Thursday, October 21, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull

 




The Lesson was the debut novel of author Cadwell Turnbull, whose September 2021 novel No Gods No Monsters really got my attention and made me want to go back and read this earlier work.  Turnbull's second novel started an urban fantasy series dealing with themes of race, family, gun violence, being out vs being in the closet and allyship, all through a story that flitter between various points of view, such that it felt almost more like an anthology of really strong smaller character-based stories than one longer book. 

The Lesson is a very similar book, using various characters in an alien invasion story to draw parallels to the impact of colonization and (usually white) foreign oppression of locals in the US Virgin Islands, particularly St. Thomas.   Like his second novel, Turnbull doesn't stick with a single narrative, but jumps from chapter to chapter in perspective to deal with how different characters are reacting - the professor whose marriage was falling apart who thinks the aliens have a secret, the college boy with dreams of space who fell in love with an alien, the brother of a boy killed by the aliens who wanted revenge, the aging woman who believes the medicine of the aliens is unholy, etc.  The result is a novel that isn't always successful, due to feeling perhaps a bit too fragmented, but is still a really strong tale of colonization and its effects on ordinary people with their own problems.  

--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
On St. Thomas, two families residing in a two-family house were seemingly falling apart - husband Jackson being tempted by a solicitous student and looking to go elsewhere, wife Audrey falling in love with the woman she works with, Alice, at the animal shelter, daughter Patrice losing her faith and realizing she feels love towards the boy, Derrick, she grew up with......and then the alien Ynaa touched down right on their shores.  

The aliens say they come in peace, searching for something on this world and offering technological gifts to humanity....all in exchange for being allowed to stay unmolested on the US Virgin Islands - but the same Ynaa, even when they take human shapes, brutally react to any annoyance and contact without mercy, taking islander lives at the slightest provocation.  And after five years of this, the Islanders are growing tired of the Ynaa presence, especially after a young boy was murdered by a Ynaa in a disproportionate act of retaliation.  

And those two families and others find themselves wrapped up in it.  Jackson researches the truth behind the Ynaa, that they've been here far longer than people thought; Derrick's sister Lee mourns the best friend whose murder is overshadowed by the aliens; Patrice ran away to the mainland for college and returns pregnant; Derrick's grandmother believes the aliens and their tech is damned....

And then there's Derrick, who has taken a job with and in fact fallen for the Ynaa ambassador Mera, a "woman" who feels more for the human population than her own people, who will be at the center of the storm that's coming as humans and Ynaa collide once more....to devastating results for the local people.....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Lesson is hardly subtle about its central themes, the impact of conquering and colonization on the native people - whether that be White People, the usual culprits, or earlier culprits (an early chapter notes that the Islands were conquered and colonized by other island peoples several times before the Westerners got there) or the aliens.  It's a story about how these pains seem to recur, and how they affect the ordinary people of the island...who aren't living perfect ideal lives as some dreamers think of pre-colonial countries, but have their own issues overshadowed and exacerbated by the conqueror's presence.  

The book does this by switching character points of view each chapter, with it only coming back before the epilogue to a few characters more than once (most notably Derrick and Mera).  In a way, this book functions more as a series of stories under alien occupation than a single overall story, although there is a main story arc.  So you have Derrick, the lover and dreamer of the stars falling for Mera and hoping for something more, you have Mera, the spy for the Ynaa and now ambassador who no longer believes in her people's mentality of kill or be killed after falling in love during the island slave rebellions hundreds of years ago, - and then you have a character who isn't so directly involved with the aliens, like Lee whose friends' brutal death at the hands of a negligent/abusive boyfriend got overshadowed by a killing by an alien on the same day or Patrice, who left the island heartbroken when the boy she finally dated, Derrick, wouldn't leave with her, from the place her parents broke up, and found herself lost and eventually pregnant, out of faith.  Turnbull imbues most of these characters with very three dimensional and real personalities that are easy to sympathize with even as they often do dumb things with grave consequences, because you can understand why they do it.  (And hell, even the 6 page chapter featuring a dude who grows weed and runs cock fights is somehow well done its ridiculousness).  

And the book's setting is really well done, with the fact that the aliens setting down on the islands, basically leaving the islanders on their own being very....sadly realistic, as who would bother to help them when the result is so much wealth for everyone else?  The aliens easily play the role of conquerors even without always being present, and the parallels between them and scenes set in Mera's past during the slave rebellions are obvious and powerfully depressing.  The aliens' lack of care for humanity is also typical of conqueror's feelings towards the native peoples, with some being outright hostile, others enjoying the natives as exotic comforts with little care, and many being willing to retaliate against any signs of rebellion with overwhelming and disproportionate force.   

Not everything works, with the book's post-climax epilogue not quite really coming together as strongly as I'd hoped, and the overall plot arc feeling kind of pointless until the big climactic moment in the final two chapters where big things occur.  And the book's prologue sets it up as if certain characters - especially Patrice, Jackson, and Aubrey, when not really so much?  Aubrey's happiness is a rare bright spot in the book, but she's basically a side character, and Patrice's plotline is kind of a mess, with a pregnancy that exists for some conflict that goes nowhere, and has little impact in her own story or in the overall one.  

But still, this is a really interesting book, and not too long either, so it's not like it overstays its welcome with the parts that do and do not work.  Worth a read.  

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)