I received this earc from netgalley. This is first time reading from this author.

Darkmotherland is an intense and challenging story about the rising and aggressively challenge political figures fighting to remain in power and those stepping into it.

I want to start off by saying this was my first time reading this author and much of the politics of Napel is unfamiliar to me. All I can do is base what I know and understand of western politics to those which were presented in this book.

And Darkmotherland made me question picking up other work but this author to be honest. Maybe this is a rough draft of the book, but even so the consistent themes of racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, classism, and sexism this book covers was just not for me. I understand that Darkmotherland is meant to present readers a story of political revolution and uprising from resistance groups. I also understand that the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship between Kranti and Professor Shrestha acts as the reader’s anchoring guide for the story. But the further we move away from that the more muddled and twisted the narrative becomes.


Was this meant to be a sardonic, satire version of the present political climate that we’ve been experiencing? To that, I have the option to say that it isn’t necessary to embellish the gross nature of situations. Especially since minorities and the oppressed groups are already familiar with it. Perhaps that’s why I was so triggered?

Likewise, because I found the dystopian line of the narrative so blurred it was not hard to imagine the world of Darkmotherlsnd as I said it is very close to our own. I did wonder if the text was also meant to be an examination of the human condition when forced into such a heavy political struggle?

I understood the Big Two was meant to be an event/time period that happened which was much bigger that then events/timeframe similar to that of WWII but beyond that I was struggling for a timeline reference. Particularly when it came to the homophobia, transphobia and racism

This was my first novel by author Samrat Upadhyay, so I was unclear what to anticipate with this initial introduction to his writing style. Thank you to NetGalley, publisher SoHo Press, Samrat Upadhyay, and Penguin Random House for the ARC. An incredibly intense dystopian novel set in earthquake ravaged Darkmotherland, there is so much going on in the plot it was difficult to follow anything, let alone the two intertwining narratives. I found the dystopian Darkmotherland by Samrat Upadhyay to be a very complicated read.