Fans of Rivers Solomon's "An Unkindness of Ghost" won't find much in common with this new release (based off the Hugo-award winning rap song from Clipping) other than its ability to tug on heartstrings in just the right way. Beautiful and haunting original lore from a group of storytellers, which has expanded a bit further with Rivers Solomon's new novella. The shift in tenses takes a little bit of getting used to, though since the book is showing what collective memories look like, it still works. Reading the afterword also helps this make a bit more sense. Overall it was so creatively told and original from anything I've read in a while, and I just adore how Solomon writes relationships.

It’s no surprise to me that we often call history a burden. The terrible actions of our past—either our own or our ancestors’—seem to have an actual weight. The protagonist of The Deep, by Rivers Solomon (based on a group idea as the afterword explains) carries her people’s past in a very literal way: her brain remembers generations of memories. These memories crowd out her own experiences and often cause physical and emotional pain. At the beginning of the novella, Yetu is desperate to put her burden down.

The wajinru, a magical aquatic people, have a yearly ritual in which Yetu shares that entire history with them. The ritual reminds them who they are and where they came from, because they tend to forget without their Historian to serve as a living archive. These memories remind the wajinru that they are the children of pregnant, enslaved African women who were thrown overboard as they were transported to the Caribbean and America. Their infants, born in the ocean, were transformed to survive under water.

Because there is a real chance that these memories could kill Yetu, as soon as she has shared the memories during the yearly ritual, she leaves. A storm leaves her stranded and injured in a tidal pool. There she meets a woman who is the last of her people, who would give anything to preserve their history before it is lost forever. Yetu has to decide if she will go back to the wajinru and rescue them from their history…or if she will strike out on her own.

The Deep, being a novella, is incredibly brief. The amazing worldbuilding has plenty of hints about a wider world—one that I wish I could know more about. The wajinru in particular are a wonderful subject for stories. Like the people of Winter in The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin, gender is not really an issue for the wajinru. They can be either male or female for the purposes of reproduction; they use gendered pronouns, but it seems to be a matter of personal preference. They can also have a collective identity, one that makes Yetu’s dilemma carry a lot of emotional weight (on top of her burden as Historian).

The best part of The Deep, at least for me, are the questions and ideas it brings up. The spare writing felt almost like folk lore. Details are often ignored to keep the plot moving. This may annoy people, but the questions at the heart of this novella are really important. Can we find a middle path between treating our history as a terrible burden or as something sacred? Can we learn to see our history as a tool for becoming something better? Can we learn to remember the good as much as the bad? (And vice versa for the people who tend to gloss over the hard parts.) I’m looking forward to reading the reviews of this book, to see what other readers and critics think.

I have first heard of the book on twitter and got curious when I learned it was inspired by a song. At the time, I haven’t read any of Solomon’s books (though my friends have recommended me An Unkindness of Ghosts plenty) nor have I heard of Clipping. But I went and listened to The Deep – it was not my usual type and yet I liked it. I liked it a whole lot. The concept sounded like nothing I’ve ever read and as someone whose creativity is inspired by music, I was doubly keen to find out what will the result of the collaboration be. So of course, I jumped at the opportunity.

And the ever-important question: Was the book any good? Hell yes. Though I was a bit unsure at the start, it did pretty much exactly what I expected from the song, and more.

Yetu is a historian, a vessel for the collective memories of the sea-dwelling wajinru people. They are the offspring of African slave women thrown overboard and have no long-term memories, instead choosing a historian to remember for them. The weight of it all is destroying her, so she flees to the surface, leaving the memories behind.

(If you wonder how they came to be or how can one person hold all of the memories, well, this is a fantasy book. There are explanations, but in short: magic.)

The worldbuilding is fantastic, too. The take on merpeople is fresh and their culture is well thought out. I especially liked the chapters told from the perspective of the wajinru as a group – they are beautifully written and it’s not often that we is used instead of I or he/she/they.

The book deals heavily with themes of memory, trauma, and the individual vs. the collective. Yetu is a high-strung, anxious, sensitive person who cannot handle remembering centuries of trauma as vividly as if she experienced what those before her went through herself. And then there is another character who is the last of her kind and wishes dearly she had something of her people and cannot understand why Yetu would turn her back on her community.

If there’s anything I didn’t like as much, it’s that the narration is fairly distant – I couldn’t connect to Yetu or the story as much as I’d want to, especially in the beginning. And typical for a novella, it’s not quite enough in places. But I’d recommend it regardless.

This book was received as an ARC from Gallery / Saga Press in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

Right from the cover and description I knew I would be intrigued.by The Deep. I was in for the ride of my life. I could not put this book down. From one chapter to the next my eyes were almost superglued and did not want to be anywhere else. The passion and determination Yetu had for discovering the truth about her ancestors and where she descended from fulfilling her role as The Historian, the most distinguished role anyone can have of her culture. I always love books when you learn a fantastic fact of history and The Depp provided that and more. This book seriously left me breathless and intrigued and those are my two favorite feelings.

We will consider adding this title to our Sci Fi/Fantasy collection at the library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.

It starts off slow and kind of dense, but once the action begins, it's hard to resist the story as it drives forward. It reads as a true epic, one that makes you feel the world really has been reshaped as you read it. Would recommend.

This is a beautiful novella! It can be intense, but that's expected given the type of story that it is. I like Solomon's writing style and I think this story goes perfectly with the song it is based on. I want to read more from this author.

tw: self-harm, graphic violence, death, mention of slavery.

This is a disturbing, fascinating novella inspired by “The Deep” by Clipping the rap group featuring Daveed Diggs (Hamilton, Wonder). It features the historian or memory keeper of the wajinru—the water-breathing children evolved from the pregnant women pushed off slave ships during the Middle Passage—trying to survive the weight of their memories. It’s haunting and thoroughly impressive pulling together issues of gender, traumatic generational memories, and the magic of the sea.

Literary fantasy is one of those genres that many aspire to write but very few can pull off. So when I have the opportunity to read a piece of literary fantasy that lands so well--describing a unique setting with a masterful hand and exploring a difficult part of human history or experience--I'm always grateful.

The Deep revolves around Yetu and her people, the wajinru--mermaid-like beings descended from African women who were thrown off of slave ships. It's so harsh a history, I initially expected the story to be solely about Yetu discovering her heritage and coming to grips with it. Yet there's a intricate character arc woven into the story as well. Yetu not only knows a good part of her history at the beginning, but she is the one tasked with holding all these painful memories so the rest of her people don't have to be burdened with them. Only occasionally do they get a glimpse of them so they do not forget completely where they came from. It's a responsibility that's weighing Yetu down so much she eventually runs away from it all, leaving everyone else trapped holding the memories and only vaguely aware of their present reality. Yetu's journey then shifts to filling in the gaps of how her people came to be, exploring what it means to be part of her community, and what the responsibility is of community members to each other. At one point, she becomes injured and leans on this as a way to stall making a decision about whether or not to return. It's relatable, it's real, and although I could never imagine holding the burden that Yetu holds, it made me feel connected to her.

"Connection brings responsibility," the book states, and there's a lot for Yetu to unpack and she explores her connections with others. The story shifts from her desperation, to her newfound happiness in her freedom, to the frustration of missing her family yet not wanting to go back to the way things were. The time shifts are sometimes sudden but always ground the reader well. I'm glad this was allowed to be exactly the length it needed--it's not a full-length novel, but expanding or over-trimming it would lose the beauty of the storytelling.

The afterword about this book and the music that inspired it was also a fascinating read. I confess much of this story's history was new to me, and I appreciated the creators taking the time to educate readers like me on that front.

Overall, The Deep is a powerful, expertly-crafted, and highly recommended piece of literature.

I was drawn to this book because of it's beautiful cover and mysterious title. Then the concept of mer-people as descendants of pregnant Africa slaves who were tossed overboard from slave ships like so much garbage really drew me in. The writing is lyrical and haunting. The world-building is very well imagined. I like that she made you feel what it would be like to live in total darkness of the bottom of the ocean. Then there is the shared memories, almost like a cultural oral history. And these memories are slowly forgotten if the history is not retold, which I felt was a very timely concept. All in all this was a brief but entirely unique story that needed to be told.

Another incredible read from Rivers Solomon. Based on the song, The Deep, by Clipping, the book tells the story of the descendants of pregnant African slaves thrown overboard who not only survived but thrived in the depths of the ocean as water-dwelling wajinru. The truth of their past is so traumatic that it is held and preserved by one historian, who holds the collective memory of all their people. A painful and often thankless job-- especially for Yetu's whose sensory sensitivities make her especially overwhelmed by the knowledge of the past.

An enthralling novella exploring everything from generational trauma and survival to gender norms. River Solomon's world building and writing are as masterful as ever, and if they aren't already on your must-read-everything-they-write list they should be now. Cannot recommend enough.

I had a hard time getting into this narrative. The premise was amazing, and there were some moments of promise, but it didn't have quite the cohesion I was expecting. Maybe I should go back and listen to the music that inspired it? I did like that the authors said in the afterward that the music and book went together like a game of telephone--things got distorted and morphed, sometimes for the better, between genres--and that the listener/reader is able to decide what is "true" based on their own preferences.

This was so, so beautiful. Rivers Solomon has this amazing talent for writing about incredibly painful topics in a way that makes them bearable. Instead of being overwhelmed with dread, I'm all tender and open and ready to receive the beautiful, devastating gut punch of sorrow and joy when it inevitably comes.

Whole this obviously touched me deeply, it also made me think a lot about loneliness, community and our responsibilities to each other, and the things we gain from validating and sharing each other's pain. Just wow. There's not much more I can say other than I loved it.

YES! I'm a bit traumatized by this book but I loved it so incredibly much. Can't wait to listen to the audiobook and recommend this title to many of my customers.

Wow. I wasn't sure what to expect from this but it wasn't what I got. It was beautiful and haunting and I could have read so much more. Solomon has very deft hand in writing the inner landscape of characters, and their work was no different here. Yetu was vividly portrayed and felt extremely real. Her people are fascinating and a powerful picture of survival. What reached out and touched me most was how neurodivergent Yeti and Oori are, as well as hints of the previous Historian, and how obvious it is on the page. How treasured it is to read as someone on that spectrum myself. The Deep isn't gentler than An Unkindness of Ghosts, but it's less graphic. So if you'd avoided reading Solomon's writing before, this is a perfect introduction.

An incredibly interesting reimagining of what happened to the slaves that got thrown off the ships while crossing the ocean.

Strong story that helps us understand the hardship of being the liable and the only one that can bring memories back to the people. Strong female character who wants escape and live a normal life.

Rivers Solomon recently wrote on their twitter feed: "me discussing writing today with a friend: i wanna be murdering ppl with every line... to clarify, i mean murdering readers. emotionally." This applies, I think to Solomon's new science fiction novella THE DEEP (I received an advance copy from the publisher in return for agreeing to write a review). The book just slays me. It is about about trauma and history, and about remembering and forgetting.
The book refers to the real history of the Atlantic slave trade, but also to an imaginative alternate history, or counter-mythology, that was invented by the Detroit techno band Drexciya. In a series of releases between 1992 and 2002, Drexciya tells us the story of an underwater realm in the mid-Atlantic, "populated by the unborn children of pregnant African women thrown off of slave ships during the Middle Passage who had learned to breathe underwater in their mother's wombs." These merpeople and their descendants establish a utopian society in the sea, free from the war and racism on the surface. In this way Drexciya imagines a partial escape from the horrors of modern history, and reclaims what the philosopher Paul Gilroy calls the "Black Atlantic."
Other artists have further developed Drexciya's vision. Ellen Gallagher's ongoing "Watery Ecstatic" series of mixed media artworks (2001- ) offers a Black feminist, and also "posthuman and interspecies," reworking of the Drexciya myth. More directly relevant to Solomon's novella, the avant-rap band Clipping released a song called "The Deep" in 2017. This song is set in the world imagined by Drexciya, and brings its narrative into the present. The song envisions the underwater realm threatened, today in the 21st century, by global warming and undersea oil drilling, and imagines the Drexciyans' apocalyptic response to these dangers.
Rivers Solomon picks up Clipping's scenario, and once more reimagines it. (In an Afterword to the book, the band compares the transmission from Drexciya to Clipping to Solomon as like a game of Telephone, in which each reiteration of a phrase creatively expands and transforms it). Solomon gives us the story of Yetu, the official Historian of the merpeople, who are here called wajinru rather than Drexciyans. Her job is to remember their past. She hoards the memories of these aquatic human beings, all the way back to their ancestral origins, when their first generation was born underwater from the wombs of kidnapped African women thrown from slave ships into the open ocean. By remembering, in excruciating detail, everything that has ever happened to the wajinru, Yetu grounds them in history. On the one hand, she uses her knowledge to remind them who they are. On the other hand, by remembering for all the others, she frees them from the burden of their history, allowing them to forget, and thereby to enjoy life in the present.
The history of the slave trade is deeply traumatic, and Yetu suffers mightly from being forced to remember it. She experiences directly, in mind and in body, the tensions that animate her whole society. On the one hand, to forget your history is to become unmoored, to feel a kind of hollowness, a cavity (a word the novella uses several times). Without some sense of growth and development across time, there can be no feeling of accomplishment or achievement. On the other hand, to remember your history is to be traumatized by it anew, and to feel unable to escape it. As Karl Marx famously wrote, "the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."
Yetu is literally trapped by this dilemma. Her job of remembering and preserving the past makes it impossible for her to function in the present -- let alone to enjoy it. But by taking the task of remembrance upon herself, she allows her people both to have fulfilling lives in the present, and to maintain the historical background that they need to thrive. She is torn between the need for self-care, and the need to hold things together for her people and for the ancestors. THE DEEP is really about how Yetu negotiates between these two needs, both of which are crucial to her survivial, and yet which seem to contradict one another. It's a powerful and affecting book; you can't read it without being deeply shaken by the conflicts that it depicts in such vivid prose.

I had never heard of the song that inspired this book, nor had I heard of the musicians who wrote the song. I just read the blurb about this book and it sounded interesting. This book was not at all what I thought it would be, but it ended up being a very enjoyable experience. However, one of the things I kept think about the whole time I read this book was how much it reminded me of the Giver and Jonas being the RECEIVER at a young age and having to deal not just with the joys, but the awful pain of the history of his people. In this case, Yetu is the HISTORIAN of her people and she is also the keeper of her people's history, all the way back to the beginning. The book shifts time and memory in sections and sometimes that confused me, but overall, I thought it was well written and it also ended well. I'm very glad this book crossed my radar. And I'm now checking out the band, Clipping, even though their style of music is not my usual.

Thanks to NetGalley, Rivers Solomon, the members of Clipping, and the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley. Also, Rivers Solomon’s preferred pronoun is they/them.

I pre-ordered this novella in July, and at the time a group of people were upset that Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel in the live-action Disney remake of the Little Mermaid. While people kept claiming that it was because her hair wasn’t red, the “backlash” basically bullied down to Bailey being black because some stupid/racist people thought black mermaids weren’t a thing. I was finding books about black mermaids to mention and this showed up. So, I pre-ordered. Then I got approval via Netgalley.
Look, the book is good enough that my pre-order is still in. Well, that’s not exactly true. I cancelled the kindle pre-order and pre-ordered the hardcover (from an Indie bookstore, so the fact that I am paying 20 bucks for a book that isn’t even 200 pages should tell you everything you need to know about this book).
It’s not the little mermaid. It isn’t.
Solomon’s book is inspired by Clipping’s song of the same name (the song appeared on an episode of This American Life) and the group has written the afterword. The story is about Yetu a member of a group of undersea creatures who are the descendants of women who were throwed overboard from slave ships.
But the book is in large part about the power – both good and bad – of memory. An while the timing is undoubtedly a fluke, it is important to note the response to the 1619 Project. If you have not read the NY Times Magazine, please do so. What it does challenge, in fact, is how we view the past and how we need to face and acknowledge that past as well as its effects if we are to move forward. Tetu is caught in the past and her response to gain her freedom details why knowledge of the past is so important.
The novella is in many ways a more interior story than an exterior story. It is to Rivers Solomon’s credit that their writing keeps the reader, and this is down, in part, though the use of two different types of storytelling. But the two styles are blended by Rivers Solomon’s skilled use of craft making the story not only strong and engrossing but also engaging the reader, almost bringing the reader into the time and place.

The Deep is an imaginative snapshot into a world where pregnant African slaves were tossed overboard during the Transatlantic Passage only to engender dangerous, hive mind mermaids. The novella features the loosest of plots and is best read by those who enjoy meandering stream-of-consciousness writing in which the narrator/time period is not clearly delineated.

Yetu is a historian for her people, holding all of the painful memories of their collective past while they live carefree 362 days of the year. For three days each year, she takes them through The Remembering during which they receive the memories of their ancestors. The Remembering doesn’t go as planned, and Yetu finds herself physically lost while trying to find her own soul and what she cares about most.

The writing is dreamlike and difficult to follow. This prevents the reader from feeling immersed in the story or grasping the setting and atmosphere of the novella. Yetu and her story are turned inward and consistently introspective, yet a couple of the sparse characters feel believable and distinct, including Amaba.

The pacing is inconsistent with the first 75% dragging across the bottom of the ocean floor at a crab’s pace.

Overall, if you enjoy innovative, nonlinear, and dreamlike novels, this is a great, quick read.