The Deep

It's definitely a 3.5 but I'm rounding up.

I got the advance listening copy of this book a couple months ago and while I was very fascinated by its premise, I didn't have any plan as to when I wanted to read it. But when I was thinking about with which book I should start my 2020, I just decided to pick this up on an impulse. And woah what a choice for the first day of a new decade.

There's just no easy way to describe the writing in this novella. It's a bit too flowery for my taste, so it took me sometime to get acclimated to it, but it's also hauntingly beautiful and emotional and made me feel a lot. Discovering the history of the wajinru, their ancestry tracing back to the pregnant African slaves thrown overboard slave ships, and how they grew to communicate and build their own world in the depths of the sea is a very interesting read. We could have definitely benefited from a little more world building but I think it's slightly vague on purpose, going along with the story's underlying themes of the importance of history and memories - how valuable it is to carry forward memories even when generational trauma can be painful, alleviating the pain by sharing the burden with the community, and understanding our history so that we can move on and build a better future.

The story really rips out your heart at times and you can feel the pain and anguish and loneliness that the main character Yetu is feeling; on the other hand, you can also feel all the tenderness and flutters of a newly formed connection when Yetu encounters someone. It's such a beautiful exploration of an unlikely relationship and I was amazed at how well it was captured in so few pages. The other relationships of her life are also well developed and we see her changing dynamic with every one of them, including her understanding of her history and her responsibility towards her people.

In conclusion, I truly can't tell whom I want to recommend this book to. If you enjoy fantasies which are unique and beautiful and probably weird, and leave you with lots of thoughts and emotions, maybe this one is for you. I alternated between the book and the audio and both formats worked well for me. I don't know if I'll ever reread it but I have a feeling I might discover something more in its words if I do.

It's The Giver but with mermaids.

The writing is really rough. Really rough. The first twenty pages consist entirely of Yetu zoning out into her “remembrances” (aka the author explains some stuff) and “nobly” suffering through her fragility; it was really lame. Gave up before anything at all happened, and I don't think I missed out on a single thing.

I had high hopes for this one, coming from a clipping song and read by Daveed himself! Unfortunately, and weirdly, he reads this like it's a children's book, which is a super disservice to the serious, tragic, and haunting tone of the material. This is a short novella, but I couldn't even make it through all 4 hours of the audiobook without speeding it up and even skipping some super cringey parts. It's incredibly repetitive and the middle parts drag on. Some action picks up at the end but I was so uninvested by then that I wasn't moved by it.