When the autopsy of Matilda's sovereign reveals a surprising link between his death and her mother's suicide some quarter-century before, Aster retraces her mother's footsteps. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, who they consider to be less than human. For generations, the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. If she were truly a monster, as they accuse, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remained of her world, save for stories told around the cookfire.Īster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. She's used to the names she only wishes there was more truth to them. Odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn, Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. Tananarive Due, author of The Living Blood and Ghost Summer With outstanding world-building and an unforgettable protagonist in Aster, An Unkindness of Ghosts is a notable debut by an author whose work I look forward to reading for years to come.' Butler, this novel explores the struggles of slum dwellers aboard a spacecraft sadly reminiscent of our own world: rife with poverty, caste, and discrimination as told through the Looking Glass. Imaginative in the vein of Colson Whitehead, Samuel R. 'Welcome to the Tarlands aboard the space vessel HSS Matilda-home of the poor and rejected-and the setting of Rivers Solomon's powerful debut novel. Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling This is a book you'll want to read now so you can tell your friends you read it first.' And yet for all that it remains deeply humane, and it's even quite funny at times.

Rivers Solomon has put together a heady science-fiction novel that speaks directly to some of the most pressing political and social concerns of the modern day. ' An Unkindness of Ghosts marks the debut of a wildly talented writer.

An unkindness of ghost