Thursday, May 2, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Rosewater Insurrection by Tade Thompson




Tade Thompson's "Rosewater" is one of my favorite books I've read over the past few years, with it being one of the few books I've given a perfect score (10 out of 10).  A non-linear story of aliens and those affected by them set in Nigeria, it was one of the more original books I've read since I got back into the genre, with a pretty impressive if very cynical take on the genre.

This is going to sound hipster-ish, but I actually read Rosewater back when it was originally published in 2016 with a small publisher.  So I was excited to see the book was due to be rereleased in 2018 by Orbit (a large publisher in the genre) as the first part in a newly announced trilogy, with the second book in the series (this one) to be released in March of 2019 and the finale to be released in October 2019.  Of course that also meant that the expectations I had for this book were sky high.

The Rosewater Insurrection....doesn't quite meet those expectations.  The world itself remains fascinating, with a wide variety of characters of human and non-human natures who are so very different from nearly everything else I've read.  But part of this book seems clearly written towards being the first part of a two part conclusion to the trilogy, even if the book does end on a complete note.  And more of an issue for me is that the book, while still maintaining its deeply cynical outlook on humanity, seems to chicken out in the end of a major plot point that was based in that cynicism.  It's still a very solid book and I'm looking forward to the conclusion....but it's not where I'd hoped it'd be, and it's definitely a bit of a mess.

NOTE:  Spoilers for the original "Rosewater" are unlabeled below.  You cannot read this book without reading Rosewater first, and as such, I'm not even going to try and get around spoilers for the first book in this review, as otherwise there'd be no other way to talk about this book.  

--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Rosewater. 2067.  To most people in the Nigerian settlement that has arisen around an Alien Dome, things have continued to go on as normal.  But others know differently and know that almost all of the "Sensitives" with psychic abilities due to the aliens' spores have recently died out, and that the DNA of all of the humans in the area is slowly being replaced by alien DNA.  Aminat, agent of the secret governmental agency Section 45, is well aware of this situation and has been working on a project to try and remove the alien influence from peoples' DNA...and has been failing.  The end seems near for humanity as everyone knows it.....

But the plans of the alien - Wormwood - are not going properly either.  An experiment to transfer consciousness to a converted human has mysteriously gone awry, with the resultant woman being confused and lost in the city.  And a mysterious alien plant has been growing in places throughout the city, interfering with both human and alien operations...and seems to be growing further and further out of control.

Which is not to say the humans are doing any better, because in the midst of all of this the power hungry Mayor of Rosewater has begun his campaign for independence.  In the midst of this chaos lies Aminat, the Aliens, and Aminat's boyfriend - the last sensitive Kaaro - and the fate of everything may rest upon them all.....which isn't good news for everyone else.
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"Rosewater" focused entirely upon the perspective of Kaaro, telling the story in non-linear fashion by jumping back and forth between time periods in Kaaro's life over about a 20 year span as he discovered his ability, had his first interactions with the mysterious phenomena around Rosewater (both of the alien and human persuasions), and made his "final" efforts against the mysterious enemy that was killing other sensitives like himself.  The Rosewater Insurrection is a much more linear tale - it only jumps time periods for interludes featuring a certain side character (another sensitive named Eric) - but it jumps around between multiple characters points of view: mainly Aminat, the strange alien/woman named Alyssa, and the alien's avatar named "Anthony."  We see a few other perspectives as well - Kaaro returns around 60% of the way through the book - but these are the main characters here.

And well, they're not particularly good people - again this is an incredibly cynical series when it comes to evaluating humanity - but they're all pretty strong characters.  Seeing Aminat as more than the mysterious love interest from book 1 allows her to shine, and she's pretty strong as a result.*  Alyssa is a really nice take on a character who is quite clearly an alien in a human body with amnesia - the book has her realize this incredibly early (the reader will realize it practically immediately) and her resultant choices and actions keep her different from the usual wandering amnesiac character, especially once her and Aminat unite.  And the other major characters - Anthony, Rosewater's avatar; Jacques, Rosewater's power hungry and insecure mayor; Eric, a second sensitive who escaped the eradication; as well as many of the minor characters all have depth to them and their own personalities and stories to be told, and they all tend to work well - even if they're generally all shitty people.

*Although Aminat's brother never appears in this book which just felt weird.  Aminat occasionally thinks about him, but it's rather weird that with her and Kaaro in trouble and Rosewater in chaos that he never reappears.*

 The Rosewater Insurrection's plot on the other hand is a bit of a mess.  Like its predecessor, the book juggles a LOT of balls in the air at once, with conflicts between humans, between humans and the aliens, and between aliens themselves all occurring simultaneously and often making everything feel like total chaos - which....it is.  The book intersperses that with occasional snippets of a fictional in-universe book, which didn't really seem to add anything for being so short, as well as interludes to various periods in time following another sensitive Eric which provide additional background and work a bit better.  Some of these plot points wind up working out, others don't - it's not a complete trainwreck where everything falls apart, but there's a lot of threads here which don't amount to much in the end, and a few threads seem to be left hanging - presumably for the sequel.  And I didn't quite love the ending**, which seems to not fit the tone of the series so far.

**Spoilers in ROT13 for the ENDING of this book - Don't read unless you're willing to be spoiled: Ebfrjngre raqrq jvgu Xnneb srryvat qbar naq gnxvat n fgrc onpx gb jngpu uhznavgl trg ercynprq ol gur nyvra pryyf, jvgu gur srryvat orvat gung jung pnzr arkg pbhyq abg cbffvoyl or jbefr guna uhznavgl vgfrys.  Guvf obbx raqf jvgu gur nyvra zvaqf naq pryyf gnxvat bire gur ernavzngrf - gur qrnq obqvrf ernavzngrq ol Ebfrjngre'f bppnfvbany "urnyvat"f vafgrnq bs npghny yvivat uhznaf, nf vs gur gjb tebhcf pbhyq yvir va crnpr.  V'z cerggl fher vg'f abg tbvat gb jbex bhg va gur raq, ohg vg'f n jrveqyl bcgvzvfgvp erfhyg gung frrzf nofbyhgryl wneevat sbe na raqvat, rira n grzcbenel bar fvapr gurer'f nabgure obbx gb pbzr.  Vg whfg qbrfa'g frrz gb svg. 

 Anyhow, this book is still incredibly different from practically anything else I've read out there, and while I didn't love how things played out, the characters and setting remain fascinating, so I still would recommend the series to others - even if the first book wasn't already an amazing must-read.  Hopefully the finale this October will step back up to the first book's level.
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