An Unkindness of Ghosts

There aren't actually any ghosts in this book. If you're looking for spooky horror/fantasy IN SPACE, this is absolutely not the book for you: all ghosts are purely metaphorical.

What this book actually offers: American-style slavery, racism, intersexism (kind of combined with racism, in this case), whatever -ism goes with mental illness and neurodivergence, transmisia, homomisia, &c. .... IN SPACE.

(I don't mean to imply that it condones these things. Quite the opposite, in fact. But it certainly does portray them.)

The hard sci-fi setting serves more as a backdrop for all this slavery and oppression and whatnot than as a foreground element, despite its plot-relevance; possibly I feel this way because the plot itself takes something of a background role as compared with social themes, relationships, and the constant crushing realities of slavery. Thematically, though, it is important. Even knowing that the vast majority of slaves never escaped, there's a difference - at least from a literary perspective - between being enslaved beneath the open sky with only a lot of distance, a whole bunch of oppressors, and an entire society built around your lack of personhood between yourself and freedom; and being enslaved IN SPACE, with recycled air and the world curving in around you, and literally no freedom anywhere because you're trapped on a spaceship and "a whole lot of distance" just straight-up doesn't exist. The setting does quite a bit to enhance the feelings of hopelessness and inevitability in a subtle way.

It's worth noting that despite its themes and subject matter, An Unkindness of Ghosts is actually surprisingly easy to read. While the violence inherent to the subject isn't glossed over, the worst of it almost entirely takes place off-screen. I wouldn't call it a pleasant book, but the unpleasantness certainly isn't gratuitous, and in fact it generally feels somewhat toned down for readability.

The prose is fluid and interesting, and all the more interesting because of the use of dialects and varied styles of speaking, with differences between various decks of the ship. Rivers Solomon obviously pays a lot of attention to language. Aster is a literal-minded pedant with elevated diction (fair enough: autism does sometimes present this way), which had me worried for the first few pages - I feared Autism Voice and dubious clichés - but as I realised that 1) she has a hell of a lot more character depth than just that and 2) she is only one of many characters with a distinct voice and her literal-minded pedantry and elevated diction don't result in her looking down on those who use figures of speech or speak in dialect, my worries soon faded.

All around an important book and one much worth reading, as long as you can put up with a bit of soul-crushing oppression in your literature.

Selling points: cool lingual stuff; sci-fi-but-also-low-budget-herbal-type medicine; intersex autistic protagonist; slave revolts; psychotic (schizophrenic?) representation with depth; there's a scene with a dog (and nothing bad ever happens to the dog!); transfeminine representation; strong focus on consent in both sexual and medical situations; not nearly as unpleasant to read as one might assume given the subject matter.

Warning points: honest depiction of slavery and all that comes with it; violence, including sexual violence (though especially the latter is mostly off-screen); there's a (consensual, and not particularly graphic) sex scene in there somewhere; the psychological violence is not just off-screen; descriptions of medical implements and procedures (and also of the causes for them: wounds, gangrene, that sort of thing); plenty of references to self-harm and suicidal ideation; semi-graphic on-screen character death; social friction; soul-crushing oppression.

I liked the idea of a strong caste-system being enforced on a generation ship, which launched from a post-apocalyptic earth with no destination. Planets are, in some ways, just generation ships, but it feels more claustrophobic in a ship, and therefore less room for idealism. I liked Aster and the deuteragonist, Theo a lot as part of a complicated, diverse and neurodiverse cast. And I also liked that for once in a dystopian setting, Solomon really explores the psychological impact of trauma in a way that is unflinching but still leaves room for sympathy.

But while the first half of the book was fascinating and driven by a compelling mystery, the denouement of the central mystery around page 150 requiring a bunch of pseudoscientific babble broke the metafictional agreement of mysteries (i.e. that before they are solved the reader at least has heard of all of the core components necessary to solve them; no fictional toxic heavy metal elements at the last minute.) And following that, the pacing really lagged into a series of upsetting but ultimately irrelevant oppression scenes. And ultimately, I wasn't sure what Solomon was trying to say about American slavery by telling a very conventional slavery narrative in space. I wish they had used the setting to advance the narrative.

This wasn’t a perfect book, but I enjoyed it a lot despite some flaws.

The flaws would be some unanswered questions and coincidences along the way (such as convenient password guessing). This is definitely soft SF because I found myself regularly thinking, this doesn’t make sense, or this is impractical. I want to call it something like steampunk in space, but it’s not in your face about it. I started thinking about it that way halfway through.

I also had some questions, like why does the Lieutenant obsess over Aster so much? What was the instigation? Otherwise it feels sort of random.

Despite all that, I enjoyed this. It reminded me of Le Guin! There’s a lot of quieter action and progress. Intense moments still feel quiet. The author focuses mainly on Aster, who is no one in particular. She plays a role in the climax at the end, but it never feels like it’s her revolution or something.

I also appreciated the neurodivergence in the story and how that was woven into the characters and their lives. Their conflicting personalities brought challenges, but they do love each other. It felt more realistic than the crew of Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, but not erring too far the other way with excessive drama.

So, I think the characters and the tone won me over on this one!

Favorite quotes:

She was standing on the edge of a new world and so ready to jump. How Lucifer felt upon leaving the Heavens. He didn’t fall. He dove.

People were so often mean that when they weren’t, there was a tendency to bestow sainthood upon them. Aster did not reward common decency with her affection.

Memories could not be unmemoried, only shuffled so as not to be in the forefront of things. Surrounded by men, they all resurfaced at once.

This was a complicated book that looks at a deeply stratified and racist society, illustrates it mainly through the eyes of nonbinary characters who don't quite fit into it, and puts the whole thing on a damaged spaceship far from Earth or any planet. I found it started a little slow and ended a little too fast but I enjoyed the characters and it grabbed me around the middle; I wish the ending had been a bit less rushed feeling and more triumphant.

Some hopefully minor spoilers below:

I suspect it would take another few readings to catch all the details and nuances of the story, but in short: generations ago a colony ship set out, controlled by a religious leadership called The Sovereignty. Believing they knew better than the autopilot, they decided to execute a risky maneuver near an asteroid field and failed, resulting in damage to the ship that killed many of them and left the ship stranded or off course (might need another rereading to clarity exactly which). In the generations since the ship left its planet, it has become deeply stratified - probably it was to start with, but it seemed implied to me that it's become even worse, anyway. The upper classes (all white) live on the highest decks, and the lower deck you're from, the less "worthy" and, of course, less likely to be white you are. Over the generations, each deck has developed its own dialect or even complete language. A few people may occasionally learn to "pass" and move upwards; particularly if they are more light skinned, allowing "passing" in the deep south racist sense. But generally, you're stuck where you were born, and the upper levels reinforce a system of slavery to keep the lower deck workers oppressed. The "ghosts" of the title appears to mainly refer to the cruel white upper class, although could also refer to the now-dead ship leaders in some ways.

Mainly through the main character, a neuro-atypical nonbinary character probably somewhere on the autism spectrum, we learn that some years ago her mother discovered what had happened when the ship was damaged, and discovered a way to adjust the ship's course to bring it finally to a colonizable planet. But this knowledge has been lost to the ship, and what remains of the Sovereignty is now just concerned with maintaining their power and enforcing the suffering of the lower decks. The book mainly revolves around the main character learning all this, as well as dealing with a change of leadership in the Sovereignty that threatens to make life even harder and more unbearable for the non-white residents.

It was not a pleasant read; there's vast amounts of abuse and trauma that are almost glossed over by the non-privileged characters who are the main narrators, but just the casualness with which they accept it almost makes it worse. It's a very interesting and unique read nonetheless. I do wish the ending had felt a bit more like a solid resolution; it was a partial resolution but it seemed as if a lot of open questions and uncertainties were left hanging.