Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on December 6, 2022 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.
Where it Rains in Color is an Afrofuturist novel from author Denise Crittendon. The novel features a galaxy in which melanin and skin color is prized, and the planet Swazembi - settled by people who disputedly have origins in West Africa - features the people with the most melanin and skin color of all. It's a world filled with color and peace and the most prized among them all is the Rare Indigo, a girl who comes along every few decades with the most perfect skin color and beauty in the galaxy and who possesses magical abilities such as the ability to "shimmer". The story follows the most recent Rare Indigo, Lileala, as she's about to be fully confirmed in that role...only for her to be struck with a strange skin affecting disease, strange voices, and a role in a galactic conspiracy.
The result is a novel with a lot of really interesting ideas - ideas about remembering the past vs being ashamed and hiding it, ideas about beauty and power, ideas about ambition and collective decisions vs individuals striving to help make things better, and more. Lileala is a very strong main character and the world is beautifully illustrated, with the main planet of Swazembi being filled with color, even if everything isn't perfect under the surface, while the world of the antagonists, the Kclabs, is completely lacking such color, just like their skin, and the contrast and afrofuturist ideas are done pretty well. At the same time however, the story relies upon occasionally switching point of view characters and that results in some very unsatisfying results, such as one prominent major character who is revealed to be hiding some major things in the ending which are not at all hinted at (or done so poorly) in the chapters from their perspective. The book also relies upon worldbuilding that doesn't sketch everything out and leaves it to the reader to figure out how it works, and that has some occasionally ineffective results (especially after the reveal). All in all, it's an interesting novel that doesn't quite meet up with its potential.
Plot Summary:
Lileala seemingly is about to have it all. She's about to be confirmed as the Rare Indigo, the most beautiful person on the colorful and idealized plnet of Swazembi...and the most beautiful person in the galaxy - with the ideal blue-black skin and the ability to cause her skin to shimmer in miraculous ways. She will be treated as the ideal of Swazembi - and the world of Swazembi is already treated itself as an ideal to other people of the coalition of world allied worlds. And as that ideal, she will serve as an ambassador of sorts to the rest of the galaxy and the first one in over forty years, when the prior rare indigo, Ahonotay, suddenly became mute and refused to speak. She even has a boy in Otto she loves and with whom she will in a few months be joined.
But inside her heart, Lileala chafes at the restrictions placed on her as part of her role. She wants to explore the Surface and the colors and to enjoy traveling on the sweeps and the sugars of molasses. She has been pampered for years, but still yearns for more, to be given time to explore...and yet she is afraid that in doing so it will cost her her title as Rare Indigo.
But when Lileala comes down with a previously unheard of illness that affects her beautiful skin and begins to hear strange voices in her head, even this equilibrium of hers is shattered. Soon, it seems that her only chance for restoring her skin and finding answers lies in going to the asteroid world of Kclaben, home to a people whose skin is alost fully translucent and who were denied access to the Coalition of Worlds years ago. But while the Kclabs promise a cure to the disease, Lileala's time among them will reveal to her a truth about not just them, but about herself, which will reveal a power that can change the entire galaxy.....
Where it Rains in Color takes place in a galaxy in which the white-centric values of the Western world are turned on their head. Here, what is valued is color, especially skin color and melanin, with the planet of Swazembi (which is filled with colors and color-based technology) being full of people with the darkest skin colors, most prominently of course the Rare Indigo. The Swazembians boast super long life spans (up through 500 years and beyond), occasional magical powers (some rare people are clairvoyant, the Rare Indigo can shimmer, etc.) and are the envy of all, and many tourists come to visit them. The white-esque people of Toth, an allied planet, even use their own mix of technology and magic to try and make their skin darker; while the nearly colorless and translucent Kclabs are the outcasts and shunned...and their society is without light and features drug use and oppression of both gender and class-centric varieties. And of course the most prominent Kclab, a woman named Trieca who has bulldozed her way into leadership, has birthmarks that give her skin blotches of color (albeit White), which provide her with prominence and attractiveness to her people.
Notably this colorism pervades the attitudes of various characters here, with interesting results. Lileala has everything and is utterly pampered and a disease that attacks her beautiful skin threatens everything for her: not just her standing possibly, but her own concepts of self-worth. Her most special ability, her ability to Shimmer, is literally to make her skin shine more. Similarly, Trieca is able to bulldoze her way through Kclab politics thanks to her birthmarks giving her prominence, but when she goes to Toth as part of a plan, she finds out that those birthmarks don't convey beauty outside of her own people and is devastated and shocked to be called ugly. Meanwhile a large part of Lileana's journey in this book is learning that her shimmer and her beauty might have power that isn't just cosmetic, and that she needs to use that prominence and power in more direct and useful fashions.
This book contains more interesting ideas and themes than just its use of Color and Skin Color however. A major conflict under the surface of the Swazembian people and of Lileana's arc is their connection to history - they are the descendants of West Africa's Dogon Tribe (a real tribe in Mali) who were taken to space ages ago, but the Swazembian leadership denies that this is the case and takes strong stands against the idea, even as the idea percolates among people. They are in many ways ashamed of the pain they escaped by fleeing the doomed Earth and the tragedies that underfell the African people, which Lileana sees in visions of her ancestors. But as Lileana discovers, and the book seems to argue, this burying of the past is wrong and only through recognizing the past and making something out of the wrongness can they move forward and really most use their power to benefit everyone else.
There are a lot of other interesting themes here as well, such as those about power and greed and ambition, about collective action vs individual, and about how various forms of utopia may have flaws. The book doesn't have enough time to really go into it at times honestly, although it's possible some ideas could be saved for another book in this galaxy (the Swazembi government's use of secret police for instance). More annoyingly is the fact that the book uses a number of point of view characters but then also relies upon hiding how one major character is really behind a number of antagonistic activities that all come into play in the ending. This just feels highly annoying and unsatisfying - as it requires the book to omit a lot of actions by certain characters that occur between moments that occur on page and to assume a lot more power and abilities to belong to various characters or people who don't seem to have anything close to that when the book is being told from their perspective. Similarly, for example, the book hints at a class conflict among the Kclabs - between their workers and miners and elites - and that never comes into play, only for those miners to apparently have done a major action off page on behalf of one character in the climax for....reasons? There's a lot going on here and it doesn't quite all come together into a cohesive and satisfying plot, even if the ideas are all interesting.
In short, Where it Rains in Color is a book with a lot of really interesting stuff to say in an Afrofuturist tale (I'm really scratching only the surface, pun not intended), but it doesn't quite come together in a way that's as enjoyable or satisfying as I would hope. So this is still a book I'd recommend, but with reservations.
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