My biggest problem with Callender as an author is that they have such great ideas for their books but for some reason can never deliver on them. I'm not sure if the editors they have from their different projects are just not challenging them enough or are just not helpful but over the many books by them i've read only one of them has been super good.
The fact that this book is in first person totally defeats the purpose of the twist at the end, and honestly the twist was not that shocking. It was clear from the get go that all of Sigourney's slaves didn't like her and were planning against her, which I thought it was INCREDULOUS that she never planned to free them as part of her plan to get revenge for her family! No ethical aristocracy and all that!
Also that audiobook narrator was awful! I'm happy that it was someone with a Caribbean accent but there was no feeling behind the books being spoken. Everything was done in a monotone. Extremely disappointing.

disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial

Admittedly, this was not my favorite Kacen Callender book. However, that doesn't mean it's a *bad* book. It just wasn't particularly my jam. I thought it was intriguing - biracial (white dad freed her Afro-Caribbean mom and then married her) slave owner Sigourney who wants to take power of her island to seek vengeance for her grief. It's a clever arc of the oppressed becoming the oppressor, and I deeply appreciate a morally grey, messy main character. This story forces you to examine what colonisation does in the aftermath, how these systems of oppression take hold deep within you (it takes a *lot* of active, uncomfortable unlearning, you're not just a perfect accomplice/ally/activist because you posted your lil black square), and how you can also become complicit in the very system that is hurting you/others.

Sigourney may be Black and biracial, and absolutely cannot escape that in a colonized society, but there are other intersections of her identity (class, social status, owning property) that actively contribute to the slavery and vile conditions that her people are currently enduring. She contends with it sometimes, but mostly justifies it - this is what I mean by being morally grey. She's aware but also laser-focused on power too! Meanwhile, the kongelig (what the colonizers are called) are being murdered and all signs point to Sigourney.  

I take no issue with that premise, let me be clear. I appreciate a book where you're internally struggling as you watch the main character make questionable decisions based in even more questionable motives. Like, I didn't feel like there were any "heroes" in this book, which I appreciate from a story, forcing people out of the good versus bad binaries, and instead presenting you with deeply layered, nuanced, fallible humans. 

I mostly took issue with the audiobook narration and the writing felt so far from what I'm used to from Callender. The writing and dialogue felt repetitive, and that repetition only made me wonder, 'Couldn't this book have been about 100 pages shorter?' I understand it's the first in a duology, so it's supposed to set the world up for us, which I don't typically mind. However, it didn't add to my understanding of the world and the way magic worked, it just repeated a lot of the same sentiments, and told us a lot (character motivations especially) instead of showing us. I recognize Sigourney's kraft was being psychic, but this just resulted in info-dumping, which was repetitive and slowed down the pace. 

I will read the next book, but I hope it's a bit less full of unnecessary fluff that this book had. 

Caribbean narrator, check. Monotone, check.