SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates: https://t.co/FY9duCWSsV Short Review: 8.5 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 22, 2020

Short Review (Cont): A story in the antebellum USA as a mixed-race slave named Hi tries to find freedom through his special power, and his experiences with Whites and other Blacks in and against the cause of abolition. Strong imagery and ideas, but some pacing issues. (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 22, 2020

The Water Dancer is Ta-Nehisi Coates' fiction novel debut, and it's one that fits within the SF/F genre.  In case you've been living under a rock and don't follow politics and political scholarship, or are from a non-United States country, Coates is one of the most influential and interesting political writers in the past decade, particularly on racial history and racial issues today.  The Water Dancer is not Coates' first fictional output - he had a decently regarded comics run on Black Panther a few years ago - but it's his first fictional novel, and unsurprisingly, it deals very much with the same ideas in Coates' political writings, with a setting that begins on a failing plantation in the antebellum south and a cast of those involved in and opposed to the institution of slavery.

The result is a strong tale, with some clear themes, and many strong characters filled with deep backstories, that's very much what you might expect from Coates' work.  At the same time though, the story suffers from some pacing issues and if you're looking for something very fantastical, you won't find it here - the magic is there but very symbolic at its heart, and not something that is used as a major mechanic in this story in and of itself (descriptions of the book may give you the wrong impression of this).


----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Hiram "Hi" Walker is a Tasked (slave) on the Virginia plantation of Lockless.  Hiram's father is the master of Lockless, but his mother was a Tasked sold away when he was a child, a woman Hiram can barely remember.  And that's about the only thing Hi cannot remember, for his perfect recall lets him remember everything he sees or hears.  Knowing of his talent, Hiram's father has him taught to read and right and tasks Hi with the guiding of Hiram's white half-brother Maynard around in life, and to ensure Maynard grows up into a proper next manager of Lockless.

Yet when an accident drowns Maynard and puts Hi into a river, a strange power somehow saves Hiram's life to his great confusion.  And as it soon becomes clear to Hi that Lockless is a dying plantation, with soil ruined by constant tobacco growing, and the Tasked of the plantation, Hiram's friends and adopted family, are being shipped out West away from heir home.  Feeling this fate closing in upon him, Hi decides to make a break for freedom, but in the process he discovers more harsh truths about the nature of freedom and slavery and about the people working for each.

And in the trials he faces as a result of his break for freedom, he will discover the idea of the power within him, the power of Conduction, which may be the key to freedom for not just those he loves, but all of the Tasked themselves.
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My aim when writing a plot summary, and a review in general, is to try and not spoil plot developments in any way.  That is particularly hard in this book, where the 2nd act takes up the majority of the book, and comes after a major plot development - and the official Plot Summary seems to spoil that development, in such a way that a reader who reads the summary will be awaiting events occurring for the entire first third, which is not the best way to read a book.  That said, it's kind of hard to review this book without referencing those same events, so I'm going to try to do the best that I can and put some spoilers at the end.

Starting with a non-spoiler review: The Water Dancer features a lot of Coates' themes from his writings as shown through the experiences and histories of the various characters involved in this story.  This is not a story in which the characters are thin actors meant to advance the plot or have stories that revolve entirely around the lead character Hi - each of the characters involved has their own stories, their own pasts, and their own motivations for their actions and what they do, good or bad.  As one character tells Hi as Hi attempts to involve her in his plans for escape: she is not "any man's" but is her own self, and while that's somewhat a thematic statement (as our protagonist learns that a person isn't just a fragment of his imagining, but their own self), it also describes how each of the characters here are built.

This works to tell a story about slavery and how the system worked and how those working for freedom worked in different ways: from the Whites who fought for abolition but who often didn't understand the pains of those enslaved they asked to be patient, to the Blacks who made deals with the devil in exchange for freedom, and to the Blacks also working for freedom who know the truth behind slavery.  It's a story showing how slavery worked to distract the class divisions between the Whites - the "Quality" as describes the upper class in this book and the "Low", who take their troubles out on the Tasked and Freed blacks they find on the streets in their anger.

Most importantly, it's a story about the power and importance of remembering and memory in general.  Power in this story comes largely from memory, and actors in this story make it clear that the loss of memory, and the denial of memory by those traumatized from it, is what holds them back from freedom.  As bonds are stretched and the Masters ship out family members of the Tasked, and trauma causes others to forget, it is only through memory that the path forwards, the path to freedom can possibly be found.  Which fits quite well with the themes of this story, and with the background work that Coates puts into all the characters.

It's not a perfect story - like I said, the 2nd act which is kind of spoiled by the plot summary takes up the bulk of the book, before things finally move with our main character in the final act, which is the shortest act by a good bit.  The result is a pacing that kind of drags at times, as the reader will, despite being interested throughout, find themselves wondering when events will finally pay off for quite some time.  Moreover, when that payoff finally occurs, the book basically just ends, which works upon reflection, but just seems really sudden with it all.  Still, for all the themes it pulls off, and even with the themes it doesn't quite work enough with, it's an impressive piece of work well worth your time.

Okay Spoiler time below.  Stop reading now if you want to avoid them.
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SPOILERS HERE:  After Hi and his love interest Sophia try to use a Free Black suspected of belonging to the Underground to escape, the two are betrayed....but Hi finds himself in the hands of Corrine, a Quality White Woman who actually does work with the Underground, having become brought to the abolitionist cause during her education in the Northeast.  She arranges for him to go to Philadelphia, where he learns more about the Underground and the Blacks and Whites who work for it - including the only other person who can seemingly use Conduction, the woman known as Moses.....the one Harriet Tubman, who teaches Hi that the power comes from memory and water, as in the memories of their people (and the water of course being what they came over from).  But again, Conduction never comes into play for Hiram until the very end, and is meant more as a symbol of the theme that memory is the key to freedom, than a fantastical method for freedom.

Meanwhile, in Corrine, who urges Hi to be patient in freeing those he loves, and to think of the larger implications instead of acting in a way which could blow some of their cover.  But as Hi makes clear in his narrative, while he respects her, she can't know the feelings of the Tasked who have suffered, as she maintains all of the freedom and privilege of the Quality.  The themes here are relevant today and pretty obvious (and made clear by Corrine's Black ally Hawkins confronting Hi and admitting that knowing where Hi is coming from, he won't try to stop Hi).  So yeah, while there are some story issues I mention above, there's a lot here in terms of relevant themes for today in line with Coates' other work.