Sorrowland is a deeply moving, poignant novel surrounding the life of Vern and her two young children as she attempts to leave the cultist society in which she was raised. Rather than allow her children to suffer the same fate, Vern leaves her homeland, but she soon realizes that the powers behind Cainland reach further than she could ever imagine. Although that is the simple plot of the story, there is so much more here - discussions of marginalized voices, race, sexuality, and religion. Although the book discusses such relevant and important issues, for me, some of the parts of the book just became confusing and others seemed to almost work out too well for Vern. I enjoyed the first half of the novel more so than the last half due to these issues; however, I think it is still worth a read - you may well enjoy it!

Thank you NetGalley for providing me a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

The subjugation, exploitation and brutalization of black bodies is a common theme in a Rivers Solomon’s works, and here the author does this by examining the unethical experimentation on African Americans, child abuse, the use of religion to control and harm anyone not fitting the “norm”, whether that be women, queer individuals, etc., and government spying on black organizations and movements that advocated for equality and empowerment in society.
Using a fictional group that lives isolated from the rest of American society, Cainland’s mandate is to provide a haven and clean, simpler living for African Americans. At least, that’s what the perception outside the gates is. Within, life is full of physical labour and no drugs, growing their food, and celebration of black accomplishments through history. There are also many strictures and punishments for everyone, though the women do seem to be living more oppressed lives than the men and anyone not heterosexual is punished. Also, people are given medications everyday, blood is drawn, and everyone is restrained in their beds at night.
Enter Vern, who is argumentative and doesn’t conform. She and her best friend Lucy flout the rules whenever they can, until Lucy escapes one day from Cainland. Years later, Vern, pregnant, escapes and gives birth to twins in the woods. Thanks to the practical learning she’s had at Cainland, she’s able to fend for herself and her babies for years.
Plagued by hauntings and pain, to the point that she thinks she’s dying, she chooses to leave the woods with her twins to search for Lucy and her family, travelling many kilometres away, and finding horrible answers to the questions that have swirled around her all her life.

This isn’t the easiest book to read. The story is a work of horror, nightmare and social commentary; Rivers Solomon has written a deeply disturbing and unsettling work about the ways in which those who don’t fit the white, patriarchal narrative are controlled and hurt to suit those in control. It’s a book that affected me, upset me, and in some moments, shook me with its frightening imagery, all of which I’ve come to expect with this author’s work.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for a review.

This is an astoundingly ambitious and harrowing novel from Rivers Solomon, destined to be one of the 2021 must-reads.

I'm calling it now, I think this is the best book of the year. It's simply staggering. The way Solomon created a book about despair, hope, AND joy, with some of the best prose I've *ever* read, and with some of the most gripping spec-fic plotting I've read in a long time...it's a tour de force. I'm going to be recommending this to everyone who can handle the content warnings (which are broad, including body transformation/body horror, animal mutilation, sexual assault, murder, racism, ableism, and lots of challenged homophobia). Also, the cover is absolutely gorgeous.

I'd like to thank Netgalley and MCD for gifting me this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

I'll start with the things I really liked about this book. One would be the cover. It was very eye catching and just beautiful. I would buy this book for the cover alone. The second thing I liked was the premise of the book. When I read the "blurb" I was intrigued and drawn in.

Now on to the problems I had with the book. I really couldn't get into the story. There were some exciting and dramatic scenes that had me continue reading but there were also some just cringe worthy parts as well. I really didn't care for the main character. I'm not sure if it was Vern's age and maturity level but she just did things that a person wouldn't do. For example, she left her twin children in the woods and went to a bar and met up with another lady and then in the time line remembers she has children at her campsite to get back to. I also had a hard time with the time line. The months and years seemed to jump and to me it felt pieced together.

I don't want to give too many spoilers away but I would not buy this book for myself. I think it has possibility of being a good book if some things were changed in it.

A story of trauma, transformation and healing with a protagonist whose journey is impossible not to root for

Content Warning: Mentions of child marriage and offsceen CSA, body horror
Having brought us a generation ship space opera with US chattel slavery race dynamics, and a story of first contact and alien society with the Black merfolk of Drexciya, I went into Rivers Solomon's third book with expectations of something similarly genre bending and thoughtful, but otherwise with little expectation of whether Sorrowland, with its intriguing, gothic set-up, would twist towards science fiction, fantasy, realism or some other direction entirely. It's a mild spoiler to answer that question in full, but what I can confirm that Sorrowland is full of magic in its most basic sense: events and locations that seem mundane on their surface but are transfused with mythical qualities. At the centre of it is Vern, Sorrowland's protagonist and one of the most engaging, interesting protagonists I've ever spent a book with. From the first few pages of Vern's narration, I was hooked on her character's voice, and in following her journey through its heartbreak and discovery I was desperate for things to work out in some for her.

Sorrowland opens with Vern as a pregnant teenage girl escaping an unknown "fiend" in the forest near Cainland, the commune compound where she grew up. Vern's first act is to give birth in the midst of making her escape, taking her twins Howling and Feral - both referred to with he/him pronouns, though their gender is left ambiguous - to live in the safety of the woods. Vern is able to survive almost exclusively on what the forest provides, her inexplicable survival skills providing the first hint both of extraordinary abilities and her strength of character - but the Fiend continues to pursue her and make its presence known, and eventually it becomes clear that at least some of what Vern needs is outside of the forest. So she leaves, first temporarily, finding comfort with a woman called Ollie; and later, while seeking her closest friend from the compound who left under mysterious circumstances, with a more permanent support network. By the point of her departure, our suspicions that Vern carries supernatural abilities of some form have been confirmed, and Vern herself is grappling with a transformation that she can't fully understand, but which is clearly linked to her former life in Cainland.

As a cult survivor, Vern's experiences in Cainland permeate every facet of Sorrowland's story, from the overt - her past, and the circumstances in which she ran away, are explored throughout the book's first section - to the way she expresses her political and cultural beliefs, to the contrast between Vern's upbringing and the start in life she gives her own children. Cainland is a Black commune built to offer its residents an alternative to white supremacist society, but by Vern's time this mission has been corrupted by authoritarian religious patriarchy which forcibly cuts its members off from outside communication and preaches hate against queer folk while enabling child marriage for its leaders. As an albino intersex girl with an exclusive attraction to women, and strong opinions about the world around her, Vern finds it impossible to mould herself to the expectations of the compound, and its no accident that Howling and Feral are brought up in an environment where curiosity is encouraged and only curbed when it would bring immediate danger. This being Rivers Solomon, of course, Cainland doesn't exist in a political vacuum, and as Vern's personal transformation is explored, the factors that made that compound what it was also come into play.

Running in parallel the physical repercussions of Vern upbringing is her emotional journey, one which involves grappling with the trauma of Cainland and learning to live with (and embrace!) the parts of her which it tried to suppress. A large part of that is Vern's sexuality, and Sorrowland has some great (consensual) queer sex, including a poly encounter towards the end of the book which would be a spoiler to begin to describe but made me go "ohhh???" in a very intrigued and thoughtful way. (Maybe also some other emotions). Finding accommodation for her disability (Vern has nystigmatus due to her albinism, which reduces her vision and stops her being able to read) and gaining access not just to books but to people who support her intellectual curiosity and interests is also a significant - and heartwarming - part of her healing towards the second half of the book. But Vern's greatest emotional challenge, and the part that propels the book to its eventual, unexpected climax is reckoning with the way the cult has negatively affected her relationships. Vern's feelings towards her mother, who took her to live in Cainland in the first place and allowed her to become a child bride; her childhood friend Lucy, who left her abruptly with only an address in a book she couldn't read to track her down; her allies outside the compound, especially Native woman Bridget and her niece Gogo who offer Vern and her children an eventual home; and of course Vern's precociously smart, curious, thoughtful children: all these relationships are complicated and nuanced and come together in a messy but optimistic vision of healing, however imperfectly, from trauma. While its ending was more high-stakes than I anticipated, the work Sorrowland puts into its emotional journey had the biggest payoff for me, and I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of Howling and Feral as their own well-rounded human beings even at a young age, with relationships with adults which go beyond a one-way system of care.

Sorrowland covers so much ground, and a lot of it is best experienced without knowing what's to come, making it a difficult book to really sum up in a review. This is a work of thoughtful, passionate brilliance from a writer at the top of faer game, and trying to capture that in a 1,000 word one-sitting review is like trying to describe the ocean to someone who has never experienced water. This isn't an easy book - if you're familiar with Solomon's previous books, you won't be expecting that anyway - but if you have the time to devote to it, Sorrowland's journey is a powerful one and ultimately something that left me with a great deal of hope for its characters. And I simply cannot rate Vern highly enough, in all her prickly, passionate, confused glory - her journey is one that will stay with me long after I put Sorrowland down.

SORROWLAND by Rivers Solomon (ISBN 978-0-374-26677-6) starts in an
isolated community set up for African-Americans who choose to
follow the "God of Cain" rather than the God of the white people.
Well, not all of them choose to be there, because it is very strict
(and reminiscent of THE HANDMAID'S TALE in many ways). However,
escape is difficult, as we discover when the young and pregnant
Vern manages to do just that, and then lives with her two children
on her own in the forest that apparently surrounds the Blessed
Acres of Cain. There has been some sort of catastrophe, left vague
until the end of the novel, but it doesn't seem to have been very
disruptive, although we never see anything other than the rural
area around the Blessed Acres.

This sounded promising, but somehow I could not connect to the
characters. It was not the usual problem of a person from a
different culture; I think it was the bizarre nature of the other
aspects of Vern's being that I had problems connecting with. I
cannot say it was a bad book; I have the feeling that I am just the
wrong audience.

SorrowLand by Rivers Solomon, is a fantasy story about a young girl named Vern who is black albino. She has lived most of her life in a cult Cainland. At the young age of 15 she is married to the leader and pregnant. She flees the cult and hides in the woods all while giving birth and raising her twins. This is a fabulously written story.
There are parts that moved slow for me, but overall I would recommend the book. I gave it a 3.5 on goodreads but after some thought will be bumping it up to a 4. Thank you NetGalley for the read.

This was given to me as an arc by netgalley for an honest review. This ended up on my DNF but I think it might just be my own person preference. I couldn’t get into it. I tried. I pushed through to 50% but I had no desire to find out what happened next.

Sorrowland sounded like a book I’d enjoy. I loved the beginning and was intrigued by Vern’s journey and she survived in the woods with her newborn children after escaping a cult.

The ideas in the novel were interesting and could very well be tied together, perhaps if the book was told from multiple perspectives instead of just Vern’s. Or I felt like the book should have began with her in Cainland growing up and questioning the teachings to at least have more exposure to the people and ideas and the way certain outsiders had dealings with the leader. It was all sort of explained through memories and I just felt like it was jumbled. Certain aspects felt unexplained and yet other minor detail were over-explained.

As the book continued, it made less and less sense to me. I knew Vern couldn’t survive in the woods forever, but going into civilization was where my interest in the book began to wane as it felt like it was less and less rooted in reality. I understood that I was reading science fiction, but aside from the hauntings, Vern felt pretty normal and the cult itself felt like it could happen, so the otherworldly elements just felt like they came out of nowhere in this story.

I think fans of Margaret Atwood would appreciate this book, but I think it was just too strange and nonlinear for me. (And to be honest, I’m a little tired of the big reveal being related to fungi in nearly everything. It started with The Girl With All the Gifts and now I just feel like it’s everywhere I look.)

The main character of this book has to be the strongest character I have read about in a while, the protagonist is a fifteen year old girl pregnant by a cult leader who escapes the said cult and has to survive on her own in the woods. this book did what it came to do. The characters are amazingly fleshed out even the children, the writing is simple and very atmospheric and I felt immediately transported to this world of cold winters and empty roads.
The book occurs over a couple of years and we see Vern's growth and her children's as well, I loved those two children so much just because its rare to see well written child characters
The setting also added to the menacing air of this book and I really enjoyed that. Rivers Solomon is a gifted writer and her ability to include disabilities and non heterosexual relationships as a daily thing was so good it brought tears to my eyes .This is a story inspired by the history of American experiments on Black bodies, which I think brought a lot of nuance and complexities to this story.

Although the relationships between various characters did not feel fully fleshed out and the ending was a bit anticlimactic I enjoyed the book.

This book is well-intentioned, with a lot of important messages at its core about slavery, racism, and the lack of accountability in the US establishment for criminal behavior. But while I appreciate the message, the writing and overly literary style (Rivers Solomon apparently writes both speculative and literary fiction) left me feeling easily lost, and the text failed to engross me.

I really loved this book, I was reading it non stop. The writing style was easy to read and get lost in, and the story was equally propulsive and engaging as it was deep and thought provoking. So many boundaries were pushed in this book without it feeling overwhelming or undefined. Gender sexuality race politics nativism parenting religion conservation poverty socialism I'm sure there's more. The sci-fi and fantasy aspects were well done and very creative. Really good read.

Sorrowland is weird.

Weird stories are challenging. Some make no sense. When the reader gets to a resolution - or lack thereof - it’s a big letdown. Sometimes it seems like a story makes no sense, but the author’s resolution snaps everything in place. It’s a wild ride with a satisfying conclusion.

Sorrowland is a wild ride.

Vern is a pregnant teen escaping from the cult-like compound where she lived with her mother and big brother. She wants to find her friend Lucy, who had previously escaped. She’s also fleeing the “fiend”, an unseen enemy that either wants to kill Vern or return her to the compound.

Vern evolves into an extraordinary woman along the way. Parts of her story are bizarre and even unsettling, but I wanted to keep reading to find out what was next on her journey. The resolution ties up loose ends and, more importantly, makes sense.

I tried to explain the plot to my teenage son, and his mouth kept dropping as I added details. If a reader has an open mind and is willing to ride the roller coaster, Sorrowland is worth it.

Sorrowland is different, and that’s a compliment.

Sorrowland starts as Vern, a pregnant, albino black teen, as she fights to survive being hunted in the woods while running away from a cult compound. Each act of this book has its own unique setting, which allows us to see how Vern must struggle to raise her twins and adapt to her own haunted memories. Throughout the book there are conversations around the violence against black and indigenous bodies, and intersex, trans, and queer lives. While the middle of the book slowed down a bit for me, it was a nice reprieve from the fast paced beginning and ending. All the hauntings and flashbacks Vern thinks about were so visceral and by the end of the book my stomach was in knots thinking about all the metaphors for real life. If you liked how Rivers Solomon wrote the memories in their book The Deep, I think you'd really like Vern's hauntings. Again, if reading about state sanctioned violence against black bodies is not something you'd like to read, or will find triggering I'd recommend not reading this book or coming back to it when you are in a safe place.

As someone who has longed to read works by this author for a long time, I was excited to gain access to this book. After reading the first chapter or so I found that I was not in a place to read a story about a teenage girl escaping a cult and giving birth on her own in the wilderness while being chased down by a predatory man. This is definitely a story for those ready to explore these concepts and themes.

A haunting and desperate story. I felt every moment of Vern's time in the woods with her babes in my stomach. However, I found the ending to be a bit convoluted and dissatisfying.

3.75 stars.

This is a hard one to review because as with all of Solomon's previous work, I found the thematic explorations, the ideas, and history they take on to be fascinating and thought-provoking. On the flip side, however, I've yet to fully be engaged in their novels, primarily because they are a bit too much "a novel of ideas" for my personal reading tastes. I do think this latest novel also helped to pinpoint that as a cis, white woman, I am not the intended audience of their work and that is absolutely fine.

In terms of specifics about this book, Solomon continues to explore themes they have explored previously, including but not limited to intergenerational trauma (particularly physical manifestations of that trauma), gender identity and fluidity, government surveillance, medical racism, and the black experience in America. I think fans of Solomon's previous work will not be disappointed, but I'm not sure I would recommend it if you've had mixed experiences with their work in the past.

Thank you to MCD (FSG) for providing me with an early copy of this novel through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Sorrowland is coming out this Tuesday, May 4.

Sorrowland is a book comprised of incredible writing and fantastical themes. This was intense and beautifully written. At fifteen, Vern flees in the night from the toxic religious compound where she lives. She is pregnant and desperate to escape the life she is forced to live, so she finds solace in the woods away from civilization. There she has her twin babies and raises them alone. But she is hunted, still. The horrors she faced at the compound were terrifying and those forces do not want to let her go.

She is now in her young adulthood and she finds her body changing. She is sickened as has no idea what to do. All she wants is to protect her babies, even if that means bringing them from the comfort of the woods, back into the outside world.

While this was unique and intense, I had trouble connecting to the book. I found so much of it confusing and strange to follow. I think that I may give this book another shot later on, but for now, I think that this one just isn’t for me.

I don't honestly know what to say about this genre. bending novel that's about more than the actual plot- except that it wan't for me. I suspect, however, that I'm going to be the odd one out because there are some important ideas here. Vern has fled Cainland, the cult where she was raised and lives with her odious husband. Now she's got twins and she must protect them from the forces that want her back in the fold. She leaves the forest to find her friend Lucy, who left years before. But that's not safe either. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Interesting, challenging and unique.