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A review by existentialhell
Esperance by Adam Oyebanji
Did not finish book. Stopped at 43%.
[Thanks to DAW books and NetGalley for offering this eARC in exchange for my honest review!]
Alright, I'm in a weird position, here. I DNFed Esperance by Adam Oyebanji before the halfway mark despite being thoroughly sold on the premise. Neo-noir Afrofuturist space thriller? We're checking a bunch of boxes! Tackling intergenerational trauma, enslavement, reparations? Weird bugs? Phenomenal, let's see it. I settled in for what promised to be a wild ride. And it was, just not in any of the ways I expected.
Racism and especially anti-Black racism is, of course, one of the story's core themes: its roots, who perpetuates it, and how, and why, and its myriad ripple effects across cultures and across time. We spend a great deal of time on racism in the United States thanks to our hard-boiled Chicago detective, Ethan Krol. and that's where I feel things start to go sideways.
From page one we see the narrative-relevant microaggressions from Krol and others that tell us Esperance's is a world of discrimination pretending that racial bigotry belongs to The Past. All fine and good, great mirror of our own world, but the problem is that the discrimination isn't confined to the plot. The way certain Black characters are described by the story, for example, is steeped in colorism. The sentence that first had me questioning everything: "Amadi Okoro's skin might have been onyx black, but if he'd been hanged the marks still would have been easy to see" (Location 180). One could argue that since Krol is our third-person POV in this scene that it helps set up up his character as casually racist, and that may even be the author's intention; but, it feels wildly out of step with subsequent intentionally racist lines and that ambiguity, which remains pervasive, is a significant problem for a novel with so much to say about such painful topics. I don't trust the book to be consistent, and that's a tough ask for me as a reader.
What's more, the intentionally bigoted moments are often underdone. This is part of a larger problem with great scene ideas being rushed or abandon altogther, but I digress. Charged conversations and scenes breeze by with little commentary from the characters or the book itself. Weird hair-related comments unacknowledged; Kroll's drive-by East Asian sexualization; all-around strange racist moments that would be much stronger if they told us anything about our characters as individual people. That's what I'm really craving: Why does Krol move through the world this way, other than trying incredibly hard to be Humphrey Bogart? I don't know, because the book seems far more interested in developing the plot than any of its characters.
That neglect is profoundly disappointing because I really want to connect with these characters! The set-up is fun, please give me any reason to care about Krol's health, his divorce, his prejudices, his personality, his pride, anything. Why is Abi the way she is, emotionally? Who is she outside of the plot? What's Holly's deal? I feel like I catch fleeting glimpses of these people, but they're just that: glimpses. Give me a reason to care, please!
I'm so conflicted. I see the bones of a great story, with plenty of crucial themes to explore. Oyebanji's love of noir shines so bright from the very first page. I wanted to love it, but the dissonant, shallow characters and inconsistent plotting left too much to be desired.
Alright, I'm in a weird position, here. I DNFed Esperance by Adam Oyebanji before the halfway mark despite being thoroughly sold on the premise. Neo-noir Afrofuturist space thriller? We're checking a bunch of boxes! Tackling intergenerational trauma, enslavement, reparations? Weird bugs? Phenomenal, let's see it. I settled in for what promised to be a wild ride. And it was, just not in any of the ways I expected.
Racism and especially anti-Black racism is, of course, one of the story's core themes: its roots, who perpetuates it, and how, and why, and its myriad ripple effects across cultures and across time. We spend a great deal of time on racism in the United States thanks to our hard-boiled Chicago detective, Ethan Krol. and that's where I feel things start to go sideways.
From page one we see the narrative-relevant microaggressions from Krol and others that tell us Esperance's is a world of discrimination pretending that racial bigotry belongs to The Past. All fine and good, great mirror of our own world, but the problem is that the discrimination isn't confined to the plot. The way certain Black characters are described by the story, for example, is steeped in colorism. The sentence that first had me questioning everything: "Amadi Okoro's skin might have been onyx black, but if he'd been hanged the marks still would have been easy to see" (Location 180). One could argue that since Krol is our third-person POV in this scene that it helps set up up his character as casually racist, and that may even be the author's intention; but, it feels wildly out of step with subsequent intentionally racist lines and that ambiguity, which remains pervasive, is a significant problem for a novel with so much to say about such painful topics. I don't trust the book to be consistent, and that's a tough ask for me as a reader.
What's more, the intentionally bigoted moments are often underdone. This is part of a larger problem with great scene ideas being rushed or abandon altogther, but I digress. Charged conversations and scenes breeze by with little commentary from the characters or the book itself. Weird hair-related comments unacknowledged; Kroll's drive-by East Asian sexualization; all-around strange racist moments that would be much stronger if they told us anything about our characters as individual people. That's what I'm really craving: Why does Krol move through the world this way, other than trying incredibly hard to be Humphrey Bogart? I don't know, because the book seems far more interested in developing the plot than any of its characters.
That neglect is profoundly disappointing because I really want to connect with these characters! The set-up is fun, please give me any reason to care about Krol's health, his divorce, his prejudices, his personality, his pride, anything. Why is Abi the way she is, emotionally? Who is she outside of the plot? What's Holly's deal? I feel like I catch fleeting glimpses of these people, but they're just that: glimpses. Give me a reason to care, please!
I'm so conflicted. I see the bones of a great story, with plenty of crucial themes to explore. Oyebanji's love of noir shines so bright from the very first page. I wanted to love it, but the dissonant, shallow characters and inconsistent plotting left too much to be desired.