A speculative fiction novel with dashes of science fiction, dystopian, and magical realism — all wrapped up in a road trip book of sorts. When Sky Full of Elephants begins, we are one year out from a large-scale mass suicide — with no warning one day all the white people in the United States turned and walked themselves into the nearest body of water and drowned.

Charlie Brunton gets a call from the biracial daughter he's never met, who has grown up with her white mother and step-family in Wisconsin. Sidney, calling on the favor of his biological relationship, all but demands he drive to her in Wisconsin and then take her to Alabama, where she believes there is a colony of the few remaining white people.

In typical roadtrip fashion, they stop a few places, meet new people, and head to Alabama. But in Campbell's construct there are some key differences as a result of the sudden and swift absence of white people. The power grid is spotty across the country, and when they arrive at Chicago O'Hare they learn of the new rules that are in place: no money is needed or exchanged, there are no schedules for planes, taking a ticket allows you to stay for seven days in the airport itself, but if you leave you can't return for thirty days. On top of that, Alabama has been sealed off and gained a king to rule over it. There is a no-fly zone over the entire state, so it's up to Charlie and Sidney to persuade a pilot (named Sailor, no doubt) to fly them as close as possible. From there they drive into the Kingdom of Alabama and discover an entirely different way of living than one they ever dreamed of before.

I love the concept of this novel — loved it from the summary, and I even love the part I laid out above in the preceding paragraph. But beyond the vaguest sense of the story there, I struggled the entire time with plot hole after plot hole, oversimplified characters and situations, and a utopia installed, when I emphatically believe utopias are not truly possible. While the story does a good job exploring identity through Sidney and Charlie, but there was not nearly enough time nor space spent with these two so they could build a relationship. For the majority of the second half, they were hardly even in the same room together.

In the end, I felt that Campbell broke the unspoken pact between reader and storyteller on too many points — the ground was absolutely littered with countless Chekhov's guns — and he missed the opportunity for a deeper exploration of the themes on which he touched. However, I read the review in Medium, and I happily agree with Zachary Houle in that I look forward to the books to come that this will no doubt inspire.

4.5-5 ⭐️

I have never read anything quite like this but it pulled me in from the first sentence. The author did a great job explaining the concept and making it easy for me to follow. I thought the ordeal of a biracial woman coming into her own and learning about her identity, while getting to form a relationship with her father was handled well. Super creative, thought-provoking, and engaging story.

*Cebo Campbell’s* *A Sky Full of Elephants* presents a bold and thought-provoking exploration of race and identity in a radically transformed America, where all white people have mysteriously disappeared. The novel follows Charlie Brunton, a Black man wrongfully imprisoned, now a professor, as he reconnects with his estranged daughter Sidney, who was abandoned by her white mother. Their journey across this new post-racial landscape forces them to confront not only their strained relationship but also the complex ways in which race and identity are redefined in this altered world.

Campbell skillfully balances heavy themes with humor and heart, as Charlie and Sidney navigate communities that have each responded differently to the disappearance of whiteness. The novel raises profound questions about belonging, power, and the Black experience, while maintaining a focus on the emotional depth of its characters. With its imaginative premise and poignant exploration of human connection, *A Sky Full of Elephants* offers a compelling and timely reflection on race and self-actualization.

This book was amazing.I like how he put fiction and history together. This is a well Put together book about the black people in how they felt in America.. He tells the story through a man named Charles BUT o. N. And his daughter s I d n y. As you read the book, this man goes through many different changes. But the author puts in black history in to explain what. Happening. The white people die in this book. S I d n y lost her mother and her father when this happened. She stayed alone for a year in wisconsin but she reached out to this man named charlie. She wanted to go to alabama to reach her aunt. Charles goes to wisconsin to get his daughter. This is when the book got really interesting because everything was displaced. They meet a pilot mean sailor who has a Daughter. Charles wanted him to fly him to alabama. Sailor thought this was a bad idea, but they did it.Anyway. This is when the book started to explain black history. Charles had a past and the daughter did not know anything about that. When they got to mobile alabama this was occasionally run by black people . This was interesting because his daughter had no idea about her black culture. So many interesting things happen in this book.I highly recommend you read it

I haven’t read much speculative fiction, and what I’ve read I can’t say I’ve loved. However, this book finally showed me the phenomenal stories that can be told by toying with realism.

I was so struck by the ambition of this premise, and the writing is beautiful enough to make the plot’s potential swell. I would’ve enjoyed reading more about the immediate aftermath of the event and the coming-to-be of the world we enter. The characters that we meet were unlike anyone I’ve read about, and I could’ve indulged in at least 100 more pages getting to know them. Overall, I’d say the only problem I had with this book is I’d like to spend more time with it which, all things considered, is a good problem for a book to have. And that leaves me most definitely sat for whatever Campbell comes up with next.

Huge thanks to the publishers for the e-arc!!

Sky Full of Elephants, is a novel set in the aftermath of “The Event” . All the white people in America wake up one day and walk to the nearest body of water and drown themselves. It is an exploration of what it means to be Black in America. It dives into cultural power shifts and reconstruction. With any novel that has a “disappearance”, like Y the Last Man or The Last White Man it, it explore the concept of “otherness”, mixed race people walked into the water if they identified as white. Of course utopia is a concept that cannot exist within human society, because well… human nature. This book does have a great plot twist, but with most magical realism you do have to suspend belief to get past plot holes..

I think I maybe would have enjoyed this a lot more if I read it at a different time and will likely be coming back to it for that reason, but it really didn't hit with me this go around.

Thank you to Net Galley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This story of speculative fiction finds us in a world where white people have basically have disappeared. Sidney who is mixed race contacts her estranged father, Charlie a college professor, and asks for his help as her mother and the rest of her white family are gone, seeing them walk in the lake. Yet, her mother told her that some of them still exist. She wants to travel to Alabama, an unknown land where it is said the "King" lives, to find if other family members still exist. As they make the perilous journey finding out how much has changed in the world and also learning about each other, they meet the King and more importantly the Queen where the world is natural...how it would have been if Black people were allowed to flourish and retain all their gifts and culture. Charlie finds it beautiful and comforting but Sidney is more lost and seeks finding her family. Charlie is then introduced to an amazing invention that has caused the change in the world but may also be its downfall especially for his relationship with Sidney. I enjoyed the story and imagining a post-racial world, although at the cost of most white people; I hope we can find a better solution in the real world. The author brought up many interesting ideas through this new world that have kept me thinking.

I considered reviewing Sky Full of Elephants because I thought it would be a thought-provoking novel. All the white people in the U.S. have walked into the water and drowned. What would people of color do? Cebo Campbell focuses on the lives of black people, though he does mention a few other people of color, in the wake of a white-less world.

As far as a book for potential discussion with a book club, this would be a great one. A lot of questions come up for the reader and there are several points that are worthy of further discussion.

As far as it is for a story to read. I found that it dragged on and the ending kind of petered out. At about 60%, I really considered not finishing it. It didn't feel like it was going anywhere, or worse that it was going in circles.

I would have liked more world-building that would have made the reader (particularly as a white reader) understand the universe Campbell is creating. I spent about a third of the novel trying to figure out if it was an alternate universe similar to our real world but with more distinctive divides or if it was supposed to be set in our world, present-day. If the latter, then where were the black leaders like former President Obama? The White House is wrecked (some of the descriptions made me think of the January 6 riot on the Capitol) and I wondered about the other politicians of color.

I did lean more toward an alternate universe with more strongly drawn divides. The world Campbell has created seems a lot more black and white (pun not really intended) than our current society. Apparently, all the people in prison are people are black and all the guards are white. While this stereotype is true for the majority, there are white people in prison and black people who are corrections officers. As I mentioned, except for a handle of passing comments there are few other people of color featured in the book.

I was confused by a comment about a quinceañera party that Sidney and Zu watch. It seemed that Zu equated the tradition to a white man's institution. But it has roots in the Aztecs. Then, there is the focus on Mardi Gras. I would consider it as a "white" tradition as European Christians celebrated it back in the Middle Ages. I also found the focus on ancient Egypt odd. From my reading, assigning black or white to ancient Egypt would be inappropriate as that classification is so far removed. Plus they were notorious slave owners throughout their history. This is one of the reasons I would have liked more context and world-building.

The characters were okay. The story is mostly about Sidney's and Charlie's journeys but there are some interesting side characters. There is actually quite a bit of time spent developing the transgender character Zu for them to just disappear from the storyline.

I was left with questions at the end. My biggest question is will black readers come away thinking that the only way to heal the past is to rid the world of white people, or as Charlie briefly states that true healing involves all the colors (at least that's what I understood him to be saying).

If you are looking for a thought-provoking book to discuss with others, then you should get this book.

My review will be published at Girl Who Reads on Saturday - https://www.girl-who-reads.com/2024/09/sky-full-of-elephants-by-cebo-campbell.html

Words cannot describe how I felt during and after reading this book. Some people will be offended and others will feel empowered, but all will feel it deeply. As a mother, I felt Charlie's need to keep his daughter safe and alive on this planet, which has not been very kind to Black folks. As a black woman, I know we are the path and light to greatness. This book grapples with so many things-the concept of whiteness, how biracial children feel, and collective trauma. What would this country have looked like without the trans Atlantic slave trade and the generational trauma that slavery presented? Shout out to the Haitian people who have always known who they are! Cant wait to see what book club will pick this up. Im recommending this book to everyone who will listen and are willing to free your mind. Part sci-fi, part Afro-futurism, all love.

Sky Full of Elephants starts with a college professor, Charles  Brunton, getting a call from his daughter, whom he had not talked to his entire life. The novel also starts a year earlier when all of the white people in America walk into bodies of water and drown themselves. Since then America has changed, with most parts of the country surviving being the large cities. Charlie’s daughter, Sidney, lives in Wisconsin, alone, in a neighborhood that had pretty much drown themselves. She is angry at her mother, stepfather, and brothers drowning themselves in the lake behind their house, and mad at her father for never being part of her life. When she gets a message taped to the front gate of her house from her white aunt, Agnes, saying that some white people are still alive and in Orange Beach, Alabama, she knows that Charlie is the only person left who can help her get there.

Part road trip novel, part story of family, and part story about learning about one’s own identity, Sky Full of Elephants starts very compelling. The tension in what America is like at this time, how people travel, what areas are more dangerous than others and which areas are just abandoned, really drives the first half of this novel. Not only do we learn about the tensions between Charles and Sidney and the reason why they have no relationship, we are also learning about different ways America has changed. Electricity is still everywhere, but pumping for oil is something that nobody seems interested in doing. Traveling and hospitality have become more about helping one another than gaining a profit. Adding to the struggle of getting out of Wisconsin, Charles and Sidney are also going to Alabama, a place where rumor is that it is ran by a king, and airplanes do not even fly there anymore. This road trip and world building half of the novel keeps the tension high, and we can sense the danger that the two characters travel into. The second half of the book is a different type of good. Most of it is learning about identity and who black people have been in their history in America versus their history in the world. Sidney being half white and raised by white people knows very little about the history of black people in the world, so she really struggles with some of the ideas and feelings that she is shown. She knows that the identity of America has changed, and she does not know where she fits anymore. The changing America has given black people the opportunity to incorporate attitudes from countries where black people have always been in leadership. I do like the feeling of togetherness and community that this brings, the sense that everyone who shows up is welcomed and treated like family. 

I wish there was more world building like in the beginning, with more interesting things that have happened in America since there are no white people left. Also the ending really did not resonate as much as it was trying to resonate, but Sky Full of Elephants is a really interesting book with some interesting concepts. I really enjoyed the first half and wish to visit there again soon. 

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

This is a powerful novel about identity and the power of community/connection. I really liked all of the characters in this novel - they were all powerful in different ways - and the struggles they faced felt very real. As a white reader, you may feel uncomfortable at times, but I was just so sucked into the story line, the plot twist that created more issues, and the denoument to worry about myself too much.

"One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down."

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

Sidney and her father Charlie, are strangely reunited by a cataclysmic event when all the white people in the world mysteriously commit suicide. In a hypnotic trance, they all walk into the nearest body of water, thus drowning themselves. Having been estranged from her father, and living with her mother and stepdad, when they all disappear, she reaches out to Charlie. Sidney is bi-racial so is spared from the event, but feels neglected, unloved, and out of place. When her aunt reaches out to her and describes a compound where white survivors have relocated, she convinces her father to take her there.
Thus begins their journey to reconciliation as they navigate this new world order which is described in detail by the author. Fuel is scarce as all drilling has stopped, giant mansions are open and unoccupied, and up for grabs, airports are loosely coupled together with a shortage of pilots. He really makes you see how little diversity there was in the world, as African Americans are able to feel a sense of freedom and control over their own destiny.
This is a bold, high-concept novel that explores race and identity in a radically transformed America. The novel delves into deep themes of racial identity, community, and the power dynamics in a society no longer defined by white supremacy.
A unique, clever addition to the apocalyptic genre.

If people could change the world, would they make it better?

Something extraordinary happened which has altered life throughout the world. One day, for reasons no one can understand, every white person walked to the nearest body of water and drowned themselves, an occurrence now known as “the event”. Half of the world’s population suddenly gone, and without them most institutions and industries have no longer been able to run, at least not as they once did. A year later, life has gone on for those left behind…but it is a very different kind of life, in some ways better but not in all. Someone for whom life has definitely taken a turn for the better is Charlie, who before the event was in the midst of a lengthy prison sentence but like most other incarcerated people was released when the hierarchy which ran such institutions no longer functioned. A man who from childhood was gifted with an intuitive understanding of how machines worked and who is able to fix just about anything found his way to Howard University in Washington DC, the closest HBCU which he figured was likely to be a place where people would be working to create a new order. There he teaches students about electrical systems and solar power, his way of contributing what he knows to his community. He lives in one of the many houses left empty by the people who no longer exist, where he has only recently felt comfortable taking down and putting away the previous owners’ photos and other personal things. Charlie gets a phone call out of the blue from Sidney, the daughter he has never met, product of a brief relationship with a young white woman named Elizabeth with whom he was in love prior to his incarceration. Sidney, he discovers, has been left alone by the event…her mother, stepfather Rick, and twin half-brothers Adam and John all walked into the lake behind their home in Wisconsin as she tried futilely to stop them. Sidney is traumatized, feels guilty to still be alive, and holds no warm feelings for Charlie, the father she believes deliberately abandoned her. But she is determined to find her way to a place called Orange Beach in Alabama where she has been led to believe members of her mother’s family and others like them who survived the event have formed a community. She needs help to get there, and can think of no one other than Charlie who might owe her enough to do so. Charlie sets out to help his daughter, and so begins a journey across a decimated country in search of a place where Sidney feels she belongs.
Sky Full of Elephants is an intriguing twist on a post-apocalyptic novel as well as an exploration of identity in a world that has undergone a fundamental shift. Charlie is a man whose life was stolen from him, convicted of a crime he didn’t commit by a white man who hated him because of the color of his skin. He has been given a chance to start fresh, but having lost almost 20 years of his life where does he begin? How can he be happy about the change in his circumstances when it came about due to the death of so many? Charlie must figure out not only who he wants to be, but who he was and who he is. Sidney is a biracial young woman who has never felt that she belonged anywhere. She didn’t look like the rest of her (white) family, and has been taught from a young age that black people are not only different from white people but lesser, more violent, dangerous. Her mother never told her why her father is not part of her life, and consequently holds only negative feelings for him. Her desire to find “people like her” in Orange City is her desire for the familiar as opposed to the unknown…but if she never felt she truly fit in with her family, how will joining a group of people just like them make her feel comfortable? She too has much to learn about who she is, from whom she came and who she can become. Traveling from Wisconsin to Chicago and ultimately to Alabama, where a society led by Vivian, a longtime social activist now considered their Queen, has tapped into the power and beauty of the black experience and seeks to heal the many wrongs to which their people have been subjected over the centuries. From an unsettling premise to the unexpected revelation of what exactly caused the event to happen in the first place, Sky Full of Elephants is a beautifully written story with well-developed and finely nuanced characters who search for connections and direction, working through anger to find hope and peace. I found it difficult to put down once I began reading, and enjoyed taking the journey alongside Charlie, Sidney and the people they met along the way. Readers of James McBride, Torah Shelton Harris and Caroline Leavitt should give this a try. Many thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for allowing me early access to this imaginative tale.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the eARC.

What a book. I could never do Cebo Campbell justice with my own words, but what I will say is this novel provoked true thought for me. I will recommend it to anyone I can.

SKY FULL OF ELEPHANTS
Cebo Campbell



One day in the near future every white person walks into the water first feet deep, then knee-high, waist deep, shoulder high until their head goes underwater and they are no longer breathing. Not one, not a few, not a cult or colony, all of them. In this world, only the brown survive.

Charles is a free man, who once wasn’t. A black man convicted of a crime he says he didn’t commit. He works as a professor, living a life of servitude. One day his estranged daughter calls him out of the blue. She asks him a favor he has no will to decline. She received a letter from a pocket of surviving relatives, and she would like to go there to see them in the new state of Alabama.

Their relationship is complicated. She resembles him in the parts of herself she tries to deny. Meeting him is like being introduced to the other side of herself. Meeting her is confirmation that the life he traded in the name of others was more valuable than he realized and not his to give.

Traversing these new United States will take more than either of them have to give. For him, it will take an acknowledgment of things he keeps hidden. For her, it will require a new way of thinking about everything she has come to know about the world, her father, and herself.

Things about this story connect to me on a deep level. Sharing all of that is a little more than I’m willing to give. Suffice it to say this story touched me. The parts of myself that are soft and vulnerable, the parts I don’t talk about—the parts I don’t share.

There are questions raised within the text that need to be asked. That we need to answer. There is a world out there calling our names and we need to f*cking remember who we are.

“Let them inherit the earth by inheriting themselves.”

Thanks to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for putting this on my radar and for the complimentary arc in exchange for a review!

SKY FULL OF ELEPHANTS…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sky full of elephants is a speculative work of fiction that is hard in many ways to read. The plot revolves the aftermath of an event where all white people walk into the water and the world is left with only black people. What would that world be like? Is the black experience any better on this world? Do they end up having any power or onus of their future? Those and many more questions are at the root of this plot, but it also delves into issues of control, power, race, identity, justice, gender, black consciousness, etc. this is a heavy read but one that deserves to be read and to be talked about, as it will make readers think deeply and resonate in our current racial climate.

Thanks to the publisher for providing this arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A very unique story line that will give every reader cause to think. While I didn't feel the connection with the characters that a skilled writer can bring, the central character, Charlie, fills so many of the preconceived ideas of readers before the caucasian apocalypse, then morphs into the person he sees in himself, he does manage to convey the story of how a man is often limited by how society has judged him. The book mixes many genre in Cebo Campbell's efforts to show how a lack of prejudice would change our world. While I might not agree with his visions, the story is compelling enough that I'm referring it to may reading circles......allof them, without prejudice.

Charles Brunton is our main character in this speculative science fiction novel. Twenty years ago, he was wrongfully convicted of a horrific crime and was imprisoned until a strange phenomenon occurred: every white person in America went into the closest body of water, and drowned themselves. Family members of people left in jails and prisons came to let everyone go, so now Charles is now a free man. Despite his lack of formal education, he is now a professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., using his ability to fix things to help this new society thrive.

A year after the country changed, his daughter Sidney calls him. She watched her white mother, stepdad and stepbrothers walk into water; she tried to drown herself too, but couldn’t. She hasn’t left their house since everything happened, but her aunt left her a note saying that people were heading to Orange Beach, Alabama, and that she hoped Sidney would join. This led to her calling Charles, angrily telling him that he owes her for abandoning her, and insists he drive her from Wisconsin to Alabama - despite Charles warning her that the south was a dangerous place to be.

Some cities, like D.C. and Chicago, are still running relatively smoothly, but other cities have changed. The country’s Infrastructure is bad in places, as cars were left on roads. There is no government, no military and no homeless - plenty of houses now sit empty. After a scary encounter on the road, Charles and Sidney decide to fly, but find out at airport that Alabama is a no-fly zone, as they are now a monarchy and the king doesn’t allow planes to fly over. Most places in the south are considered too dangerous to fly into, but they find a pilot who is willing to take them to the Mississippi/Alabama border in search of jet fuel to keep his planes airborne. They were caught coming into Alabama and were brought to Mobile, where they meet the king, Hosea, and his queen wife, Vivian. They are stunned by the beautiful and peaceful city full of history and hoodoo, and begin finding their roots.

This book was so poetic and beautifully written; it’s hard sometimes to describe sci-fi without it sounding cheesy, but this was quite an interesting read. It did get slow in a few places, and dipped into some fantasy along the way, but overall I thought this was really unique. 3.5 stars, rounded up.

(Thank you to Simon & Schuster, Cebo Campbell and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.)

Well, this was a read and a half. A fantasia, an attempt to view the culture of privilege and prejudice confronted by a man and the mixed-race daughter he never knew he had in the wake of white peoples' mass lemming-like vanishing.

Now, let me bring something up: This is in no way some triumphalist "wouldn't it be cool if all the white people vanished?" racist fantasy. It isn't that kind of facile storytelling, or revenge fantasy. It's a fantasia on the inscrutable ways of the Universe, an unknowable, unfathomably powerful external force that, this time, spared you; but...Amid the reorgaization of society, there's that unease that comes from an unresolved stressor, like the Bomb in the Cold War.

A lot like Le Guin's <I>The Dispossessed, A Morally Ambiguous Utopia</I>, the ideas in this story are heady indeed. The overculture in each of these different stories presupposes the existence of a hegemonic economic system that can only be opposed not reimagined. In Author Campbell's story, the presumption includes the fact that when whiteness and its (largely) unexamined privilege vanish, the enforcement of the hegemonic capitalism dies. Is everything suddenly perfect? No, but it's free from many of the more abusive qualities of capitalism and racism. I myownself am not quite so confident that capitalism would wither so completely or so quickly; it's too effective a tool of control, that most human of needs. Leaving that aside, the Brave New World presented feels...right, just, positive. I say this as someone explicitly excluded from this world. That fact is, I suspect, what led a LOT of whiny little butthurt arrested adolescents to ratings-bomb the book on Goodreads. Such arrant nonsense makes Author Campbell's premise's point for him. It also embarrasses me, an old white man, to be relegated among such angry, hateful, immature people.

The author's imagination, then, can't be faulted. This is his debut novel, so technique is logically enough less well-honed than his idea-generating musculature. I kept saying to my DRC, "Please don't explain so much to me. Trust that the stories you've imagined so richly will, in fact, lead me where you're wanting me to go. Conflicts whose roots and results you carefully elucidate aren't tense enough to keep me eagerly reading." I'm confident this can be attributed to his tyro status. I'm also very eager to read his next work when it comes out.

The ending of the story, while not exactly a release from tension, does flow from the events of the preceding action. It felt...I'm not sure "inevitable" is precisely correct, but it has the leadenness of affect I want to convey.

I've rated the book with four stars because I was brought up short and required to consider the ideas of the story multiple times. Good SF/F does that wonderful job better than any other form of storytelling.

This is good SF. That explains the other half-star.