Reviews with content warning for Death - The Deep

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Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

148 reviews

grace_b_3's review against another edition

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reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This a very meditative novella that touches on memory, history, and community. This definitely feels like a book that sits with you. While I wish that the world-building was a little bit more developed, I understand that that is not the point of this book. It says what it needs to say.

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meshuganush's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book is one that I will be contemplating for a long time. The way it was written really allowed us to feel Yetu's constant pain and confusion as she tries to hold onto the history while still maintaining her own identity. This was a truly remarkable mythology based on the generational trauma of the middle passage. I didn't love the characters but I think that makes sense since Yetu's character was fairly subsumed by her role of holding the history.

I really loved the solution that they came up with and how her pain was lifted by being able to spread it out and share it with her people and by doing so she was also now able to see the beauty of the history and not just the pain.

I really recommend reading The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael Twitty, it is a spectacular nonfiction book where the author takes us through his journey to uncover the roots of southern cuisine as well as his roots as an African American whos ancestors were enslaved in the united states. It lends some beautiful context to the themes of homeland and ancestral history.

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bucketsjen's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

The children of pregnant African women thrown overboard by slavers have adapted to the water and built their own society. They appoint one person every generation to be the Historian that holds all of their memories - but the current historian is struggling as the only person holding the awareness of pain and history. She returns the memories and flees, leaving her people to grapple with their history alone as she tries to find herself... but of course, their unprocessed pain effects everything.

Has themes of cultural, generational, and personal trauma, the pain of being the only one who Knows and Understands, and processing/healing to move forward. It's REALLY well done. While the subject matter is heavy, it's managed deftly and the book is surprisingly healing to read.

I really recommend the audiobook for this one. Daveed Diggs does an incredible job, and the work's musical history really lends it to auditory retelling. There's an Afterward by Diggs which was an awesome addition to the story (he's funny and insightful).

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numerous_bees's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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anaheeta's review against another edition

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emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I seem to be very very fortunate lately as I keep reading books that make me want to start from the beginning right as I finish them.

This was so so so beautiful and heartbreaking in a good way. And also the creation of the story and the multiple steps it took for this book to come to be (read the editor’s words) was fascinating. It was based on a horribly tragic historical genocide, one of pregnant/in labor African women thrown off of slave ships.
Without giving away any more of the story, it’s sci-fi fantasy about life, love, and generational trauma. The book delves into the traumas of an underwater civilization and how the traumas are handled. How individuality and community interact. How change and progress works.

It was just a beautiful beautiful work of fiction and I have become a fan of Rivers Solomon, can’t wait to read more of their work!

Trigger warnings: slavery, racism, blood, death, misogyny, grief, generational trauma,

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biobeetle's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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agnela's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

The star was slow because of how confused I was, but the story was important, and the premise was amazing.

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ginalucia's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The Deep is a must-read for anyone interested in exploring the complexities of history and humanity in a deeply moving way.

I was immediately drawn in by the story's atmosphere - it's incredibly immersive and gripping right from the start. It eases you into its world before taking you on an emotional rollercoaster.

The Deep is a beautifully haunting tale that forces you to confront the harsh realities of slavery while also offering a glimpse of hope for healing and growth.

Throughout the novella, it delves into themes of generational trauma, memory, and the search for belonging, making it a deeply thought-provoking read.

The writing style is dark and lyrical, which I found intense in the best possible way. Despite its shorter length, the story packs a powerful punch. I won’t be forgetting this read.

As a bonus, I highly recommend reading the afterward, as it offers insights into the creation of The Deep.

For more reviews and book recommendations, check out my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/ginaluciayt

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tessamd's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The message and plot of this book are beautiful. However, as important as the message was, I felt beat over the head with it. There was little room for imagination and interpretation. Since the book was so short, there was also no time to get to know the characters well

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pacifickat's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This was a wonderfully original fantasy novella with excellent world building, a unique culture, and themes of collective memory and belonging in tension with the main character's desire for self-determination and autonomy. It is also set against the horror of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the cruel deaths of so many abducted Africans at sea. The Wajinru, children of African pregnant mothers thrown overboard by cruel captors and transformed into merpeople, have a history marked by tremendous grief. What I liked best about the storytelling was the lyrical style employed when describing the Wajinru in the first half of the story, and again toward the end. As a chorus, their voice is stunningly rendered.

However, there was a section toward the middle where

Yetu, the main character and ‘memory keeper’ for her people, is separated from the rest of her culture. This was less interesting to me in terms of style, but necessary for the plot of the story. Yetu longs for self-determination, individual freedom, and to be an ‘I’ in a culture of ‘we’. It is her voice that annoyed me a bit, the inclusion of details about her romantic inclinations and sexual preferences as well as her personal curiosity regarding biological distinctions between humans and merpeople. I found the unique history and anthropology of the Wajinru far more captivating than the nitty gritty of their biology. Yet Yetu’s individuality is part of the point of the story, that she doesn’t want to be swallowed up and erased in a collective oneness with her people. And what is more individual than that which a person chooses to love, and how they choose to express their affection?

Ultimately this is a story about finding balance, between a traumatic past and a hopeful future, between individual and communal identity, between colonizing forces and indigenous cultures, and between the land and sea itself. It is also about remembering.

"Remember. […] That was all remembering was, prodding them lest they try to move on from things that should not be moved on from. Forgetting is not the same as healing.” - Yetu

"One can only go so long without asking, ‘Who am I? Where do I come from? What does all this mean? What is being? What came before me, and what might come after?’ Without answers there is only a hole, a whole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities.” - Amamba

Yetu bears all of her people’s generational trauma, that is her role as ‘memory keeper’ in a society where long-term memory has largely been erased to give her people the freedom to thrive in the present unhindered by a painful past. She is their matriarch, but she is ill-suited for the role.

Out of an instinct for self-preservation, being unable to hold all of her peoples’ pain alone, she ultimately is the one to bring the wisdom of balance to the Wajinru.

"She couldn’t determine which was worse, the pain of the ancestors or the pain of the living. Both fed off her.”

"She learned how to make an inch for herself.”

"She touched each one of them, figuring out how each Wajinru was outside of the oneness the remembrance brought. That mattered. Who each of them was mattered as much as who all of them were together.”

"They could bear it all together.”

It is also a story about the function of memory in culture-making and identity.

One poignant detail is that Yetu and her romantic human interest, Oori, turn out to have come from the same distant ancestors. When Oori’s homeland is swallowed up by the sea, their history washed away, both characters lost something deep and sacred. However, they gained something as well, in the relationship they chose to forge in the present together.

In the afterward, The Deep is described as “a game of cumulative telephone.” The concept began as a song and was adapted over time by different musical groups until this novelization was produced.

“Each new telling of The Deep has been productive rather than destructive, and each new iteration has been carried out with admiration for the previous, […] happily taking on adaptations of each new interpreter into the future.”

This is a wonderful description of culture-making, the turning of ‘I’ into ‘we’, of carrying our stories, traumas, and longings together, erasing loneliness in the context of a communal tribe. It is forming collective memory, adapting a shared history into a cohesive perspective, a meaningful and unifying mythology.

"The living put their own mark on the dead.”

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