on is that human bondage is unacceptable and should be fought against at all costs. The rest is...messy. Frustrating, beautiful, important, and so freaking tangled. Just a really amazing job capturing that feeling.

-The tech. I did enjoy the separate growth of the dirigible. Again there was a brief time when blimps were poised to surpass airplanes as a mode of travel, and this book has a lot of fun running with that concept.

-Inclusion. I say it all the time--everyone has always been a part of history. Again, Shawl awed me with her effortless and unremarked inclusion of interracial couples, queer folks in that full spectrum, people with mental illness, people with physical infirmities, people who are older, people who are smart, rich, greedy, impulsive and all other aspects of our humanity. Yes, sure, some of these are important to the story in that the world was not as egalitarian as Shawl worked to be in her book, but the fact that they existed and had the right to expect the full array of human rights was a given. In short, while everyone was different, even in their responses to those differences, no one was fetishized or demonized for it.

Things that I'm not sure I loved:

-Tink's story. He kinda petered out in a way that felt a bit weaker than other story lines and made me question what his story added to the whole. The guesses I have are not terribly favorable, so I'm still chewing on it.

-Thin plot. Like I said, it's a bit thin and a few of the devices used to move things along were a bit blunt.

-The end. We kind of just...stop. Which, I guess sort of makes sense. Tell me any nation's history. What point in time do you choose to end it? How do you put a bow on something still evolving? But at the same time, I did come here for a story, and I do expect stories to have beginnings, middles and ends, at a minimum.

Still, when I reflect on my experience with this book, I'm highly impressed and glad to have finally gotten to it! I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to, but I think it's one of the most hopeful looks at really dark subjects I've so far read, so if you're looking for a book that wants to impart things without judgment or grimdark dwelling on the horror, this was a good one.

[Cheryl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, I loved the premise of this book and at first I was hooked by the story. But while I was really slogging through the middle of it I realized I wasn't connected at all to either the story or the characters. It should have been right up my alley, but it wasn't.

I am learning more about myself as a reader and I think this book just did not tick my boxes, as it were. I like very fleshed-out characters who engage in real meaningful dialogue that gives me insight into their lives and motivations. Also, I want to feel like I'm right there in the room (or jungle) with them. Unfortunately, I didn't get any of these things from Everfair. And you'd think that war and slavery would be pretty substantial motivation! I found myself confused during most of this book, perhaps because of the short chapters and the constantly moving POV or setting.

I was intrigued by the alternate-history aspect and the steampunk components. And, now I am interested in learning more about this place & time in history and King Leopold (bastard!). But unfortunately this book was not a good read for me. With regret I give this 1* of 5, but ymmv.

[Fran · Rating 5 out of 5]

With Everfair, Nisi Shawl not only redraws the steampunk map, she reworks history itself, revealing points at which change is entirely within our grasp. Within this sweeping narrative, Everfair's characters are beautifully drawn, yet treated with such a level gaze that one expects to find all of them in history books upon finishing the novel. Interlacing subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in hearts, minds, and communities against the background of the rubber trade, WWI, and King Leopold's reign, Shawl builds a fulcrum for change. In short, Everfair embodies wonder: both technologically, as is familiar to fans of the genre, and in the matters of possibility and hope. Nisi Shawl has breathed new life into the genre.

(From my blurb of Everfair. Reader, I loved it.)

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I failed this book - although I really, really tried. It contains everything that I typically love in story making and world building, but I just couldn't put it all together to make it work for me. My fault, not the author's - but I will definitely give her short story collection a read one day in hopes that is where I can connect.

This line was my favorite, taken not from the novel but from the first line of her Acknowledgements:

"Writing is a solitary act that expresses the genius of a community."

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everfair - Nisi Shawl It's an alternate history in which a genocide doesn't happen.
It's about a utopian society that isn't so cleverly set up as to avoid all problems, but in which people work to find different, practical, solutions.
It's steampunk that feels utterly plausible.
It's a book that acknowledges the tremendous breadth and depth of people and cultures throughout Africa, although it focuses on one nation.
It is a marvelous accomplishment in every sense of the word, and I'm sure it's going to be one of my top reads for the year, and probably every other reader's list, because it is a book that makes you go "ohhh" and "ahhh", that constantly delights and surprises, even though it is addressing many of the darkest aspects of colonialism.
It's a book that reminded me of how new and appealing are the many voices in scifi these days, and actually makes me feel optimistic about humanity.
Sweet, fancy Moses, it's just a great, sweeping Victorian "ills of society" novel, such as those of Charles Dickens, but with a light touch. It's just perfect.
 
Now goo, read it right away, unless you're devoting October to horror, in which case, okay, but then you have to start it on November first.
 
ARC provided by publisher via GoodReads

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited to get my hands on a copy of Everfair to see how Nisi Shawl would re-imagine the outcome of the Belgian occupation of the Congo. Since reading King Leopold’s Ghost in college, I remained curious about this period of history that I had previously known very little about. The prospect of an alternate history featuring mechanical prosthetics, airships and the like drew me in, so I agreed to read and review the book. (Thanks Tor!)

The character cast was broad and rather diverse. I was surprised to find my favorites were Tink, a boy from Macao, who was skilled in the production of mechanical prosthetics and steam powered devices, and Fwendi, a Congolese girl who was both actress and spy. Unfortunately I felt that neither one of these characters got enough screen/page time because it was mostly focused on Daisy and Lisette. Both were extremely involved in the political side of things and their chapters usually dragged along for me. They had spots of interest, but overall there was an emotional disconnect with them and most of the other characters in the book.

The story of Everfair spans more than twenty years, from the founding of the colony, through the war with the Belgians, the events of WWI and further. This isn’t a particularly long book and the time span is significant. As a result, readers get few details of the war with the Belgians and the characters remain shallow of depth. I feel like this would have been better broken into perhaps two books, one of the founding and expulsion of Belgian influence, and a second detailing the events in the latter years. This would have allowed for more details, more character development, and a more interesting read.

Overall, I found this book to unfortunately be uninteresting. Everfair took me nearly a week to read, and I barely skimmed the last 40 or so pages because I just wanted to be done.

[Bryan Alexander]

Right off the bat I must confess to potential bias. Nisi and I used to work for the same pair of bookstores in Ann Arbor, back in the 20th century. I'm a fan and admirer.

Everfair is an alternate history, with the divergent point coming in the late 1800s, when a group of British socialists, American missionaries, and a local king carve a new country out of king Leopold's nightmarish Congo colony. They create Everfair, a multiracial state that lasts into the 20th century.

That description makes the novel sound like epic alt-historical fiction, which it is. Shawl offers battles and assassinations, new technologies and economies. We see Everfair plunge into WWI (on the Central Powers' side), escape the great influenza, fall into civil strife, and somehow persist into the great decolonialization of the 20th century. Characters are kings and spies, poets and technicians.

Everfair also partakes of other genres. It is certainly in the steampunk mode, with steam bicycles, airships, gear-driven mechanical hands, knife-throwing guns (the "shongun"), early heavier-than-air craft, and waterfall-climbing boats. It shows us "a new mechanical friend" in its very first paragraph. It also touches on fantasy, with ghosts and at least one god, characters fighting real-world battles in dreams, conducting espionage via temporarily possessed cats, interrogating prisoners via chicken-scratching divination (181), using bees to attack enemies, and suffering physical side effects of magical implementations.

The novel is also a utopia, and a daring one. Consider: the nation appears in the teeth of true horror, Leopold's Congo (cf Heart of Darkness most famously). It imagines a multi-racial community during a time when racism became "scientific" and the basis for horrific state actions. We see same-sex love during the era which most clearly made heterosexuality compulsory. Listen to the utopian desire in the country's national anthem:

From many countries we journeyed afar
To find the place where our dreams could come true;
With eyes wide open, we dared to plan a paradise;
A home for all and any, our home in you.(238)

Yet the focus of the novel is really on a set of characters, their relationships and their personal growth. Chapters are less about historical sweep and more devoted to conversations and meetings, where these people struggle to achieve a tactical goal, or survive an encounter, win back a lover, teach a group of students, or win the approval of a parent. We begin and end the book with Lisette Toutournier, a polymathic French woman who becomes a key player in Everfair's development. Her relationship with poet Daisy is so important that the novel chooses "love" as its final word. Indeed, romance plots are in many ways Everfair's primary motor.

These characters and their relationships are enormously diverse. They are drawn not only from Africa but the United States, several European nations, and China. Their romances cross genders and races. Like I said above, this is a warm and defiant politics hurled in the teeth of a conservative age.

The novel's style fascinates me. As some readers have noted for example, Everfair doesn't show most of the historical events it references. Frequently we learn about a war, an alliance, or a plague in passing, as one character observes it having happened. At first this bugged me, as I wanted to learn more about these events. Gradually I realized that the characters are what's most important within this novel. King Mwenda's strategies are important, yes, but perhaps more so his relationship with his wife, the way he grapples with his spirit father, and his friendships. Again, the novel's final word isn't history or time or campaign, but love.

Everfair is a pleasure to read because of so many lovely passages.

They rose before the sun did so that Wheatley might rise into the sky with it. (286)
A hush descended as the Reverend Thomas Jefferson Wilson took the podium. A dark, slim, upright man in dark dress, he stood out in the Small Concert Room's gleaming brightness like a wick in a brass lamp. His words were fire. (28)

(Wheatley is an airship, named after Phillis Wheatley)
One chapter describing the invention of a new airship engine builds to a final sentence closing with "graceful - almost stately - revolutions", offering both a neat pun (physical rotation->political upheaval) and (I think) a nice description of the book itself (101).

I admire and recommend this novel. In a 2017 when America is suffering from political polarization, resurgent racism, and a spectacularly bad president, Everfair is a fine place to dream with.

[Kristin B. Bodreau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Objectively, this book was very good. Well written, evocative, nuanced. There was lush description of place, fascinating relationship dynamics, intrigue and complex political machinations with no clear “good guys.” It even had really cool steampunk tech as well as more traditional cultural elements.

However, I was very bored. This is not the fault of the book necessarily. If you like stories that cover decades and very broad scale changes, this is an excellent book. I am an impatient reader and this is not a book for impatient folks.

My only real gripe is that I don’t like fantasy elements where they don’t feel like they belong. I LOVE fantasy. It is in fact my favorite genre. But Fwendi’s cats and the gifts of Loango felt very out of place here.

[Ruxandra Grrr · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a very frustrating experience for me. I was expecting to love it and I'm sad I did not. Quite the contrary. Nisi Shawl chooses an extremely wide scope for this story of not even 400 pages. And I felt scattered everywhere, unmoored, unable to tether myself to any sort of character or storyline, even though the potential was incredibly high!

Which, considering that two of the bisexual women POV characters start out the story as lovers even though they live in a sort of free love arrangement with the husband of one of them?! That's like catnip for me, and yet...

I honestly would have preferred this to be either 800 pages or a duology, with each of the two parts as a separate, chonky book. I think writing about the decentralized forming of a nation absolutely *demands* plurality in voices and POV characters (which exists here), but there is such plurality that everyone and every plot or conflict becomes lost in the weeds. But also, it's decentralized and a monarchy?!

There are way too many POV characters and also the time axis is super long - this takes place over 30 years -, which means that so many interesting things either happen off-page (one of the main POV characters we follow in the beginning dies off-page even), don't have time to be developed or are introduced very late in the game. I was baffled by some of the choices. Like finding out that Fwendi can enter the minds of cats at around 68%?

Some of the chapters could have been just summarized in a sentence and it would not have made a dent in the overall story, and some of the characters were very one-note: Martha, for instance, is so obsessed with how not everyone in Everfair is Christian and that seems to be her only character trait, other than her occupation as a medical professional. A lot of the chapters don't even take place in Everfair anyway.

And yet, with such large scope, I have no idea what the people are fighting for - what day-to-day life is like in Everfair, for normal people and important characters alike, what exactly they're fighting for, what are the values? There is no sitting put here, to just feel how a normal day passes, we can't sit with the characters and their quite interesting conflicts about identity, racism, religion, love, acceptance.

And it's sad, because of that potential and because the prose is quite beautiful in many places. I just wish it had had time to breathe.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Everfair' has an absolutely brilliant central concept: that Belgium's genocidal colonisation of the Congo was successfully resisted by a coalition of native people, Fabian socialists from Britain, and African American missionaries. It recounts the tumultuous history of the free country Everfair from 1889 to 1919. While I adored the story and the ideas it contained, I was not keen on the way it was told. The narrative is curiously fragmentary, with short chapters from many different points of view that skim over major events very swiftly. I found it difficult to keep track of who everyone was and what was happening, as time was rarely spent getting to know a character or exploring the implications of an event.

I wish the novel had been twice as long, so that the ideas within it had more space to develop. There are so many interesting things going on: resistance to colonialism, steampunk technology, solidarity and conflict between oppressed groups, religious friction, fraught romances, spying, multiple wars, propaganda, assassinations, a plague, constitutional debates, etc. The best alternate history I've read recently, The Years of Rice and Salt, drew its complex narrative together by using a small cast of reincarnating characters. In 'Everfair', I can understand that the aim was likely to show a wide diversity of perspectives, but unfortunately the large number of characters confused me. Fewer protagonists and a slower paced plot would have made it more readable. Nonetheless, the ideas are fascinating and I would like to read more anti-imperialist novels of this kind.

[Milton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nisi Shawl's Steamfunk alternative history novel Everfair is an amazing tome of historical detail and character development. It centers around a terrible time in history, the exploitation and genocide of the Congo region of Africa by King Leopold II. In Nisi's re-imagining a new country is established in the midst of this horror, Everfair. The inhabitants of this land are a mix; defiant indigenous Congolese, determined Jacobins from England, evangelical Black Christians from America, and workers from various other parts of the globe. Together they form a nation that confronts and eventually goes to war against the Belgians.

Nisi's meticulous research stands out in Everfair. The details of late 19th century life, history and morals standout in this story, making it an interesting read for history buffs like myself. At the same time her re-imagining satisfies the fantastic reader as well, with the creation of steam-powered dirigibles and mystical intrusions. I also enjoyed the characters. There is always a chance that books with diverse characters will seem forced and deliberate. Nisi's characters fit well into this story, showing that they were developed as part of the telling, not added as an afterthought. What I enjoyed most about the story was the logical ending, another brilliant example of Nisi's attention to detail and circumstances.

Nisi tells a complex and compelling tale worth the read. It does what Steamfunk is supposed to do, incorporating the story of people of African/African Diaspora descent in a genre that often neglects the historical and cultural contributions of others. It's a book well worth the read.

[ambyr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think ambitious exceeds craft here a bit, but oh, what ambition! It's hard not to applaud it even when the execution has flaws. As alternate history this is astonishing and inventive, and also uncompromising in its refusal to exposit--if you don't know your late 19th and early 20th century history (and my knowledge is not as great as it might be), this is best read with at the very least Wikipedia near to hand.

That's not what I consider a flaw, by the way; I appreciate a book that goes full steam ahead and lets its readers catch up however they may. What I found frustrating was the choppiness of the sections. As snapshots of political and cultural change, they were perfectly chosen and formed a fascinating mosaic, but as portraits of individuals, they were frustratingly opaque. I understood the broad sweep of events, but not the participants' individual motivations--particularly when it came to matters of the heart. We are told there are a lot of great (and sometimes tragic) love stories here, but I never really bought any of the chemistry.

I did appreciate that so many of the love stories were between women (why did no one tell me this book was chock full of lesbians and bi women? perhaps I simply wasn't paying enough attention), but if they were going to be there at all, I wish they had been more fleshed out. This is the rare book that I think could have benefited from an extra hundred pages or two.

[Hank · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up because I appreciate the effort.
The multiple perspectives and general, planning a city without problems, ideas were good but none of it was compelling enough for me. I was unable to attach to any of them and there wasn't much of a story.

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of those books that I admired more than I enjoyed. I think it was also a weird read for me because I think it's talking back to mainstream steampunk, but this is the only steampunk I've ever read. It's an ambitious alt history novel that reworks the atrocities of Belgium's colonization of the Congo. Fascinating concepts but the wide scope left me not feeling connected with the characters and not feeling invested in their stories.