Reviews with content warning for Rape - An Unkindness of Ghosts

This was an adventurous, compelling, dark, and overall loaded scifi novel.

Taking place on a multilevel spaceship, traveling through space attempting to find a habitable planet, it's passengers are quite literally divided by levels of "class".

We follow Aster who lives in the lower deck "Tarlands" of the Matilda, apart of a community made up of POC, that is abused and oppressed by the "upper deckers".
In the wake of the ship leaders death, Matilda struggles to uncover the truth about her own mothers death and the seemingly inconspicuous connections between the two.

This novel gave me very much Octavia Butler vibes. The characters were very unlovable but in a tangible, realistic way. I found myself only being able to consume a few chapters at a time to be able to soak it all in.
The ending left me SO unsatisfied, but again, in a way that I just can't stop thinking about. Was it a neat and tidy ending? Absolutely not. But there's something...fitting about that.

Content Warnings

jessthanthree's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious 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

Content Warnings

mazomazli's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad 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

4.5

This is definitely one of the hardest books I’ve ever read emotionally. It deeply pulls from the history of American chattel slavery for world building. If you’ve read Kindred by Octavia Butler it’s in that type of atmosphere but more graphic.

I would like to inform anyone who has or will compare this to the Handmaid’s Tale that you are incorrect for doing so. I highly recommend any form of nonfiction on the realities of people who were enslaved in the US so you understand that the things read in this book happened often to real people. I would also say it pulls from actual history similarly like the Poppy War trilogy where that author pulled accounts from survivors of the Rape of Nanjing to put directly in. I also might say that like the Poppy War, the real history was toned down a little meaning the events in this book are still not as cruel as the real worlds.

Here’s a long and incomplete list of topics addressed throughout the book: being autistic in a world that is quick to do violence to you and trying to navigate it, what people do to survive constant sexual assault and rape, child on child sexual abuse after both experiencing and witnessing so much, physical abuse and violence at every turn, the stories told amongst those who are surviving to hold each other up, a character who is white passing and trying to help those oppressed, police brutality (literally overseers are the origins of cops), and a character with psychosis/paranoia (perhaps schizophrenia) with lots of self harm.

There are so many things I think of between the way Aster tries to always be prepared for when violence comes for her, how Giselle was both vibrant and subdued and so complicated, and the way Theo presents himself and how his uncle likely had abused him as a child and he does not remember. I feel so much for Giselle. It is very uncommon to see a severely mentally ill character depicted so realistically - at the end of the day she wasn’t the big scary danger to every one else. The majority of the violence she did was against herself or objects.

This is definitely a check if you’re in the headspace before you try this, but I think it’s worth it.

Content Warnings