A mixture of sci-fi, self-expression, survival, trauma & a lot of conspiracy vibes.

Towards the end of this book, it really held my interest that I was devouring each sentence; the action, answers & tension all had begun. HOWEVER, I almost DNFed this book twice because the last 1/4 of a book is too little and wayyyy too long of a wait to become interesting finally. It just wasn't for me because of that.

The topic of gender, sexuality and Native American culture was so interesting. I liked the discussion between Vern & Gogo about those things and the touch of how white culture really is overtaking and trying to destroy anything not like it (Which we all know).
TW: I would recommend reading for the cult, cult government plants, the very evident child marriage, because that was horrifying in its own right just as the "Passenger" transformation & hauntings were.

I loved this so much. I love Vern, and Gogo, and Howling and Feral. Just wish it were a bit longer—the pacing at the end was a bit too fast in my opinion, especially compared with the beginning of the book. Maybe I’m just being selfish because as the end approached I already knew I’d miss those characters.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advance copy of this book.

The writing of this book was absolutely beautiful. I saw this title because I'd heard some buzz surrounding it in some library journals, and to be honest, it didn't disappoint. Though it was a bit difficult to follow at times, and was certainly slower paced than I'm used to, but kept me engaged most of the time.

Its elements of gothic horror and the supernatural were extremely engaging and for as disturbing as the book can get at times, it gives you those moments of powerful emotion conveyed through language that end up being my favorite aspects of a book.

This was a powerful book. This is about Vern a 15 year-old pregnant cult escapee. She has twins and is raising them in the woods. She goes in search of her friend Lucy who escaped but finds out that she is considered dead and meets up with GoGo and Bridget who take them in. This is when The conspiracy comes after them. This book is about fury and love and race and gender identity. Really can't wait till it's released to discuss this book with others.

I'm honestly at a loss for how to review this one. Some parts, I loved; Others I felt dragged on; and a few aspects I felt went over my head in a way that I could almost catch them but then it'd slip through my fingers. The more I sit on it, the more I enjoy it but am still left with some questions.

Overall, I enjoyed the concept and the mix of genres (I was really curious how the sci-fi/fantasy element played in!) and I instinctually know there were some deep themes here but none felt fleshed out enough for me to get a good handle on them (however, I acknowledge that as I am not a POC that may be more on me than this book). Vern escapes from a cult and starts experiencing not-necessarily-human abilities while on the run. The book is split into three parts: the first and third parts I enjoyed the most; the second one had me wondering "what are we gaining here?" as the plot wasn't moving along and the character development felt minimal. I know this is when we learn more of Vern's past and abilities but it left me... bored more often than not. I wish we were able to know more about her abilities and the cause of them earlier in the book - I don't feel like I ever quite understood what was happening there. But by the third and final section, I was hooked again and super keen to find out what was going to happen.

The characters were super engaging. Vern was unlikeable but also someone we could root for which I appreciate that fine line. Her twins, Feral and Howling, added heart and a unique perspective of Vern's world. I honestly would have loved to know more about the leader(s) of the Cain-cult, too!

I think if you're looking for a sci-fi/horror with diverse representation - this is definitely a book to pick up.

Sorrowland was a difficult book to read, mainly because of its heavy themes. Yet it does so many interesting things with genre that it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is, but I think that is just a good thing. The writing is raw and exquisite, and poetical without being too flowery. In short, I really, really enjoyed this read!

The novel is about Vern, an albino, queer black girl that has recently escaped from the clutches of a cult. Soon after escaping, she gives birth to the twins Feral and Howling, and ends up living in the woods with them. What follows is her journey to figure out what was done to her in this cult, both mentally and physically, as her body starts changing.

It discusses themes like race, gender, sexuality, the crimes of the state and society in general. While I could go into more detail here, I think that would be too spoilery.

My favourite parts were definitely Verns exploration of gender and sexuality, and it was refreshing to see a queer character that did not have a straightforward relationship with both her gender and sexuality. I also absolutely adored Feral, Howling, and Gogo! Especially the way Vern and Gogo's relationship developed, and while most of the novel is pretty dark, their relationship made me smile a lot!

I can only highly recommend this book!! Thank you so much for the publishers giving me an arc through NetGalley!

A beautiful and skin-crawling piece about Black bodies and what our so-called nations (or occupationists?) do to them. What happens when someone breaks free, what happens to their minds and concepts of themselves? I loved it. Rivers Solomon has never let me down and I highly recommend this book.

I really don’t know how I feel about this one to be honest. I don’t think I really processed what the book was about when I started it. I really liked the cover and the title, but looking back at the summary, I should’ve known that this book wouldn’t be the right match for me.

The premise is really interesting and the writing itself was captivating, but aside from that, I still couldn’t seem to stay invested or interested. There were a lot going on, and it truly just was not my kind of scene. Tho, I wouldn’t discount this for anyone else. It does seem like a story many others might enjoy much better than I. I’ve seen some compare it to the Handmaids Tale, which is super popular but also not my cup of tea.

Rivers Solomon has yet again created a gripping and original piece of fiction. This book is emotional, mysterious, dark, and tense. It's hard to say much about the power of Solomon's plot without giving away any spoilers, but be assured that the prose is beautiful. Vern is hunted by monsters in more ways than one, and the haunting build up to the ending reminded me of Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians.

* I received an ARC free of charge for my honest review *

Wait a minute let me tell you; this book took me for a loop. The details and plot were amazing. The hardship the protagonist faced was unbelievable. What really struck my attention was the very first page. The struggles of running away to face a world you didn't know existed. I enjoyed reading this book down to the last page. Very well written, good job.

From the start of this I could tell this would be a very unique read. Described as sci-fi fantasy/Gothic Horror, the story follows Vern and her children. She is on the run from an abusive cult. Beautifully written and at times confusing to follow, but definitely not like something I've read before. I don't know if this will be for everyone but I appreciate an original story.

Thanks Netgalley for the chance to read and review this!

A Handmaid's Tale on crack with a twist. This is the second book I've read by Rivers Solomon and Rivers is on the road to be my favorite living author. This was a wild ride, I suggest trying this journey!

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Unfortunately, I DNF'd "Sorrowland" 50 pages into the novel. The plot was extremely intriguing, and I was blown away by Rivers Solomon's writing, which I found spectacular. At the same time, I recognize that this is very much a character-driven novel, and I do not tend to enjoy those very much. Despite the heavy focus on the characters, I was not fond of anyone in the book, and that could easily be due to the fact that I only spent 50 pages "with" them.

Although the novel did not work for me, I don't want to rate it lower than 3 stars because the little I got to read was really, really good writing. There are some passages that will stick with me for sure, so I would still recommend giving this book a try to anyone who is even remotely interested.

This book was nothing like what I expected: I was expecting more horror, and while there certainly are horror elements, this book is more of a character-driven social commentary with um, magical realism? Sorrowland is exquisitely written and wonderfully readable, flowing smoothly without ever becoming too jargon-y. Fifteen-year-old Vern escapes Cainland, a former Black-led Black refuge that became corrupted over the years. Taking refuge in the woods, Vern gives birth to twins, Howling and Feral, whose sexes are not revealed and who are raised without prescribed genders.

I adored Vern’s inner monologue throughout the novel. Vern’s Blackness, her albinism, her visual impairment, her intersex identity, her attraction to women, and her unexplained bodily changes all are shown to contribute to who she is. She reconciles her past with her present and makes use of the resourcefulness she’d always displayed at Cainland. She’s a hard-edged and flawed due to everything she’s been through, but so easy to root for. As a very young mother raising her children without any help, parenthood understandably becomes overwhelming for her, and her thoughts and actions often reflect this. I can imagine some of these scenes might be hard for parents to read, but I appreciated that they were included because they seemed realistic.

Though this is a dark story, it is not without its snippets of light. The twins’ innocence was refreshing and their antics made me smile. Vern also meets some side characters who are kind to her and her kids, which felt to me like a cool drink of water on a hot day. Vern’s journey toward accepting this kindness was so heartwarming to witness, and there are even some moments of sapphic tenderness that made me melt!

Solomon expertly weaves past and present into a narrative that is jarring and unique. During her quest for the truth, Vern comes face-to-face with the past: sometimes figuratively, and sometimes quite literally. There are beautiful scenes that turn disturbing and disturbing scenes that turn beautiful. As secrets are revealed, Vern becomes more and more determined to annihilate the forces of evil that forever altered her life path.

Oddly enough, I found my interest waning during what was probably supposed to be one of the most dramatic scenes toward the end. The ending did wrap up a bit quickly for my tastes; I would have loved an epilogue or something similar. There’s also a chapter from Howling’s POV that felt random to me. Despite my minor gripes, Sorrowland gripped me and will be one of my standout reads of 2021.

content warnings: child abuse, alcohol (recreational), alcoholism, animal killings, blood, gore, body horror, cult, brainwashing, death threats, death, murder, beheading, drugging, guilt, hallucinations(?), homophobia, Stockholm syndrome, child death, manipulation, medical stuff, mind control, teenage pregnancy, childbirth, racism, racial slur, white supremacy, pedophilia, child marriage to an adult, graphic sex, suicidal ideation, suicide, stalking, forced experimentation

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon was a much-needed, refreshing read compared to the cookie-cutter tropes that have come out recently and the much-needed diversity that fantasy needs. Solomon intertwined our society's history and this fictional world's society creating a very alluring and haunting world that captivated you the very moment you begin to read. This was a rich and complex story and the writing was absolutely stunning. It is sad when we get glimpses of Vern’s past about how members of the cult were treated and ostracized by others. Even though this is a new fictional world, prejudices against marginalized communities dictated as “others” are still prevalent both in our world and this world.

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. The story started and ended unlike how I expected, basically I had no idea where this book was going and I loved that about it. It was incredibly unique, beautifully written, beautifully vivid, and discusses topics of race and the treatment of black bodies, religion, and sexuality.

I loved reading through Vern’s physical and mental transformations. We see her grow from a weary 15 year old not quite ready for motherhood to an adult in charge of her own life, her sexuality, and her destiny.

I also found the parts about The Blessed Acres of Cain to be very interesting as the compound began as an all black community rebelling against racism and oppression but unfortunately took a turn away from being a refuge and a celebration of black joy because of infiltrated, corrupt leadership.

In SORROWLAND we follow a soon to be mother named Vern as she hides in the woods from a religious cult she recently escaped. This New Adult Sci-Fi was stunning. The writing was beyond beautiful, the atmosphere was surreal, and the twists pulled all the punches. SORROWLAND is a book you do not want to put down from start to finish. I very much appreciate all the representation and the serious conversations that are had. My only gripe was that this book needed a massive amount of trigger warnings!

I think that this is going to be a love it or hate it book for a lot of people. I can say that, hands down, it is the weirdest, coolest, most confusing yet interesting book I’ve read in a while, and I don’t know how to settle in on my opinion of it.
First off, this is an #OwnVoices book, which is crucial given the importance that racial and sexual identity plays in the protagonist’s (Vern) motivations. The LGBTQ+ representation and the use of Indeigenous and African American historical trauma to inform the throughline of the story is so well done, and Solomon gets a standing ovation from me for that. The intertwining of nature and body horror with these past traumas (particularly the legacy of medical experimentation on Black and Indigenous peoples in US history), is grimly fascinating, and I would look up background on the topic before diving into Sorrowland.

I will say that I got easily confused throughout the book; whenever the body horror/fantastical elements of Vern’s condition were described it was hard for me to visualize what was happening. I also wish that we got more of a feel of what life in Cainland was like - the majority of the book takes place in the woods, and at times I felt like more flashbacks would have helped to break-up some of the slower paced sections.

I would recommend this to anyone who just wants to read something totally different from their usual rotation - this is definitely that!

Thank you @Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book.
I’m sitting here trying to put my thoughts into words and I’m struggling. This is truly a genre-bending novel. It’s a story that evolves around Vern, a young woman who escapes a cult-like black separatist commune and must fend for herself and her 2 newborn children in the woods. The main character undergoes physical transformations and experiences strange “hauntings” that are explained later on in the novel. The main character struggles to overcome the trauma of her past in the compound while grappling with her own identity and sexuality.
The author effortlessly handles the topics of racism, sexuality and gender identity. It’s contemporary fiction at its best intimately mixed with science fiction and a bit of horror. The ending did feel a bit rushed. I think that the main plot could have been revealed a earlier since you spend at least over 60-70% of the book not knowing why Vern is affected in the way she is. When the reveal occurs it is a bit late and then the ending seems somewhat abrupt. Other than that, I really liked this book a lot, it's an intriguing and enjoyable read!

Sorrowland is the second novel by Rivers Solomon, the author of 2017's An Unkindness of Ghosts. Solomon's work (they also wrote the 2019 novella, The Deep as well as parts of the first season of Serial Box's "The Vela") in the past has always been a tremendously powerful use of the genre to hit strong themes of the historical racist atrocities this country and world has perpetuated, whether that be through the translation of an antebellum plantation onto a generation ship (An Unkindness of Ghosts), dealing with the memories and survivors of Africans thrown overboard from slave ships (The Deep) or horrific treatment of refugees of a people whose world was destroyed by outsiders' greed (The Vela). One thing their work has never been - and is unlikely to ever be - is easy to read, and so I went into Sorrowland expecting another whopper of a science fiction story.

And Sorrowland definitely is another whopper, although this is a scifi/fantasy novel more closer in timeline to our own. Once again Solomon centers the story around a protagonist struggling with identity in a cruel cruel world enacting horrors similar to our own - both by others (via experimenting on black bodies) and by a group themselves. Its protagonist, Vern, is at first a teenager who doesn't fit in to her community - not into its ideas of gender, of sexuality, of the need to be religiously controlled, and who flees that community while pregnant (at age 15) with two children, only to discover more about herself, and about the world, than she could ever have imagined - or that anyone could seemingly have imagined. Her story is the story of a girl persevering in the face of tremendous odds and atrocities, finding herself, and fighting back while never forgetting what has been done to her, and it's a really strong story.

Trigger Warning: Child Abuse, Spiritual Abuse, Child Pregnancy (and implied offpage rape as backstory), Unwilling Scientific Experimentation On African Americans.
-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
15 year old Vern ran into the forest surrounding the camp of the Blessed Acres of Cain, determined to ensure that her child grew up free from the camp's restrictions and dogma, free from the control of her mother and her husband the camp's leader, Reverend Sherman. Vern had never fit in with them - as an Albino in a camp dedicated to black power, a child who never fit as either boy or girl and who had a secret interest in other girls, and as a wild child who knew the Reverend's controlling dictates made no sense in their constraints. And when she gives birth to two sons, she names them Feral and Howling, knowing that these two inhuman names would be the last thing the Cainties would want. And then, as she tries to care for her two sons in the forest, all the while hiding from a fiend of a hunter who seems always to be out there, she expects none of them will last very long.

But Vern and her children survive, and Vern begins to see visions, and feel supernatural strength. And upon sneaking out of the forest to civilization for a few moments, she begins to feel more as well, to find feelings that were always denied to her in the past. But when Vern's body begins to ache and feature a strange bodily substance on her back, she knows she can't stay in the forest for much longer if her kids are going to survive.

And so Vern, along with Feral and Howling, flees the forest into civilization, searching for the only address she knows, the one that the girl she once loved once gave her. But what Vern finds is a world just as cruel as it was in Blessed Acres and revelations about what she is and is becoming that will change everything forever....and might make it impossible for her to keep fighting......
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Sorrowland takes place from the perspective of Vern, a teenager forced into too many things at once for survival from a young age - she's 15 and pregnant with twins at the start of the book, hiding in the jungle from the cult she grew up in. Vern doesn't really fit in anywhere - she's an albino child who grew up in a cult that centered around black power, she's never quite felt like a girl* in a religious community that is misogynistic and patriarchal at its core, she's never believed in any religion or god (and again grew up in a religious cult essentially), etc. But what Vern is, through and through, is a fighter - first for the very idea that she and her children will not live and die under the constraints of Blessed Acres, and then for the idea that they will survive, regardless of what is happening to her, regardless of the racial and structural forces arrayed against her, etc. This makes Vern relatable but also incredibly prickly and prone to distrust, as she's used to fighting everything and not used to the occasional bits of kindness she might encounter in the world...especially as many such kindnesses have turned out to be false in her past.

*The book uses she/her pronouns for both Vern and the other character who turns out to be genderqueer/non-binary, so I will do the same in this review.*

And Vern faces a ton of adversity to fight against - first a village based upon a culture of black supremacy that uses its religion to control its women, children, and anyone who doesn't fit into the clear definition of being a man; then the challenge of raising two sons in the jungle alone, with a mysterious person around her to try to scare and hunt her; then trying to survive with the children in civilization as she desperately searches for the only shelter she can imagine; and then finally, seemingly in safety, to figure out what she is truly and what her feelings are for Gogo, the medically trained winkte (NB) Lakota who helps her....and then more I won't spoil here. And really what she's fighting against through all of it a society that oppresses and abuses anyone who isn't in what it considers the norm, whether that be because they're people of color, or because they don't fit into the cis-heteronorm, or just because they refuse to bow down to what people of authority dictate for them. And Solomon doesn't spare the reader in how oppression and abuse takes place, with a significant portion, but not all of it, coming through human experimentation in a more sci-fi way but otherwise no more unusual of a way than actually happened in real life.

And through the plot and through Vern, Solomon makes clear that even many among the oppressed can be complicit in such activities - the way the Cainites are here, or more specifically how Vern's mother bought in and lets it happen to her. And Solomon makes a strong case that we should understand why such people do such a thing....while also pointing out that such understanding doesn't necessarily mean we should forgive them for it. Sorrowland's plot may take a little bit to start going, and definitely gets hard to read at times, but its strong character work and themes are pretty powerful from beginning to end - and unlike An Unkindness of Ghosts, this one ends on what's kind of a hopeful note, even if not an idealistic one.

So yeah Sorrowland is a tremendous second novel and well worth your time - and if it picks up award nominations for next year, I will be far from stunned. It's not a perfect novel - there's one segment that randomly switches point of view characters which goes nowhere - but it's tremendously poignant and powerful and fascinating at all times, which is what Solomon has become clearly known for.