I don't write a lot of negative reviews because I have no interest being a hatchetman critic, instead seeing my job as to introduce people to what's out there that they may not find otherwise, in film, music and books. However, it does happen and one such review was of 'Everfair', to which this book is a sequel.

Now, I didn't tear it apart, because what Nisi Shawl did with it impressed the heck out of the part of me that wears a writer's hat. The way she structured the book was intensely ambitious and the real historical bedrock she built her story onto was fascinating. I've referenced it often when I've talked about how science fiction and fantasy can so capably shine a light on uncomfortable truths that we may never have heard of but really should know about. Most recently, I brought it up in a conversation about books that aren't horror but are horrific, because even the writers of extreme horror can't match what King Leopold did in the Congo Free State, which he owned individually. It doesn't come much worse than effectively establishing human hands as a unit of currency. It was Nisi Shawl who introduced me to that, via 'Everfair'.

All that said, as a reader, I hated it. If you want to know why, then read that review, but I'll cover some of it here by comparing how its approach was fundamentally different to the approach the author takes with the sequel.

For one thing, the primary character in 'Everfair' was a nation, arguably an idea behind a nation, and that isn't the sort of character it's easy for us to relate to and sympathise with. Here, we have a broad choice of primary characters because there's a large ensemble cast in play, but they're all human beings. I certainly didn't like all of them but I'm sure I wasn't supposed to and I absolutely liked some of them. The nation of Everfair is still in play and there are high-level ideas unfolding, but we can connect to all that through real characters who we can identify.

For another, the biggest constant in the chronology of 'Everfair' is change. Every time we caught up to where we were, it moved on again, skipping from here to there over a thirty-year span. That didn't allow us to find much of a grounding. This book, on the other hand, which is longer by forty pages or so, unfolds in less than a year of Everfair time, from December 1920 to September 1921, with a Chapter Zero that starts four years earlier.

Now, that ensemble cast does put in a heck of a lot of mileage during the book, some characters starting out in Vietnam and others Egypt, all of them gradually working their way through nation after nation to eventually reach Everfair, on the eastern edge of what was the Congo Free State, became Zaire and is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but that's just flavour. I was never confused as to where I was or why I was there, whether it be Cairo, Mombasa or Mogadishu. That I have a large globe by the side of my bed helped but wasn't at all necessary.

I deliberately asked for this book because I wanted to see how Shawl would continue the story that could easily have been done after 'Everfair', but I had two questions going in. One was whether I'd appreciate it as much as a writer and the other was whether I'd hate it as much as a reader. I didn't appreciate it as much, because it's not as ambitious in literary ways, but I did appreciate how well it functioned both as a story for such a large cast of characters and as a launchpad for a collection of themes and ideas. There's a heck of a lot here and it's going to take a while for it all to sink in. I also enjoyed it a lot more. I can't say I loved it, because I do have problems with it, but I certainly didn't hate it.

There are three major threads as we start out, but one peters out surprisingly a third of the way.

That's the battle for succession for the Everfair throne. King Mwendi is about to abdicate and his two children both want to be his successor. That initially seems to fall to fairy tale logic—whoever retrieves the king's shongo from the atolo tree into which he threw it will take the throne—but it gets discarded quickly and we fall into intrigue. Another is the intrigue that surrounds the future of Everfair, given how a deadly influenza pandemic has shifted balances with the British, Italians and Germans all jockeying positions.

There's a lot of intrigue here and I think that it becomes one of the book's problems but it isn't at this point. I was fascinated by whether Princess Mwadi, who's ambitious, capable and willing to do everything differently, or Prince Ilanga, educated and capable but a playboy at heart, would win the throne. The broader intrigue I never cared much about except in how it introduced a new set of characters, from assassins to refugees.

The third thread is the one that takes over everything, appropriately so given that it's kind of the point. This is the thread that starts out in Vietnam because there are competing cures to the flu, one Russian and the other Chinese, but the latter has been finessed into something more by the remaining characters who are dedicated to spreading it far and wide not only to keep people alive but to instill them with a socialist sense of empathy. Whereas the other two threads are all rooted in intrigue, this one is jointly action and intrigue so it's more engaging and it develops into where all the most enticing ideas reside.

There's a major theme of colonialism in both 'Everfair' and 'Kinning' that isn't explored the way it would be by lesser-talented writers. Shawl is a truly speculative fiction writer so she prompts us to think about these themes rather than follow her own views about them. Ironically, the characters in this third thread absolutely have their own view of how things will end up and are driven to get to the endgame they've seen all along. That doesn't quite happen, because there are unintended consequences that constitute the most fascinating ideas in the book, looking at individuality and personal identity and how that might function in collective beings.

While they travel around inoculating people with their particular secret medicine spores, so many that we start to wonder whether there's anyone left in the story who hasn't been inoculated, the true goal is to inoculate telegraph cables with the goal of tapping into communication in a fashion that resembles a sort of biomechanical internet of symbiosis. This is like reinventing the Borg as a medical implementation of socialism. It's radical but it's fascinating and this thread trumps that international intrigue with growing emphasis.

This is still historical, I should add, and there are still steampunk elements, like a prosthetic brass hand and steam-powered aircanoes, which still ought to have a space in it because they're canoes in the air and that word does not rhyme with volcanoes. Given that, it's highly retrofuturistic, to a degree that 'Everfair' never reached. This isn't just future to the past, it's future to us too, with a lot of these questions about identity applicable to today's gender politics and beyond, all the way to the Borg, which avoided the question and never factored in non-human elements. They went for assimilation as an end state, while the characters here see it as transhuman enhancement.

All in all, I enjoyed this. I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time, because there's a huge amount here to digest, but I think its ideas outstrip its implementation, especially in the second half of the book and increasingly so as it builds towards its finalé. However, I doubt I'll come back to re-read, because it's too long, too complex and, especially during the third act, too repetitive. Those problems are big ones that matter much more than a couple of characters avoiding the use of apostrophes on abbreviated words like takin, makin and comin that annoyed me intensely. I'm happy I read it, especially after hating 'Everfair' so much, but I doubt I'll read it again. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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