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A review by finallyfinnian
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
5.0
I've been sitting with this for a few hours and I still can't quite wrap my mind around how I feel about it.
This is an incredible book. Aster is an unusual main character - unique, off-kilter, brilliant and socially awkward. Born into the lower levels of a spaceship that is supposedly looking for the promised land. The ship is a caste system of white supremacy and getting worse every moment. Aster is almost an anti-hero - she doesn't necessarily want to be the one to fix things, she just wants to understand what happened to her mom.
Theo was a delightfully well-developed character, as was Giselle. This book was, in places, hard to read, but ultimately worth it.
Potential slight spoiler to follow:
The ending was unsatisfactory to me - not because it wasn't well-written. It was. But, as with Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, it really couldn't have ended any other way and still been true to the story. Anything else would have felt contrived. So, in a way, it was a perfect ending, but in another way, I can't help but feel horrible and anxious about it.
All in all, I highly recommend this book, even if you aren't into science fiction, because the spaceship is really just the backdrop. The real gem here is in the characters, the race relations, and the family dynamics that continually evolve.
This is an incredible book. Aster is an unusual main character - unique, off-kilter, brilliant and socially awkward. Born into the lower levels of a spaceship that is supposedly looking for the promised land. The ship is a caste system of white supremacy and getting worse every moment. Aster is almost an anti-hero - she doesn't necessarily want to be the one to fix things, she just wants to understand what happened to her mom.
Theo was a delightfully well-developed character, as was Giselle. This book was, in places, hard to read, but ultimately worth it.
Potential slight spoiler to follow:
The ending was unsatisfactory to me - not because it wasn't well-written. It was. But, as with Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, it really couldn't have ended any other way and still been true to the story. Anything else would have felt contrived. So, in a way, it was a perfect ending, but in another way, I can't help but feel horrible and anxious about it.
All in all, I highly recommend this book, even if you aren't into science fiction, because the spaceship is really just the backdrop. The real gem here is in the characters, the race relations, and the family dynamics that continually evolve.