sittingwishingreading's Reviews (880)

A stunning speculative fiction space novel that explores themes of liberation, enslavement, autonomy, care, justice, and love. This book does a great job at discussing trauma, neurodivergence, and love in all its forms. 

I loved Solomon’s craft in not only writing the whole story, but the way she wrote her characters and the bonds between them. The setting and overall plot trajectory were really stellar (no pun intended), and I loved the overall creativity, vision, and radical thinking in this book. 

And endlessly creative way to tell the story of the Apache fight for land rights and autonomy over their sacred lands. Redniss’ illustrations and the way the text is interspersed with hand drawn images deepened the book in a really gorgeous way. I loved the way Redniss connected the cosmos to the present, and included a variety of perspectives and history of copper mining in Arizona, the after effects of copper mining in Arizona, and the future Apache activists are working toward. 

I have a deep respect for this book in that it details the cause and effects of trauma, as well as some of the process of trauma treatment. It’s a brutal book in that the events that happened to the protagonist are really painful and brutal, and it shows how physical and psychic pain are so closely intertwined for some folks. 

In terms of craft, I think it could have been more tightly written. I generally appreciate stories taking time to unfurl, but I think that this one was more about the step-by-step events that happened to the protagonist, rather than the protagonist’s path to healing, which is, imho, what would have been the stronger narrative and would have felt more expansive with time.  The step-by-step nature of the book made it seem less like a book of personal development and more a chronicle of events, which did not need as much space as it had.