This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one - the historian. Yetu holds the memories for her people - water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners - who live idyllic lives in the deep. a beautifully written novella that will such you in and leave you begging for more.The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society - and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award-nominated song 'The Deep' from Daveed Diggs' rap group, Clipping. successfully builds a world that feels real enough that you can ask yourself about these things alongside the characters, without feeling like you’re being spoon-fed anything. It’s rare that I find myself so thoroughly entertained by a story that focuses so entirely on one character, but Yetu’s perspective is so special, seamlessly shifting between memories, the mundane, and mindful introspection, that I was kept on my toes from start to finish. When you do catch your breath, you’ll be amazed by the beautiful vastness of the text, much like the depths of the ocean in which the story is set. It takes you under so quickly that you might even feel like you’re drowning and gasping for air, trying to stay afloat, until you start to get a feel for the world, the characters, and the writing style. The book wastes no time pulling you in with its unique, poetic language. manages to say more with its relatively small word count than some multi-novel series I’ve read. a quick read that you’ll wish you could live in for much longer. Furthermore, enjoying the story doesn't require any foreknowledge of clipping., Drexciya, or the mythology of the wajinru that precedes it while those elements certainly enrich the novel, Solomon's text stands alone as a wise, daring, touching, and important addition to the Afrofuturist canon, and one that carries its own rhythmic and melodic grace - not to mention a wholly relevant and righteous gravity. Yetu's plight is an essential, emotionally fraught conflict between duty and sacrifice, between tradition and progress, between the individual and the common good, and between vengeance and forgiveness.

For all its complexity in origin and concept, The Deep is an elegantly concise and simple novel.

But what makes the novel more than just a winning exercise in multimedia storytelling is the way this collective narrative mirrors the way Yetu and the wajinru amass memories, store them in the historians, then relive them together once a year. even more remarkable in the uncanny way it crosses over between media.

The deep rivers solomon review