It's hard to talk about a volume of short stories that starts with one that states proudly that authorities killing people is justified if the authorities have a greater purpose in mind and people don't witness it.

I wanted to read this for the „Black Future” promise. However, it seems that the „Black Future” is anything but that - the futuristic shorts are bad, the historical fiction ones are slightly better, but even so at one point I simply couldn't go on - it was too atrocious to continue. As far as I read this, Jemisin doesn't seem to be very much anti-racism - she's racist herself, and proudly so. But it wasn't the blatant racism or the political views of the author that drove me away from this book. I assume I'm not the target of the short stories.

Perhaps that's a flaw of the stories: the fact that they don't stand on their own. Some of them have cultural references missing. Perhaps at fault is the selection made: you have a historical fantasy between a cyberpunk story and a urban-fantasy story. Or maybe the explanation is as simple as „it's not for me”. Otherwise, the stories are well written except for when they are unintelligible.