A fascinating and heart-wrenching new folk tale, which takes one of the most repugnant deeds in human history and weaves the pain into something beautiful.

I struggled with this one a bit. I wasn't sure what to expect after reading the synopsis. Anyone looking for a fantastical black mermaid tale should be warned that this is not that. I commend the book for mentioning a part of history that often gets overlooked. Yes we know about the Middle Passage and slavery but when discussing the horrors of the journey we don't think about the slaves tossed overboard during the journey. In this story after being tossed overboard the pregnant slaves babies end up surviving having been born with fins giving them a second chance at life. I did like the parts about them creating their own society and thriving under the sea. Yetu being the historian has the job of educating her people about their past. She guides us through the traumatic history of her people and at times it's very repetitive and overwhelming. The pacing is painfully slow at times especially for a novella. Overall this is a story about survival.

Climb aboard Rivers Solomon's bathysphere and enter his multi-layered world beneath the sea. This compelling novella contains enough ideas and concepts to fill a "door-stop" novel or richly textured epic saga. This amazing magical adventure although inspired by the haunting song of the rap group "clipping" is actually a homage to Drexciya - a duo of musician-artists that I was fortunate enough to experience while growing up in Detroit, MI. James Tinson and Gerold Donald provided the electronic music that captivated the Detroit (and even national) scene of the 90's.. Through their album liner notes they exposed the mythos and music that rivaled the nation's fascination with "Star Wars" and space adventure. They proposed the presence of an underwater world populated by the children of pregnant African woman thrown overboard from slave ships crossing the Atlantic - deemed too troublesome cargo. The babies had adapted to breathing underwater in their mother's womb and survived the drowning to form their own society and culture.
Solomon's story marvelously expands this mythos with his lyrical and poetic prose. These babies were born breathing water and built their own world on the sea floor, unaware of the two-legged surface dwellers.. Their world would one day be threatened by these surface dweller's greed for "black gold" lying beneath the sandy floor of the ocean bottom.. They collectively called themselves "wajinru" and individually were unaware of their origin. They depended on one lone member of their society, called the Historian, to yearly remind all of their painful and traumatic past cultural history.... which allowed them to then flourish .... and then almost telepathically "suck back" the memories and provide an unburdening effect. And yet, Yetu, the historian is forced to forever remember and retain this painful cultural history. This burden weighs heavy and erodes her self worth and health.. Yetu perceives this as an unfair burden (her continuous immersion in sadness, guilt and pain), rather than a great honor.and flees her home on a journey in an attempt to reach self actualization. All just before her next delivery of the Remembrance ... which, if undelivered, would threaten the the health and success of the wajinru community.
Solomon effortlessly weaves a magical and poignant tale that touches on the many problems and concepts that continue to be relevant even today .. .the ..necessity and benefits of companionship, love, cultural history, and community. Thanks to NetGalley and Saga Press for providing an Uncorrected Proof of this gem , in exchange for an honest review. A trip to YouTube is warranted .. to experience not only the "clipping" song but also the root contributions of Drexciya. ..... ( readersremains.com)

While I was a bit confused at first, I still enjoyed it. I wish I read the note at the end first to get a full understanding BEFORE the actual novel; I think it would have added to the understanding.

The Deep by Rivers Solomon is in conversation with a song by William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes and performed by Daveed Diggs, based on the underwater mythology of the 90s Detroit electro band Drexciya. (You can hear the song on Episode 623 of This American Life.)

Mercreatures descended from enslaved women murdered and thrown overboard when they were pregnant live in communities on the ocean floor, with the ability to connect telepathically. Yetu is the historian and bears the weight of the collective memory, and the story starts in the days up to the annual Remembering. There is some interaction with the "two-legs" but their interference in their ways of being are causing Yetu's community to rise up.

I was immediately drawn to this book by the beautiful cover and loved the originality of the book.
Years ago many America bound pregnant African slave women were tossed overboard during labor for being a nuisance to the slave traders. What resulted was the death of the women but the origins of another type of deep sea dwellers who have fins and can breathe underwater as well as above.
This story follows Yetu who is the historian for her people. The historian bears the great weight of holding all of her peoples painful memories so they may have their minds free until they have ceremonies called the rememberings where the historian shares those memories, then takes them back until the next ceremony. This is a too great of a weight for Yetu to bear and she takes drastic actions and that is where this story will take you, through loss of memories, regrets, love and great losses physically and mentally.
A beautifully written book. Be sure to read the origins of this story in the back of the book for more insights into the combination of thought processes that went into the making of this novella.

The Deep is a novella inspired by the song of the same title by clipping, we explore the concept of what would happen if the pregnant African women thrown from slave ships to their death had led to a species of mermaids; babies who continuing to breath water once the womb broke away. We enter on the character of Yetu, the historian of the Wajinru, the mermaid people who live an idyllic life in small communities across the seas. Their scattered communities are coming together to converge for the Remembrance, where Yetu will pour out the memories of their 600-year history to the Wajinru gathered... however they know none of it.

When I read Rivers Solomon's debut, An Unkindness of Ghosts, I immediately drew connections to many of the greats of SFF past, this work has even further strengthened that initial impression of their influences. If this has the seed of the clipping song that inspired it, it has just as much a seed of the work of Ursula K Le Guin in my eyes, I see the inspiration of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas in the character of Yetu, the historian bearing that weight of trauma for a whole people living blissfully ignorant, but with new insights. In the physiology of the Wajinru, I can see echoes of The Left Hand of Darkness, yet taken further.

Structurally, this delivers us the experience of Yetu living immersed in all memory. We skim between Yetu's current experiences, personal past experiences, experiences of past historians, and remembrances of the history of the Wajinru - all as if we exist within the deluge of memory.

I also found that this has expressed something I've always felt but never been able to externalize, that tradition often involves erasure of individual identity.  Within such a short length, there is a  rich exploration on the weight of cultural and familial expectations to the individual. In particular, Yetu is hypersensory and intelligent, which is both what led to the role as historian, yet also creates a distance and difference, even those who are family seem at an arms length emotionally, due to the function of Yetu's position in their society.

If nothing else, I would implore you to stand in a bookshop and read the afterword by clipping recounting the evolution of the story that made its way to reach these pages, it is a moving treatise on the life of art.

The Wajinru people are sea dwellers resembling mermaids that descended from the pregnant slaves who were tossed overboard of the slave ships on the way to the New World. The story focuses on the Wajinru historian, Yetu, who is tasked with keeping all of their memories. When they prove to be too horrific for her to manage, she abruptly swims away from her people leaving them in the throes of the trance-like state in which she transfers the memories briefly to them before taking them back on for another year. As Yetu learns to be herself again, relieved of her people's history and memories, she makes a valuable discovery about the "two-legs," friendship, and the importance of history and place.
Wildly imaginative and heartbreaking, I recommend this book for ages 15 and above and for libraries looking to provide a more diverse collection to their patrons.

a captivating read. mystifyingly descriptive i did feel like i was underwater experiencing everything. very unusual book about pregnant slaves thrown into.the deep. water breathing descendents created their own surreal world in the jeep highly recommend this book. thank you nead gallery for giving me the chance to review it. one of the best books i have read this year. this is a real world sticks with me. a truly unique and wonderful read. i think it will hold my middle school students interest. and they may learn a little fictionalized history to boot

I honestly found this book difficult to read, and I'm going to need to try it again, given all of the rave reviews of it. My initial attempt to read it left me wanting (I think it was due to unfair expectations of what the story was actually about), and I ended up putting it down due to the slow pacing.

The Deep by Rivers Solomon Daveed Diggs, &William Hutson Jonathan Snipes is my most highly anticipated Fantasy of 2019 and let me tell you it was worth every moment waiting for this. This book was so beautifully written, descents of pregnant African slave women who were thrown overboard by slave owners, this book blew me away. I have NEVER ready anything like this.

I have never heard of the song The Deep or the group Clipping, so I googled it then went back and reread the book and OMG! Talk about chills. Look this book is an absolute must read. Thank you, Thank you, Net Galley & Gallery / Saga Press for gifting me this copy. This was an easy 5/5 star read for me.

Poetic and stunning story telling that is powerful and thought provoking! I read it all in one sitting, and was captivated from start to finish. I highly recommend this read, as it took me out of my own cultural perspective and touches on an innate desire for a connection to our ancestors, along with a need to find our individual selves within the whole of our communities.

Thank you to Saga Press and NetGalley for the e-ARC to read and review.

"The Deep" is a thought-provoking work that embraces the history of pregnant African slave women being thrown overboard slave ships, along with their histories, memories and identities.

Yetu is a powerful but frail character. She serves as the medium, the Historian, to her people who carries the memories of their descendants. This way her people (the wajinru) can live without the pain of their descendants terrible past. After two decades, Yetu is near death by her position that she sees as an unfair burden while others see it as an honor. So she seeks to claim a better life for herself that so few during that time can claim to have achieved.

In her moments of tumultuous pain and grief, it's impossible not to acknowledge how far we are removed from that particular history that we sometimes cannot fathom the trauma of it all. Yetu, therefore, must carry that history for all wajinru and the reader.

The story is tragically beautiful. No matter the depths within which the wajinru live in order to escape the pain of the past, it still haunts them, finds them in the darkest depths.

At times I found it hard to believe that Yetu's people couldn't even muster up an ounce of sympathy for what Yetu goes through in some phantom feeling. I know they have no memory of the past and therefore whatever Yetu says comes across as fantasy and imaginings, but periodically there is a gap in their being that needs to be filled briefly with those memories in order to survive. After the Remembrance, they happily move on with their lives - unlike Yetu.

I love the themes of identity and culture that courses throughout the story. It's lessons beg to be heard: that history no matter how painful is not something to forget but to embrace and learn from.

After reading this book I am left impassive but moved, sad yet embolden. I ache but wish the story would continue. I am lost in thought. Great story!

I think I came into this novel with the wrong expectations. I definitely assumed I would see a lot focused on the history of the met people because they were descendants of African slaves tossed overboard, but I wasn’t expecting so much introspection.

A great deal of the book is Yetu complaining. Like <I>a lot</I>. She was dealt a shit hand and I can understand her reluctance and resentment, but I got a bit bored with her constant internal monologue of how much she hated everything.

When she meets new characters it started to pick up a bit and became a quiet and beautiful story of how healing and companionship and dramatically change someone. I enjoyed the peacefulness of those scenes and rooted for Yetu in those moments.

The origin story of how the babies came to survive in the ocean was original and clever and probably my favorite part of the book. The first mothers are majestic as hell and all I want for them is happiness forever.

This book has an interesting backstory: inspired by a song written for the podcast This American Life by the rap group Clipping. It is a world where the children of pregnant women thrown overboard during slave trade survived their mother’s murders and become the wajinru - a ocean dwelling people.

Solomon builds off this premise and creates a main character who seeks to find herself apart from her job of remembering all of the wajinru’s past. I enjoyed reading this book and immersing myself in this world. I will be recommending this book to library patrons interested in fantasy and well written prose.

Thanks to netgalley for the chance to read this great book.

A really powerful book, it felt like being underwater. I really had to concentrate, it was very outside of my usual white experience and I loved it. I want to be stretched in my reading and see from other people's point of view. I want more books like this!

I don't think I've ever read something quite like this novella. It's completely unique in the best, most fascinating way. The fantastical worldbuilding is enthralling and the story is so powerful, both in a raw, painful way and a wondrous, beautiful way. Yetu themself, along with the other historians, show a huge variety in how they lead and see their people. (Sidenote: I really loved the use of plural pronouns and the reasoning behind it. The whole author's note will be very interesting to any fantasy writer.)

It's a really emotional story, one that seeps into you and weighs heavy, but it should. The past that made this story is a thousand times more than anything I've experienced in my life. I feel as though I've glimpsed something, much like how the wajinru experience their Remembrance, that'll stay with me for a long time. Beautifully done.

Note: I received a free Kindle edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for the honest review above. I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher Saga Press, and the author Rivers Solomon for the opportunity to do so.

Can I give this 10 stars? Because I really want to give it 10 stars.

There is so much to unpack in this novel(la?) that I honestly don't really know where to start. There is an afterword explaining where the idea came from and how it was transformed, and I had read in a few reviews about the song by clipping., The Deep, that inspired the book. I went and listened to the song and really absorbed the lyrics.

The afterword explained how the gender and first-person narratives were stripped away in the song and "y'all" was used instead. In the book, many characters have a distinctly male or female gender, but several are referred to as "they." The characters we see in flashbacks, Zoti and Basha, are both non-gendered as "we." And Yetu explains to Oori at one point that the wajinru (the mer-folk) aren't truly gendered, as they can mate as male or female with anyone, and anyone can carry a child. I thought this was an interesting way to present the information, because we aren't focused on whether we're reading about a male or female mermaid, but rather that they are something different. These creatures were born of violence and necessity, and a little magic. What does gender matter?

The question of identity outside of the self is explored quite well. The wajinru give up most of their memories to the Historian, who carries the memory of all wajinru since the beginning. They are then left as empty shells, who don't form meaningful memories, and don't carry their history with them. Then Yetu meets and becomes close to a "two-legs," Oori, whose sense of self is destroyed because she doesn't have a home anymore, she's the last of her people. Yetu can't understand how that kills a person, because she sees it every day with her people. The two come to an understanding after a lot of struggle and discussion.

Yetu's adventure away from the wajinru gives her the inspiration and strength she needs to be part of her people and yet still maintain her sense of self. I loved how at the end she learns to harness her own power and use it to make an entirely new creature, and it's left a bit open for anything that may evolve from these artists in the future.

Seriously meaningful stuff, and I'm not even scratching the surface here. I am not a POC, and I don't carry their history inside me, so I don't want to impose my own meaning on something that may mean something entirely different. But I did appreciate and connect with the material and even if you're looking at it as pure fantasy, it is a spectacular read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.

This book was phenomenal. So many layers. It constantly made me aware of the weight and importance of cultural memory, as both a Black person and a queer person. I hope this book finds a wide audience.

I got an ARC of this book.

Every time I went to the beach as a kid I had a strange sensation that would distract me for hours afterwards. I would be sitting perfectly still, but I would still feel the waves hitting my body. I have no idea if I was the only one who ever felt that sensation, since no one else ever mentioned feeling the water so long after we left it. This book gave me that sensation. It made the ocean feel like home. It was able to make the loneliness and the pain feel so intensely real. More real than the waves ever were. 

I had gotten the book, because of the cover. I saw a mermaid. That was all I really cared about. I had half read the description. Even fully reading the description after I have read the book doesn't even come close to what this book provides. There is just so many feelings and so much pain. There is more pain than I ever expected seeing a mermaid on a cover of a book. The thing is, that is not a mermaid. 

There is this really intense and slight romance or at the very least a friendship based on a weird compromise and understanding. It was something that I lived for. I couldn't imagine life continuing after or without that connection. This book swallowed me whole. It made me feel every emotion and there was no respite. I felt as if I was the historian or going through the remembering. I knew nothing, but I also knew there was more and ached for more. Solomon is an amazing author. I just can't explain in anything that resembles even a semblance of what I feel about this book and what it did to me. READ IT. 

Listening to the song after reading the book, just is magical in a way that I have not experienced before. Yes, it is on Spotify and I may be listening to it on repeat while writing this. All of the feelings just won't stop. I am destroyed. 

This might just be the best book I have read this year or potentially ever. I just. So many feelings. I still feel them so intensely, its like I am still reading the book. I hope, like the waves, they subside after time. I feel so lost. I can't imagine moving on from this story. It feels so real.