The problem is that the concept that drives the plot for half the novel is barely developed. The problem isn’t that the notion that Vern is part of a secret experiment conducted on Black people is implausible-Solomon references both the Tuskegee Study and the work of James Marion Sims, a 19th-century gynecologist who practiced new techniques on enslaved women. This is surprising given the quality of the worldbuilding in An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017), a dystopian tale set on a giant spaceship. As Solomon moves further into the realms of science fiction, though, their voice loses much of its force. The novel starts out strong the portion of the narrative in which Vern and her children are fending for themselves in the wilderness has the feel of folklore, and the idea that she is haunted by the experience of her ancestors is evocative. There’s a lot going on here-perhaps too much. As a parasite takes over her body, Vern develops superhuman powers and begins to suspect that she is a test subject being used by the United States government. Both are connected to the Black separatist commune from which Vern has escaped. Vern is being followed by ghosts and stalked by someone who butchers animals and dresses them in infants’ clothes. Vern is a young woman raising her twin babies in a forest, dressing them in the hides of animals she’s hunted and hiding them away in makeshift shelters. A Lambda Award–winning writer explores America’s dark history of brutalizing Black bodies in their latest work of speculative fiction.
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