SciFi/Fantasy Novella: The Deep by Rivers Solomon (with clipping)

Full Disclosure:  This work was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on November 5 2019 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Deep by Rivers Solomon (with an assist from the band "clipping.").

The Deep is one of the more highly anticipated novellas of the year in the SF/F world due to the story's unique origins: the novella is inspired and takes its name from an afrofuturist (afrofantasy?) song of the same name by clipping - the band that includes Daveed Diggs, and has branched into SF/F in its songs more than a few times.  In fact the original song actually earned its own Hugo nomination, featuring a fantasy world in which the children of pregnant African slaves thrown overboard during the slave trade morph into beings who can live under the sea and eventually come into conflict with surface dwellers.  And the author who is adapting that song into this novella, Rivers Solomon, was twice a Campbell nominee for Best New Writer, with the powerful but tragic novel: The Unkindness of Ghosts.  So yeah, it's got one hell of a pedigree.

The novella features that same origin concept, but is its own inspired story with the themes you would expect, and perhaps a few you wouldn't - themes of a people being thrown away, a people being forced to adapt, of the value of memories and history to a people that may be dying off/be split apart, and of one's self.  It's a fascinating work, and well worth your time, making good on the promise of its pedigree.


Plot Summary:  Yetu is the historian of her sea-dwelling people, the Wajinru.  That role is is of utmost importance to her people, because aside from the historian, her people do not remember the events of the past - except for the yearly Remembrance, when the historian shares the memories of her people's past - of how they evolved from the children of pregnant mothers thrown overboard during the slave trade to what they are now, and the events that have happened since - with her people.  But for Yetu, the role is nearly unbearable, as the memories of her ancestors constantly overwhelm her own self, making it hard for Yetu to know the difference between the past and present.  And so, during the Remembrance, when the memories are passed along to her people, Yetu runs away before they can give the memories back.  But as Yetu runs far away and encounters the two legged people on the surface, she'll find that her self may not be what she thought it was, and the value of history, even a painful history, may proof to be more to her than she ever thought.

Thoughts:  The Deep is, like Solomon's prior novel, extremely well written, allowing the story to showcase both the setting and the main character and her feelings, and to really hit hard on the themes of the story.  I will say this - whereas the original song goes more overtly into the conflict between the surface dwellers (descendants of the slavers) and the Wajinru (descendants of the tossed overboard slaves), this novella focuses less on that conflict - which still has happened in the past - and more on the Wajinru themselves, and the meaning of their and others' histories to their self identities.

It's a fascinating story, told mainly (although there are some interludes focusing on the memories and history of the Wajinru people) from Yetu's perspective, and contrasting Yetu's perspective (history is agonizing, and the burden of the past ancestral history overwhelms her self to the point it feels like dying) with that of a surface dweller, the last of her people, who dreads the loss of her history one she is gone.  And that contrast is made even further with Yetu's people, who try to have it both ways, remembering once a year through another while being able to let go of the past entirely for the rest of the time.  It's a really interesting setup that makes some obvious analogies, but works really well.  As does the romantic sideplot by the way, between two individuals of different people's trying to deal with such contrasts.  I suspect if I had time, I could write a whole essay on what Solomon has done here, but I prefer not to do that - and really, you should read this yourselves to get the idea.