I said I was lost for words in my last book review, but Jesus Christ, Sorrowland makes that book look joyful. This is horrifying, I don’t live in American, I was never taught American history at school, I only recently learned that the US government did medical experiments of black people, to read this book and see just how common place it is and how they continue to get away with it fills me with such burning rage. Anyone who thinks America is great or even somewhat good is delusional if not actively participating in the extreme injustice the US thrives on.

I want to start this review by saying that there are themes and trauma brought up in this book that I will never be able to understand. That being said, I think this was an absolutely incredible story following one of the best protagonists I’ve ever read about. Vern’s upbringing and subsequent escape was so enthralling to me, I found myself drinking up chapters like water at 3am. It was such a powerful yet heartbreaking story and I can only imagine how much more impactful it will be for Black readers and I hope the people who need this story the most will be able to read it.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

This was a strange book that was well written that was not for me.

I first discovered Rivers Solomon with Rivers’s first novel, The Unkindness of Ghosts, set on a generation ship that has instituted a version of 19th century southern slavery (for undisclosed reasons). It was excellent - raw and interesting and beautiful. So I eagerly bought and dove into the Deep, Rivers’s novella based on a song about mermaids who evolved from enslaved pregnant people tossed overboard during the Atlantic crossing. I did not love it - the plot was too non linear for me, the language too poetic for my tastes. I couldn’t follow it.

So I went into Sorrowland with lowered expectations. It was a good book - an albino black woman escapes her black power cult after being experimented on, after which she has twins and lives off the land while on the run. And she sees ghosts. The story was interesting, the writing excellent, but I couldn’t find a way to like the protagonist. I know she was supposed to be a flawed character, and I can appreciate her, but fairly early in the book she leaves her twin infants asleep alone in the woods in the middle of the night while she seeks out a sexual encounter. I was never able to move past that act of child endangerment and I could never like her or trust her again after that. I know she didn’t always make the best choices and that she was only 15 years old at the time, but I just could not get over that and it made it impossible for me to ever like her. This book is good. It is just not for me.

“A misfit in the Land of the Living, she’d always been a dead girl walking.”

Sorrowland is a beautiful, lyrical gothic horror with some science fiction elements that reaches into real life for inspiration. Vern was born on the Blessed Acres of Cain, a Black community that has disassociated from white man’s religion to form their own Utopia. Originally led by Black Panthers, Cainland has been formed into something different. The men are controlling, and the victims aren’t allowed to leave.

When Vern escapes, she finds living in the woods preferable to Cainland. After giving birth to her two children, she remains there for four years until she decides it’s time to move on. She’s becoming more and more ill, with strange symptoms such as super strength and a hard lump on her back she calls her Passenger.

The visions or hauntings she’s been having help her unravel the truth about who she is, where she came from, and what Cainland truly is. It’s beautifully written and timely. With bits of everything I enjoy about a horror novel. The only thing keeping me from rating it a solid 5 stars is the writing felt a little disjointed. This is definitely a book I’ll reread at one point to get a better appreciation for it.

I truly recommend this to everyone. It’s a horror novel with a twist; it’s genre-bending and follows no rules.

“When you can’t fill a hole with goodness, fill it with filth.”

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and Rivers Solomon for this advanced reader’s copy! This is my second of Solomon’s books, and I can’t wait to read more of their stuff!

I wanted to love this book. The writing is fantastic, and the premise is exactly the dystopian novel I'm quick to fall in love with. But I found myself slowing down about halfway through, and I struggled with some of the imagery for the various supernatural events. I still recommend it, as it confronts dark themes pertinent to today's climate. I hope to see this made into a Netflix show because I think it's perfect for the screen.

Thank you to the publisher/NetGalley for an early review copy.

The mood and movement in this novel is really lively. I enjoyed the fierce survival instinct of Vern, combined with her poetic interior musings. The story is full of forward movement and sometimes I felt a little hurried along when I would have preferred to linger in a scene that had more detail and circumspection. I felt like an outsider reading this novel, as if I were looking on vs fully immersed. A bit at arm’s length. I know this is a very personal reaction and it seems to me that readers who read speculative fiction as their first preference will find much to love here.

This book has been a wonderful surprise. I only had the general idea from the description, but it goes so much further. It's not a sci-fi story, it's a mix between own voices, paranormal, dystopia, LGBTQIA+ and YA. It's unique.

The story starts with Vern. She's in labour, all by herself in the woods. She's only 15 years old and far away from home. She's strong. She has to be. Someone is following her, threatening her, and she knows who's sent them. Vern is smart and knows how to survive in the woods and take care of her babies.

Little by little we know that Vern is running away from the community her mother and brother belong. She's married with the lider and she knows he will do whatever is needed to make her and their children come back.

This community, the Blessed Acres of Cain, started as a way of helping all the people of African ancestry to stand up for their rights and fight against groups such as White Supremacy. Though other intentions were also a part of its foundation. Vern knows that the community is hiding something. Aweful things happen inside those lands. The enemy isn't only outside those doors that keep the people from the Blessed Acres of Cain imprisoned.

Absolutely recommend it and I hope to read soon the other books by Rivers Solomon.

Vern gives birth to her twin sons after escaping from the compound called Cainland. Someone she calls the fiend hunts her down through the woods where she makes camp and cares for her babies Howling and Feral. Instead of settling in a nearby town, Vern, a teenager at the novel’s start, keeps to the forest. She relies on the water, plants, and animals for sustenance. When the pain and physical changes in her body (since running away from Cainland, also known as the Blessed Acres) become harder to bear, she decides to find Lucy, her friend who had escaped from the compound years ago.

Vern navigates unfamiliar terrain, her children even more bewildered at the world outside their forest home. She eventually finds where Lucy supposedly lives, but sees that the address has led her to Bridget, who tells her that Lucy has vanished several years ago. Vern stays with Bridget and her niece GoGo (both Lakota), and as she tries to adjust to the stability, she continues to undergo physical changes. And she learns that she’s transforming into a being of superhuman strength and vitality.
Solomon’s evocative prose unfolds Vern’s story, an albino Black woman, partly blind and a Lesbian, as she traverses the changes in her life and body. She encounters hauntings of people and past memories, the withdrawal symptoms from the drugs that the compound had forced in her. The compound’s psychological hold on her, including her husband’s (Reverend Sherman) abuse, causes her to second guess herself in certain situations.

The story provides glimpses of Vern’s life in the strictly religious compound Cainland, which originates from a Black Nationalist movement against white supremacy. Initially, a community intended to empower Black people, Cainland (where they worship the God of Cain) reinforces oppressive values from white America. The pleasures of the outside world, along with queerness and processed foods, are seen as the white man’s evil. Even after her escape, Vern struggles with her sexuality and other “sins.”

Reminiscent of books like Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler and Black No More by George Schuyler, Sorrowland stands on its own with its intersectionality and blunt perspective.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon is available from Macmillian.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Fifteen year old Vern escapes life in Cainland—a cult full of mysterious practices—in the hopes of giving herself and her twins a better life. She soon realizes that life on the outside can be just as harsh.

Rating this is hard, because I can definitely see why some people liked this book, but it was not for me. Although it took a few chapters for the author to really hit their stride, I genuinely enjoyed the writing style. Sorrow land was beautifully written and addressed many very important topics with sensitivity and respect. I greatly appreciated how gender and sexuality were betrayed as fluid and personal, and how labels weren’t necessary. One thing I want to commend the author on, more than anything, is disability representation. Vern has nystagmus, something I’ve never seen in a character before, and as someone who also has nystagmus, it meant a lot to me to actually come across it in a book, even if I didn’t always agree with the way it was portrayed.

Overall, Rivers Solomon dealt with a number of difficult topics with care and mastery, and I absolutely applaud them for it. It’s an interesting plot concept (reminiscent at times of Mexican Gothic, a book I loved) and a unique story, and I do honestly wish I’d enjoyed it.

The first critique I have is on the pacing. Some parts felt rushed, whereas there were huge chunks of the book where virtually nothing happened. Major plot points would appear out of the blue, changing the trajectory of the book. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good plot twist—but this felt more as if major plot decisions were made on the spot rather than planned out and weaved into the story. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but it failed to resonate with me. Additionally, this is classified as sci-fi/fantasy, but I genuinely don’t know why. It certainly isn’t fantasy, and I’d hesitate to really call it sci-fi even.

Vern’s characterization was often frustrating, too. Despite the lengths the author goes to show the world in shades of grey, and no matter how many times Vern is shown to realize that the world is shades of grey, she still views everything in black and white. Everyone affiliated with Cainland is all bad, with the exception of Lucy, no matter that most of them are no less victims than her. When this view flips, it’s without any warning or lead-up or explanation. She often declares that other characters’ experiences are or aren’t trauma, regardless of how the character themself views the experience. There are several instances where phrases such as “everyone always said Vern was ____” or “no one would ever call Vern ____” were used to give us one of her supposed traits, and yet the traits named were rarely ones with any textual backup. It’s not enough, in my opinion, to tell the reader that a character possesses a certain trait without ever having them act in that way.

Again, I do still understand why some people enjoyed this book. It’s incredibly important to have literature that highlights different aspects of the human experience and it is incredibly important to address many of the issues and topics Sorrowland addresses. The writing style itself flows well and is very pretty, but the characterization and plot pacing failed to satisfy. I can’t think of a better example, though, of how personal book ratings are—my 2 star experience could absolutely be another’s 5 star experience.

Sorrowland follows Vern as she escapes, pregnant, the strict religious compound where she was raised and flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins and raises them far from the influence of the outside world. But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality, her body wracked by inexplicable changes. To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her family, Vern has to face the past and the future.

I read and loved Rivers Solomon's The Deep last year, and ever since then, I've been excited to read more of fae’s writing. I went into Sorrowland expecting it to be an SFF book. But, right from the first few pages, I realized that it very much isn't that. This is one of those novels that mix so many genres together to the point that it's hard to describe it, but I would say it's a gothic novel that at moments borders on horror. In this book Rivers Solomon doesn’t shy away from the dark and horrific history of what America is willing to do to black bodies. There were times that this was a difficult book to read, but it still had an underlying sense of hope.

This is one of those rare books that I did not know where it was going to go at any point. Everything that happened was unexpected and surprising.

I also really liked the sapphic romance in the book, it isn't the main focus, but I was really invested in the development of the relationship. The writing was incredible and so atmospheric, you could feel that sense of creeping unease as Vern begins to be haunted by the memories of the past.
Trigger Warnings: child abuse, violence, cults, homophobia, transphobia, torture, death, mention of forced sterilization, racism, misogyny, body horror, gore.

Like Solomon's The Deep, I think I was more smitten with the concept of this book, rather than the execution. This is a book with epic scope, a unique premise, and wholly original characters. However, personally, I didn't really dig how all those elements came together (mostly because I felt like it DIDN'T come together.)

Starting off with the strengths... I was fascinated with Vern and really got into the first quarter of the book where she births and raises her twin boys alone in the woods. We learn a little bit about the cult from which she has escaped (the Afro-centric focus of which was a totally original concept that I've not seen explored before in any book I've read) and come to care deeply about their future.

I also was on board for the second quarter-ish of the book too where these characters that we've grown to root for exit the woods and make their way in society. This section of the book digs deeper into both conspiracies surrounding the cult and the supernatural elements of the book, with--in my opinion--varying degrees of success.

The third quarter of the book was about Vern building new relationships, and leaned even deeper into the conspiracies of the cult and the supernatural elements. I wasn't loving this direction, but I did love the characters and that kept me plugging along as a reader. At this point you're rooting for Vern to have help on her journey and for her kids to find a soft place to land.

The last quarter of the book though? Man, for me, this is when things went totally off the rails. There is a decapitation, some interspecies cannibalism, some ghost sex, some wig trying on, some fungus spore infestations--just A LOT. I didn't buy the ending and I felt like elements were just being thrown at the wall to see what sticks. I'm sure some people will love this ending, but for me it was a train wreck.

I guess this book is challenging to classify as it is times quite gross, quite terrifying, quite lovely, quite fantastical, and quite graphic with its depiction sexuality (but only a bit...at the end). I appreciated the reach of this book--that it tried to be all these things and more, that it tackled heady issues connected to belonging, faith, sexuality and race. However, to be honest, I didn't really ENJOY reading this book at all. It seemed like a lot of work to ride the wide shifts in tone, to stay connected to the story that seemed to want to go in so many directions.

I'm sure this book will be a hit with some readers, but it was mostly a miss for me, personally. I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This book blew my mind with its sharpness, precision and fresh voice. I was absolutely captivated from the first page of Rivers Solomon’s gorgeous and terrifying breakout novel. Sorrowland combines searing social commentary and rich, frightening speculative story-telling to deliver a heart-pounding, thought-provoking page turner. Vern, a Black teenager raised in a secluded religious compound, is one of the few Cainites bold enough to escape Blessed Acres. But even after surviving in the forest with her children for years, Vern experiences mysterious new abilities that mean she must confront the horrible secrets of the compound and the America that fostered it.

I loved the complexity of these characters, and this haunted world. I was particularly invested in the relationship between Vern and her children, and Vern and Gogo, the Lakota winkte, healer and philosopher who becomes Vern’s closest ally and confidant.

The ending felt rather rushed to me, but it was still quite satisfying and left a lot of space for engaging discussion.

Pregnant Vern runs into the woods to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised. She is determined to raise her twins far away from them, but they're looking for her. They refuse to let her go, and in protecting herself and her twins, she unleashes powers she shouldn't have. Vern is undergoing a metamorphosis, and understanding it means learning about the compound and the world outside the woods.

This is "a genre-bending work of Gothic fiction." At first, I didn't have a good sense of the timeline for when this takes place. I thought that it took place in the 1800s or 1900s because the commune that Vern was raised in was the odd sort of religion that would've risen in that time frame. But it's not that old a compound, even if its founding tenets were warped with time due to politics and the need for power by those in charge. The power that Vern has isn't clear at first; she's incredibly strong, both of body and mind, and knowledgeable about living off the land. Her twin sons, one wild and one albino like her, grow up in the forest and are the primary interactions that she has. Soon, we see her healing quickly, and skin changes develop as well. Her interactions with people outside of the forest are fraught times; she isn't used to being in modern America, and the changes to her body take on a science fiction cast.

Vern is a difficult woman to like, but I think she prefers it that way. I understand her and feel for her, and was horrified on her behalf for the sheer number of betrayals she suffered throughout the book. The science-fiction aspects are most evident in the final third of the book, but it flows so naturally from the earlier Gothic aspects that it doesn't feel out of place. Vern is even stronger here, though she's still at a disadvantage given her lack of experience. She has a lot to fight for, and that drives her forward against everything working to stop her and reduce her to a lab rat. She really comes into her own over the course of the novel, and I loved seeing her grow that way. This is a very thoughtful book by an insightful writer, one that I really enjoyed reading.

This was a very weird but very engaging and powerful read. The story took a few turns and was left a bit open ended, but overall I enjoyed this and appreciated the imagery and historical callbacks to the terrible crimes done to Black people in the US, that don’t get enough attention today.

Sorrowland is everything that you would expect from a Rivers Solomon book; it’s smart and raw, tackling race and gender themes with no pulled punches. Two days have passed since I finished it, and I’m already itching to read it again from the beginning (with more notes and highlighting).

The story begins with Vern giving birth in the woods, newly escaped from the religious compound she was raised on. She names the twins Howling and Feral – intentionally snubbing the biblical names her husband planned for them in as grand a manner possible – and creates a home for herself and the children in the middle of the forest. But life in the woods carries many of the same dangers as the compound; a Fiend stalks her, and Vern tries to keep the children safe, keep ahead of the Fiend, and keep her changing body under control all at the same time.

I was expecting a straight sci-fi novel going in, and while there are science fiction elements, it reads more like a gothic horror. The pacing is slow and suspenseful, and there are long periods of unnatural quiet as you wait for The Bad Thing to happen (and the bad thing never fails to happen). The compound is positioned as a haven for Black people, but it contains the same misogynist hierarchies and hypocritical ideals one would find while studying any cult. Solomon does a brilliant job of conveying that a system founded in white supremacy does not stop carrying supremacist energy just because it has been populated with Black people. The compound is less of a haven and more of a prison, and what appears to be a textbook cult on the surface is actually part of a larger conspiracy.

While Vern would prefer to keep to herself, she is forced to seek outside help once it becomes clear that she is in over her head with the Blessed Acres of Cain and its followers. She meets Bridget and Gogo – Bridget works wonders with the children, while Gogo helps Vern do some serious unlearning. Reading Vern quantify the juxtapositions between Gogo’s approaches and the compound’s hits hard.

As a whole, there isn’t any part of this book that didn’t work for me. I loved Vern’s contrary nature. I loved the way she could not keep her tongue in her mouth, even when it brought her harm. I loved the love she held for her babies, and the fierce love they had for her in return. I loved Gogo’s inner strength and her commitment to fighting for the right thing. I loved that she was winkte. I loved her complicated feelings regarding society, as an indigenous person taken off a reservation so young, she doesn’t fully feel that she belongs in either world. This book had everything; monsters (of the figurative and literal variety), friendship, complicated family, found family, loyalty, flawed heroes, villains, and a climax that nearly moved me to tears.

Rivers Solomon has a gift for creating gutting narratives that stay with you, and Sorrowland meets that precedent. It is both one of the heaviest and one of the most incredible books I have read so far this year, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the free e-arc of Sorrowland in exchange for an honest review.

I am not sure I enjoyed Sorrowland. Was it well written? Yes. Was it a powerful story that kept me captivated and make me think? Most of the time. But did I enjoy it? I don’t know. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to.

Sorrowland is a deeply influential story that will stick with you long into the night. The first 1/2 - 2/3 of the book is wonderfully gothic with just the right amount of hair raising suspense. We first meet the main character, Vern, when she is fifteen, having run away from her husband (who is also the leader of a cult), and in the middle of giving birth to her children. The novel then follows her as she attempts to raise her children in the woods all while dealing with the mysterious “hauntings” that plague her.

Where the book starts to feel more mundane is when Vern finally leaves the woods. While I found the transition of the children from living in the wild to living in modern society fascinating, everything happening to Vern starts to feel just like any modern sci-fi thriller.

While it wasn’t something I will read again and it wasn’t one of those lazy-Sunday-mornings-with-a-cup-of-coffee books, I would recommend this book. It could be a very interesting read for a book club, even one that doesn’t normally do sci-fi/fantasy.

Trying to capture the essence of Sorrowland using words would never do enough justice.

Solomon immediately transports the reader into a mesmerizing atmosphere of darkness, fear, and mystery. Fom the pace of the story to the rhythm of the words, I became lost within the writing. Sorrowland can not be contained by a single genre. Instead it merges sci fi fantasy with gothic horror. Many of my fears were exposed which made for a difficult read at times. It pushed my boundaries a little but I think this was due to my limited experience with the gothic horror genre.

Sorrowland is the story of Vern, a young girl fleeing her abusive husband who happens to be leader of the cult she was living at. She escapes in order to provide a better life for herself and the children she carries. As Vern and her two boys grow, they struggle for survival in the midst of an unflinching environment. I felt her fear as she was being stalked and manipulated by the unrelenting forces from Cainland. The writing made for an unforgettable read as themes of motherhood, gender, sexuality, and the dark history of race are explored.

Well, that was an intense and meaty read. Whew!

This book took me quite some time to get through, I would read some and put this book down and turn to other books. There is a lot going on in this book. A lot of food for thought. A lot of issues being addressed. Plus, it was bizarre at times and there were instances where I just was not sure what I just read and had to go back and re-read some sections.

The book begins as a 7-month pregnant, Vern, flees Cainland, the religious compound where she was raised. She goes into the woods and gives birth to her twin sons, Howling and Feral. Hunted by the Fiend, she must survive and do the best she can to raise her sons.

While in the woods, Vern begins to change. Her sons notice it. There is something going on with her back. But what? Was she poisoned? Was it the drugs she was given at night in Cainland? Plus, are the "hauntings" she experiences hallucinations? Is this the result of the drugs she was given? Are the "Hauntings" telling her something? Are they even real? Vern eventually leaves the woods and meets a woman named Gonzo who with a woman named Bridget, help Vern, and take care of her children. There is a lot more there, but I will leave it at that.

So, the plot seems straightforward, right? Wrong! At least it was not for me. This book is a mixture of several genres and as I mentioned before parts were bizarre to me. There are a lot of issues being addressed in this book - survival, motherhood, abuse, violence, history, sexuality, friendship, race, identity, cults, religion, etc. For me, all the issues in addition to the numerous genres became overwhelming and bogged down the book a little for me.

This was an extremely ambitious novel. Many are enjoying this more than I did. I struggled in the beginning and I struggled at the end. The only part, I didn't struggle was in middle.

Beautifully written, Ambitious, genre bending, haunting and bizarre.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

Sorrowland is the story of Vern, the 15 year old wife of Reverend Sherman, who has spent her whole life in the Blessed Acres of Cain (or Cainland) an isolationist black nationalist compound. Vern is albino, with vision issues that mean she has never learned to read, but she is incredibly smart, having absorbed any knowledge she could from those around her. She is pregnant and determined not to bring new life into the cult, she flees into the forest, but a fiend is in the forest with her making ominous threats, she seems sure the fiend is real and not one of the continued Hauntings she experiences that the Reverend taught were detoxification from the outside world. Vern gives birth to twins in the forest, becoming wrapped up entirely in their care and survival. When she starts losing her own identity to the children, one day she wanders out of the forest to the road and meets a biker woman who she strikes up a relationship with. As time has gone on in the forest, the Hauntings have only worsened, Vern's body is also changing is strange ways that even the children who have never seen another person recognize is unusual. Over the course of excursions out of the forest to meet the woman, Vern begins to realize she can't stay in the forest forever and she needs to know more about the changes she's undergoing, she wants to start by finding her childhood best friend Lucy who escaped the cult. Vern slowly unravels the truth of the Hauntings, the changes in her body, and the secrets of Cainland.

This starts very slow and atmospheric, being mostly about a quiet isolated survival in the woods, but completely changes in part 2 and 3, continues escalating in both pace and strangeness. It is a bit hard to accept a 15 year old being able to survive in this way, though the life at the compound meant mostly self reliance, resourcefulness and survivalism, so it comes off at least feasible. Vern does eventually leave the forest, finding her way to people who are helpers and don't care about her unusual situation, there she begins a relationship with a Lakota third gender/two-spirit (winkte) individual, who is also medic and is able to help her with her body problem. As well, while Vern has been socialized to she/her pronouns, she is clear in the first chapter that she defies gender, interestingly with her twins likewise we have a sort of fluidity in gender.

For me this is the most rich in terms of prose of Solomon's work so far, and I can really see the progression of their work here. Looking back to past work, In The Deep, the primary narrative is the collective memory of trauma, this story definitely also draws on that as an element as well. We see this from an individual and generational level, with Vern herself and her mother as the first part is split between current Vern in the forest, and her backstory at Cainland leading up her escape. As we get into parst 2 and 3 we get into the history of trauma of Cainland. As well, beyond the forest the introduction of indigenous characters into her life makes Vern re-think the fact that the ideology of Cainlaind said they were taking back the land they were entitled after slavery, but she is confronted now with whose land is it really they were taking. This is very much focused on the exploitation of black bodies particularly, but through the inclusion of the indigenous characters it extends out to broader people of colour in general beyond just the black experience. This touches around the edges on the reality for them of pipeline protests and chronic diabetes.

From a content perspective, there is some severe homophobia and rejection of biracial relationships in Cainland. The book does include a fair amount of violence and gore, but for me I found it to be written in a way that is not lingered on or excessive, it is more vivid. At the beginning the fiend is leaving dead animal bodies, but it doesn't get much more graphic than I've written there, so even though that is something I am personally extremely sensitive to, so because of how it is handled it never bothered me. As her body begins to change there are some elements of self harm as well, however for me this seems more a literal means of showing an outward expression of internal damage and healing, not what you think of when talking about the topic normally regarding mental illness and self harming. It is body horror in the technical sense of actual body changing, but not as much the way it's more commonly used to impart extremely graphic mutilation I think.

The only elements that didn't really work for me were an extremely graphic and bizarre sex scene, and the villain just monologuing an explanation of all the plans & unanswered questions in the end (see the trope: Evil Gloating or Evil Plan).

Rivers Solomon is just a master of using a seed of real history and then twisting it, so that the real element remains the most harrowing part.

Another exploration of a dark side to history that gives a marginalized group a voice. As with An Unkindness of Ghosts, Sorrowland deals with difficult, but relevant, topics in a world that is not quite our own. And just like their other book, I felt like I was struggling to understand what exactly they were trying to convey. The representation within the book is unparalleled, and the characters are compelling. Solomon has a unique writing voice, and they are fearless in exploring these difficult topics.