This was a really interesting Afro-futurist read. Three Black college students, all from different backgrounds, but long-time friends, start a road trip that changes the entire world. Black people from the past have started appearing to and interacting with Black people from the present, appearing to the government as a dangerous thing that needs to be controlled.
The premise was very interesting. The execution was less than perfect. It relied really heavily on telling instead of showing, summarizing things rather than letting them play out in a more meaningful way to the reader. In many places, it felt heavy-handed. I walked the line between understanding the heavy-handedness, since this novel deals with a lot of heavy topics, but can't the reader be allowed to walk on their own two feet? Finally, the ending was a lot. It took some weird turns.

So I was very guarded going into this read, because racial intolerance takes me to a place of anger and I don't like the feeling, however I'm glad I dove in because I absolutely LOVED IT!! I love the incorporation of the Black culture and history. I love the Sci-Fi spin on the story as well.

This is great read. The characters were engaging and I couldn't put the book down. I would recommend this book for a book club or a friend.

I got a free review copy of this book on the condition that I would write a detailed review.
I kind of feel bad now because I am about to give it a shocking review! Sorry.

First, I read it on Kindle and the formatting was terrible. I don't know what was wrong with the first few pages but I could make no sense of them, and flipped through until I got to something I could read. The formatting at this point was still poor (occasional random line breaks, spaces before full stops. that sort of thing) but at least the text was readable.

I really wanted to enjoy this book, the description was enticing and the context seemed an important one. And I really feel the author has got something valuable to say. But. The writing style was heavy - clumsy and preachy.

For example (three African American women enrolled at a swanky university in a USA whose racism has been supercharged over a period two decades or so) - "Despite the happiness that they felt knowing that they walked the campus of one of the most elite universities in both the state and the country on their own academic prowess and merit, it gave them a pride that made them indifferent to the end of the aforementioned provision [affirmative action]."

It reads like an essay about the story, but I don't want to read an essay about the story, I want to read the story and draw my own conclusions!

And a few pages later (at a spelling bee, on being given the word *amalgamation* to spell) - "Soweto, ever vigilant for a six-year-old due to the consistent conditioning she underwent as a result of the incessant inappropriate questioning, raised an eyebrow on the stage beneath the spotlight, feeling as if the very genetic makeup that she was so constantly ridiculed for by the people that constituted both sides of who she was, was being far too conveniently denoted and her mother ridiculed in the process."

Reads like a high school student with a thesaurus and a determination to shoehorn as many ideas as possible into a single, breathlessly overlong sentence - a sentence in which all that actually *happens* is that a six-year-old raises an eyebrow.

I prefer books where I am trusted to find the moral content for myself, books in which the author drops a few hints and the characters tell their own story. I read books because I *don't* like being told what to think.

And now I'm sad because I could not get any further into this book. It was unreadable. But I'm missing out on what had promised to be a story about three young African Americans going on a fantastical journey of discovery in which surreal things bring them to a deeper understanding of their own reality. I would have liked that.

This book is a thought-provoking and immersive Historical Fiction, Sci-Fi/Fantasy. I really enjoyed that the narrative is immersed in a group of characters that gained knowledge about identity, belief, and the nature of their reality. I will say that for me there were moments where the plot felt heavy and overly complex, but not enough to make me put the book down. The pacing of this book was well-executed with just the right balance of action, suspense, and introspection to keep us (the reader) engaged. What truly sets this book apart from any other is the tackling the most weighty subjects with intelligence and sensitivity, inviting us to ponder on the deepest questions alongside the characters. This one l will stay with me for a long time and with such an unforgettable reading experience I will re-read it time and time again. I would highly recommend this book TO EVERYONE!!!

I DNF's this book at about 50%.

The book's premise was compelling and the first chapter had me hooked. I love stories about how stories are made, communicated, recorded, and how histories that those in power try to crush will always rise up again. The characters have a lot going on: there's a mixed-race character fighting her white father's hatred of her and her mother, and his racism that seeps into every interaction; there's an African-American muslim woman who deals with the intersection of anti-black and anti-Islamic hatred on a daily basis; there's a disabled character who was adopted from a young age, raised in a mixed-race household by scholars of African-American and postcolonial history - history which is being systematically erased in educational settings, even the university that the three friends attend - and whose brother, an autistic teenager, seems to be getting strange messages or predictions that he can only convey through song or sketch. The narrative should be compelling, with its fantasy-historic fiction mash-up, action and moments of tender reflection on a painful, traumatic history.

But it isn't, because the writing is horrendous.

The entire story is written as if it's a book report, or some kind of extended Wikipedia summary. It's the perfect demonstration of "tell, don't show", and the characters don't have anything behind them. Nor do the settings. Action occurs with no momentum, it just happens, and the author tells us how each character reacts in blunt sentences with no room for the reader to connect with or interpret them. The prose is written so coldly, so emptily, that I wonder if there's a human being behind it at all. There's no style, no voice, just oddly-written paragraphs of "They did this, and then they did this, because they want this and they think this." The settings have no depth, the characters have no character, and none of it really means anything because you can't connect to a prose style that is this removed from its own story.