An Unkindness of Ghosts
An Unkindness of Ghosts Rivers Solomon, 2017 Premise: Aster lives in the bowels of the great ship Matilda. As a dark-skinned lowerdecker, she is constantly in danger from the people of higher classes who run the ship and the society. Then she discovers that an affliction suffered by the leader of the ship may have a connection to her mother's long-ago disappearance. This is a hard book to review for a lot of reasons. What's good about it is great, but what misses the mark for me personally threatens to derail the whole thing. The best part of this book was the worldbuilding, the characters, and the texture of the writing. I feel as though I could recognize any of these characters at a glance. I absorbed the brutality of the violence. I can picture the ship in all its complexity and horror. Most of the major characters are gender-fluid and/or LGBTQ and/or neuroatypical and/or suffering from severe trauma. Their complexity means that while they might not be "fun...