Shawl - Everfair
Feb. 22nd, 2020 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocochipbiscuitPosting two book reviews in one day? What madness! :P
I’ve been looking forward to reading Nisi Shawl’s Everfair for quite a while! Steampunk alt-history where British socialists purchase land in the Congo in an effort to create a safe haven for refugees from King Leopold’s atrocities? Where these socialists work with American-American missionaries and with the indigenous people (whose land it originally was, before being stolen by King Leopold and sold to the society) and develop the technology and intelligence to hold their own against the European powers? Awesome hook! I’m all for it!
Except...egads, it covers a massive span of time. I know I’ve criticized The Black Tides of Heaven for jumping around and not giving me space to inhabit the characters, but it’s even worse with this. It’s a thick book at almost 400 pages, but it covers over three decades and as many wars, plus the 34 characters listed at the front of the book alone! Chapters are given with the location and date (example: “Bookerville, Everfair, April 1896”) but individual chapters can jump months, years, or a decade between them! The characters are diverse and fascinating, with their own flaws and competing interests, but because we get so little time dwelling with them it feels impersonal, like we are witnessing them only do what is the bare minimum to progress the greater story rather than develop their relationships with one another.
Which I’ve come to realize is my biggest passion in any book. I rarely read for clever plot or engaging worldbuilding alone; I read because I want to care about the characters and spend time with them. Doubly so if I plan to reread the book.
And I am not rereading Everfair.
That aside, I have a feeling I would have enjoyed this book more if I were more familiar with the history or the genre it’s criticizing. I haven’t read a lot (or any) steampunk and am mostly familiar with it as the shiny neo-Victorian aesthetique and technology. By its very definition, I am aware that this subgenre tends to run distressingly towards nostalgia for imperialism and colonialism. And the fictional country of Everfair is planted squarely in the midst of that, with interesting juxtapositions as we see Lisette’s exhilaration on her borrowed bicycle and then, in the next chapter, Wilson’s horror at the atrocities committed in the harvest of the necessary rubber. The book also loves to explore foods and clothing, particularly incorporating African dress and culture, which—in hindsight—feels as much a pushback against Eurocentrism.
I also enjoyed many of the characters, but again, which we actually got to spend more time with them interacting and exploring their histories. Lisette is one of the characters we follow most consistently, and I find her fascinating on her intelligence operations, and how she chooses to emphasize (or downplay) her mixed racial background, as a white-passing French woman who is one-sixteenth Black. I also really enjoyed our few chapters with Fwendi, a young African woman with a prosthetic arm and who is also gifted with the ability to ride cats, inhabiting their senses and directing them to spy or retrieve information. And I wish we got to spend more time with Wilson, and the crisis of faith as he went from a Christian missionary to assimilating into the Congolese religion.
All of their narratives are intertwined, and because there is no single narrator or POV, I think that’s part of the book’s strength: it’s complicated. Intricate. Countries and nations take shape because of the efforts of many, not one.
But it also leaves me with fewer emotional hooks, because we touch on so many characters so lightly; I often had to use the page with the list of characters as a quick refresher on who’s who.
At the end of the day, I don't think I'm the target audience for this book. And that’s okay.
I’ve been looking forward to reading Nisi Shawl’s Everfair for quite a while! Steampunk alt-history where British socialists purchase land in the Congo in an effort to create a safe haven for refugees from King Leopold’s atrocities? Where these socialists work with American-American missionaries and with the indigenous people (whose land it originally was, before being stolen by King Leopold and sold to the society) and develop the technology and intelligence to hold their own against the European powers? Awesome hook! I’m all for it!
Except...egads, it covers a massive span of time. I know I’ve criticized The Black Tides of Heaven for jumping around and not giving me space to inhabit the characters, but it’s even worse with this. It’s a thick book at almost 400 pages, but it covers over three decades and as many wars, plus the 34 characters listed at the front of the book alone! Chapters are given with the location and date (example: “Bookerville, Everfair, April 1896”) but individual chapters can jump months, years, or a decade between them! The characters are diverse and fascinating, with their own flaws and competing interests, but because we get so little time dwelling with them it feels impersonal, like we are witnessing them only do what is the bare minimum to progress the greater story rather than develop their relationships with one another.
Which I’ve come to realize is my biggest passion in any book. I rarely read for clever plot or engaging worldbuilding alone; I read because I want to care about the characters and spend time with them. Doubly so if I plan to reread the book.
And I am not rereading Everfair.
That aside, I have a feeling I would have enjoyed this book more if I were more familiar with the history or the genre it’s criticizing. I haven’t read a lot (or any) steampunk and am mostly familiar with it as the shiny neo-Victorian aesthetique and technology. By its very definition, I am aware that this subgenre tends to run distressingly towards nostalgia for imperialism and colonialism. And the fictional country of Everfair is planted squarely in the midst of that, with interesting juxtapositions as we see Lisette’s exhilaration on her borrowed bicycle and then, in the next chapter, Wilson’s horror at the atrocities committed in the harvest of the necessary rubber. The book also loves to explore foods and clothing, particularly incorporating African dress and culture, which—in hindsight—feels as much a pushback against Eurocentrism.
I also enjoyed many of the characters, but again, which we actually got to spend more time with them interacting and exploring their histories. Lisette is one of the characters we follow most consistently, and I find her fascinating on her intelligence operations, and how she chooses to emphasize (or downplay) her mixed racial background, as a white-passing French woman who is one-sixteenth Black. I also really enjoyed our few chapters with Fwendi, a young African woman with a prosthetic arm and who is also gifted with the ability to ride cats, inhabiting their senses and directing them to spy or retrieve information. And I wish we got to spend more time with Wilson, and the crisis of faith as he went from a Christian missionary to assimilating into the Congolese religion.
All of their narratives are intertwined, and because there is no single narrator or POV, I think that’s part of the book’s strength: it’s complicated. Intricate. Countries and nations take shape because of the efforts of many, not one.
But it also leaves me with fewer emotional hooks, because we touch on so many characters so lightly; I often had to use the page with the list of characters as a quick refresher on who’s who.
At the end of the day, I don't think I'm the target audience for this book. And that’s okay.
