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A review by carduelia_carduelis
The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan
4.0
What a novel to start the year off!
This book is a spectacular achievement. The narrative techniques in the opening chapters absolutely blew me away. There is variety in style, in who is telling the story, the pacing.
Much of my enjoyment was also from the early tension of the protagonists/antagonists and their power struggles. Morgan really knows how to write tension.
Enjoyment is a strong word but I feel justified using it for the first few chapters. Maybe because, or in spite of, the later themes of natural selection and people interpreting it to justify racism and selective inbreeding, not manifesting as strongly in the opening chapters.
I'm so glad this book was written and was so unflinching in its approach to these themes.
Because it doesn't matter that this was written in 2016, excuses for treating people of colour as inferior, like the ones used by both generations of Henry Ford exist to this day. And one of the strengths here is that the book lays them out without obvious criticism for many pages: letting them exist as statements and then prove themselves to be utterly absurd: first in practice, then by science.
It's a strong way to challenge long-held, erroneous, harmful beliefs and The Sport of Kings is given the space to do it.
I made some notes in the opening chapters that this book would have to work very hard not to be a 5-star read.
I'm still really torn about what to rate this, some of the story elements and characters throwing me off a bit. One of the main reasons I'm having trouble rating it is that I found the third chapter so devastating.
In this chapter the book details the long-term effects of systematic racism, including the welfare system in the United States. It's shocking without being melodramatic and gut-wrenching stuff. I found it very moving and hard to read in places.
In a similar way, the fourth chapter fulfills some early shadows to do with natural selection that I suspected (but hoped I was wrong) might occur. I don't really understand the character of Henrietta in this chapter - a lot of her actions seem at odds with her setup, particularly in the end.
Less forgiving, though, is that the plotting suffers a little towards the conclusion. The Grand Themes seem to take over the pace of the story, and the antagonistic character of a jockey ends up more irritating than anything else. I think the end of the book isn't quite satisfying for me, but I appreciate the symbolism of the closing passages.
This book is a time investment, it really should not be rushed, but it's a worthy one.
P.s. This is the first book I read for a MOOP course on How to Read a Novel.
This book is a spectacular achievement. The narrative techniques in the opening chapters absolutely blew me away. There is variety in style, in who is telling the story, the pacing.
Much of my enjoyment was also from the early tension of the protagonists/antagonists and their power struggles. Morgan really knows how to write tension.
Enjoyment is a strong word but I feel justified using it for the first few chapters. Maybe because, or in spite of, the later themes of natural selection and people interpreting it to justify racism and selective inbreeding, not manifesting as strongly in the opening chapters.
I'm so glad this book was written and was so unflinching in its approach to these themes.
Because it doesn't matter that this was written in 2016, excuses for treating people of colour as inferior, like the ones used by both generations of Henry Ford exist to this day. And one of the strengths here is that the book lays them out without obvious criticism for many pages: letting them exist as statements and then prove themselves to be utterly absurd: first in practice, then by science.
It's a strong way to challenge long-held, erroneous, harmful beliefs and The Sport of Kings is given the space to do it.
I made some notes in the opening chapters that this book would have to work very hard not to be a 5-star read.
I'm still really torn about what to rate this, some of the story elements and characters throwing me off a bit. One of the main reasons I'm having trouble rating it is that I found the third chapter so devastating.
In this chapter the book details the long-term effects of systematic racism, including the welfare system in the United States. It's shocking without being melodramatic and gut-wrenching stuff. I found it very moving and hard to read in places.
In a similar way, the fourth chapter fulfills some early shadows to do with natural selection that I suspected (but hoped I was wrong) might occur. I don't really understand the character of Henrietta in this chapter - a lot of her actions seem at odds with her setup, particularly in the end.
Less forgiving, though, is that the plotting suffers a little towards the conclusion. The Grand Themes seem to take over the pace of the story, and the antagonistic character of a jockey ends up more irritating than anything else. I think the end of the book isn't quite satisfying for me
Spoiler
and I still can't believe Henrietta is killed in childbirth. Fallen-woman much?This book is a time investment, it really should not be rushed, but it's a worthy one.
P.s. This is the first book I read for a MOOP course on How to Read a Novel.