Dave

I can't tell you how many times I've picked this book up, read the first few pages and tossed it aside.

Something about those first few pages is difficult to overcome and I know I'm not the only one. Maybe it's folks around my age (pushing 40) who all seem to uniformly find the same annoyance in a snarky, smart-mouthed protagonist that feels very contemporary (if not dated) for a fantastical setting that kills our interest. Or, for me, the sorta grimdark setting of the Tomb of the Ninth.

In a way, it felt like a Nick Lutsko Spirit Halloween video with no tongues in cheeks.

If I'm honest, I can't tell you why I picked it up again. It's been recommended to me dozens of times now, and I've unknowingly bought it twice in different formats. All of my desired library holds were a few weeks out, so I sorta just said, “fine, I'll try this again until one of the holds comes through.”

Sure enough, there was that beginning again where we meet the titular Gideon and it's the same cringe epic bacon guy sort of humor that made me hate ‘The Martian' in all of its glory. Along with a comically dark setting of some sort of tomb planet with shambling skeletons and dark dungeons. Sigh.

But, I kept going. This book gets hyped a lot for queer representation, and any cynicism about this sort of melts away because Gideon is absolutely queer, but done in a way where it's very matter-of-fact. Gideon is just Gideon, being queer is just a part of the character.

See, the thing is, Gideon is also really annoying. One of the drawbacks of having an obnoxious lead is you're gonna turn some people away. That's what happened to me. Then you start to see more of Gideon, and that everyone is annoyed by Gideon and a lot of the goofy, aloof behavior is a defense mechanism from a lifetime of trauma.

You really, really need to push past those initial annoyances, though, because once you do, everything opens up.

The story winds itself around in all sorts of interesting ways, the characters are all mashed together, pit against each other and forced to cope with their own shortcomings in unique ways and while there's a relatively massive bodycount for named characters here, never did I find myself wanting to put this book aside after the story got going.

In places, the diction can feel clunky in trying to illustrate this realm as a science fantasy one, especially considering Gideon is our anchor to things and Gideon's link to everything is comic books and skin mags. Still, the occasional five-dollar word is easy enough to gloss over considering how well everything else flows.

This is a special book and if you're like me and struggled with the beginning, it's worth pushing further into before writing it off.

Not quite as good as I remembered it, sadly.

Jemisin is one of the best voices in SFF today and this short story is just further proof of that.

You'll read reviews about it being “heavy-handed” only to see it's only heavy-handed to those who disagree with the story's theme.

The story takes on another layer when you consider who the story's publisher is and how this was all a direct criticism of late stage capitalism, greed, toxic masculinity and the inherent racism that comes with these things.

Bold. It's especially bold knowing how many people this story would upset.

There's a lot about this book to love, but it feels like it's not quite there yet.

The character of Kev feels fleshed out and realized, while on the other hand Ella does not. The opening of the book, which follows Ella, is incredible, before switching to Kev. The idea behind it is to highlight Ella's powers before jumping into Kev, who is in the wrong place at the wrong time while the wrong skin color.

While the book jumps around a lot to work within the framework of seeing trauma of other characters through the eyes of both Ella and Kevin, I've seen others state it made the book difficult to read, but I didn't think that was much of an issue. After it happens a few times it becomes clear what's happening.

The biggest, glaring issue here is a real lack of defined characters beyond Kev. Ella feels so strong early on and crumples under the weight of Kevin, his incarceration and his experiences.

There's a lot of parts of this book that are intentional and done incredibly well, which only highlights the parts that feel unfinished. This book has a lot to say about being black in America, the school-to-prison-pipeline, policing, criminal justice and much more. The ending was good but could have been much more effective if there was more to cling onto or more of a feeling for Kev or Ella. The characters spend so much time jumping around into the memories of others that we, the readers, can't ever get grounded enough or invested beyond parts of Kevin's journey.

This book is delightful.

Really.