Book Review: The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes

 

The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes

Hardcover, 166 pages

Published November  2019 by Gallery / Saga Press 

 

Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novella (2020)

Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novella (2019)

 Locus Award Nominee for Best Novella (2020)

Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror (2019)

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Science Fiction (2019)

 

This is my second Rivers Solomon book this summer.  They were the author of the powerful generation ship novel An Unkindness of Ghosts. That was a powerful debut novel and a great example of Afrofuturism. It was a book I found challenging while I was reading it on a couple of levels.  For one thing, it was a brutal story about slavery and the antebellum south through the lens of science fiction. At the same time the method of world-building was done in a style I didn't really connect with. The thing is the story stayed with me long after I closed the book.

The Deep is a similar book. I enjoyed it as I was reading it, but liked it better after I closed it and thought about it more. The most famous person involved in this project is Daveed Davis famous for originating the role of Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton. He is the frontman of the Afrofuturist hip-hop group Clipping. What a cool project. I love the idea of a concept being expressed in music, prose and maybe someday I think it would make a great anime film.

The Clipping song that inspired the book

 

The novel is a somewhat surreal fantasy, if you get hung up on how people talk below water or how the under ocean city works you are missing the point. The song/novel is inspired by the idea that the children of pregnant African slaves thrown overboard crossing the Atlantic survive to become generations of merpeople.
 
 The story is focused on Yetu whose job is to remember, that is how the history is passed down. When Yetu experiences short moments of the above world of the Two-legs the contrast is clear.  The story and much of the world building is all there in the song and it is expanded in the novel. One theme the book explores very well is the need and trauma of passing the history down through generations. The act of remembering is important but painful process in this culture. When their culture mixes with the land and the "Two-Legs" is when the people start fully understand their origins.

“I AM THANKFUL FOR THE ocean, from which life springs. I am thankful for the ancestors, who lived, which is all any of us can do. And I am thankful for our vast human history, wide and various enough that there are legacies of triumph for every legacy of trauma. Everything is always changing, which means nothing can ever be hopeless.”

The Deep is a novel that is heavy on the atmosphere and the tone. The concept is high but not explained in details. Sci-fi reader who want things to be literal or explained fully should probably not read this. Part of the fun of this novel is that it is nothing we have ever seen before. A novel that started as a Hip-hop tune and a concept so beautifully strange that turns a horror of history into an unexpected evolution.

 "We wajinru live Zoti's ignorant lie for centuries, convinced our castles in the deep can shield us. The Ocean is more than our home or birthplace. It is our heaven, too. For we were knit together by the powers of it's life force."
 
The spiritual force just under the surface of this book is so much more important than the details. Based on a song this novel is short and not a traditionally structured narrative. I think the short length is perfect. Sorry for the obvious analogy but if it was longer narrative-wise the reader would start it feel out to sea. A longer piece would need more structure in my opinion. Still, this is a neat book that makes a great companion to the song.