Review – The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 192 pages
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Release Date: August 4, 2020
ISBN-13 : 978-1534439870
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed from Library
Rating: 3/5 stars
“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. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.
Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.
Yetu will learn more than she ever expected about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone novella that I borrowed from the library.
Story (3/5): Yetu holds the memories for the Wajinru (a mermaid like people descended from African slave women who were thrown into the ocean to die). As the time approaches for Yetu to do the Remembering for the Wajinru (where she shares the memories with them before again holding them), Yetu fears she is losing herself to the memories and fears she is in too much pain from the memories to take them back into herself again. So she runs, leaving her people swamped in memories and experiences, to see some of the outside world for herself.
This was okay. It’s kind of like a mermaid version of The Giver by Lois Lowry but shorter and less interesting. There are a lot of big ideas addressed in here: slavery, the idea of history, what makes a group of people a People, GLBT rights.. I just kind of felt like they were ideas that have been explored in other books in a much better way. I honestly had some trouble getting into the story and really never engaged with it all that well.
Characters (3/5): I found Yetu hard to engage with. She caused some major issues and really let her people down and she does this for a fairly selfish reason…however, her people seem to grow and benefit from her rather childish action in the end. All of the Wajinru come across as fairly childish because they hold no history and just live day to day. I didn’t engage with the characters and found them all to be fairly shallow and stereotypical.
Setting (3/5): The setting wasn’t really the main driver for the story. I enjoyed that the story takes place in the deep ocean, but the description of the surroundings here is pretty slim and I often forgot that the story was taking place in the deep. It’s important that this is where the Wajinru developed and thrived, but we don’t hear much about how they actually survive and thrive in this environment.
Writing Style (3/5): I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing style and found it somewhat difficult to stay engaged with. The writing alternates between being poetic/flowery and somewhat stark. I found my mind struggling to stay focused and kept putting the book down to wander off and do other things. It was just kind of boring and explored ideas that are better explored in other more lengthy novels. I felt like this was almost an over commercialized, light version of a book trying to pack lots of meaningful ideas in a small space but without much impact.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this was okay since it wasn’t a huge time commitment to read. However, I didn’t really enjoy it or find it thought-provoking or intriguing. I guess it was an okay mermaid origin story. However, the idea of a memory keeper was done much better in “The Giver” by Lois Lowry. I felt like this novella was trying to make a big impact by hitting a lot of hot button issues but mostly it kind of falls flat and ends up feeling like a light, surfacey glimpse into these issues (slavery, a people’s history, etc). I felt very “eh, whatever” about the whole thing.
