01/50: Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo

[bulliciosa]

Comments

[bulliciosa]

It's just all tell, tell, tell. And so heavy-handed.

I know, right? :/ I wanted to like this book more, but at times it felt Tolkien-esque. Many times I wanted to scream, "JUST GET TO THE POINT ALREADY, PLZ."

The weird mix of time periods and technologies isn't my thing, either.

This was pointed out by another reviewer on Amazon. It was one of those things that didn't sit well with me, but I couldn't quite explain why it annoyed me so much.

[icecreamempress]

I agree with you that it's not very good as an alternate history. (Also, there are some really glaring errors--the "Happy Birthday" song would hardly be an old tradition of English slaves, seeing as it was written by Americans in the early 20th century; Doris calls King Shaka an "Uncle Tom" but obviously if Great Ambossa had had an equivalent of Harriet Beecher Stowe, her loyal-to-his-master Euroslave character would have been called "Uncle Sundiata" or something, even if his name really was Tom.)

That said, I'm not sure how much Evaristo was invested in doing a good job in the traditional sense of speculative fiction; she seems to have been much more focused on writing a pointed social satire.

[icecreamempress]

The parody memoir by KKK was very good parody, but it was very good parody of early 19th century English slavers' memoirs, so it didn't really fit in with all the "traveling on the Underground" stuff.

[jinian]

The mishmash mostly amused me, but I also felt like she was being lazy.

(Also, believe it or not, my mad pattern-matching brain actually remembers that she was called Omorenomwara, with another M.)

[bulliciosa]

(Also, believe it or not, my mad pattern-matching brain actually remembers that she was called Omorenomwara, with another M.)

You are correct, thanks. Made the change. ;)