Across Steven Barnes's career, this is probably the book that's received most praise, including an Endeavour Award in 2003, in a tie with Kristine Kathryn Rusch for 'The Disappeared'. I believe that it's also his longest book at that point and while some others were substantial, this one feels like an epic; the sort of drama that would have been adapted into a television mini-series back in the day, merely alternate history rather than history proper. As the cover points out, it's "a novel of slavery and freedom in an alternate America".

It's a compelling vision that succeeds in both its primary goals: to tell a well-drawn story about the relationship between slaveowner and slave in the American deep south and to do so through race reversal. This time, the slaveowner is black and Muslim and the slave white and Irish. The balance of power is very different in this world, Europe having collapsed centuries before we begin in 1863 through some sort of germ warfare on the Nile. Names we know like Mozart and Da Vinci are still famous but through patronage in Alexandria, the home of a world empire.

Expansion west to the New World was the vision of Bilal ibn Rajah in Abyssinia, the first muezzin appointed by the Prophet Muhammad, so the lands colonised are known as Bilalistan. We spend a majority of our time in New Djibouti, which spreads across the coast from Texas to Georgia, in Dar Kush, a plantation owned by Abu Ali Jallaleddin ibn Rashid al Kushi. He's a particularly wealthy landowner known as the Wakil, second only to the governor of New Abyssinia in power. He has two sons, Ali and Kai, and a large slave population, which includes a shipment of Celtic slaves recently stolen from Ireland, Aidan and his mother Deirdre among them.

Initially, my response to this was interest. The prose is smooth and generous, even though action can be brutal. However, Barnes takes his race reversal very seriously. It isn't simply black owners and white slaves. The O'Dere Crannog was raided by Vikings, so these white fisherman were sold into slavery by other white men. There's an excellent touch where Babatunde, a Yoruban tutor, is explaining history and suggests that Alexander of Macedon, "the Great" to us but a Pharaoh of Egypt to these characters, may not have been as black as he's usually depicted, which I felt was a particularly blistering nod to the western image of White Jesus.

There's also serious nuance here, making this far from being literally a black and white issue. The initial Viking raid shows us two sides of white and Barnes gradually introduces us to the different factions of black. In Africa, there's still tension between Abyssinia and Egypt that date back to the rise of Islam. In colonised North America, there's ideological difference separating Muslims from Zulus, Shaka Zulu leading the latter population in the north of New Djibouti. There's a telling line from him that suggests to Abu Ali that, if they didn't have common enemies in Native Americans and Aztecs, they would be fighting each other. Also, there's a subplot concerning Sufism, which is looked down upon by the mainstream of Muslims, as certain key characters are or become Sufis.

About halfway through, I started to wonder who the lead was. Traditionally, we'd expect it to be Aidan, because he was there at the very start and we've followed him throughout, from an idyllic rural life in Ireland to the slave quarters in Ghost Town on the Dar Kush plantation. However, it's obvious that Barnes is paying just as much attention to Abu Ali's youngest son, Kai, to the degree that it would seem jarring to lose him. Given that the two grow close, Aidan officially being Kai's footboy but also effectively his closest friend, I figured that they had to share the lead.

One problem is that, once I'd realised that, the logical ending was set. This is richly imagined work so it's far from that simple, a whole slew of different dynamics shifting in and out of focus, and it's also much deeper than these two characters, but it's clear at this point that the ending simply has to comprise certain details to avoid disappointment. The question therefore becomes how we get to that point and here Barnes has a great deal of fun building things up and tearing them down. I certainly caught some telegraphed details but enough of this was surprising enough for moments to carry a serious amount of shock.

There's nothing here that reaches Red Wedding levels of shock, but a number of scenes come close to it and some of them are exquisitely crafted. For instance, there's a scene that unfolds around a bet and, while some of its ramifications are immediately obvious, others manifest in its wake and they're truly brutal. Abu Ali's daughter Elenya is a prodigy at satranj, the Afghan name for chess, and scenes like these suggest that Barnes is no different. He's positioning pieces in a way that we can see but we don't always catch what's going to happen four moves later until we get there and that's one of the greatest successes of the novel.

Frankly, there are a lot of successes and not a lot else. There were a few moments, late in the first half, where it started to feel long to me and I wondered why Barnes was giving us so much detail, but the more I read the faster the pages turned. I could see some failing to connect with it due to how weakly and consistently he develops female characters, but then women are hardly equals in this world. I may have wanted to know more about Elenya, Kai's sister, but it wouldn't have helped the story because she's there to be married off, just as Lamiya is there to be married to Ali. Even the most substantially developed female character, Sophia, is entirely defined by her connection to men, but appropriately so. She's not just a woman but a slave. None are free.

This book clearly meant a great deal to Barnes. It's easily his most densely plotted yet smoothest written novel thus far. He also returned to this alternate history immediately, following this book up with a sequel, 'Zulu Heart', which I'll tackle next month. I should also check out a filk album, of all things, named 'Insh'Allah' for this duology, by Heather Alexander. By sheer coincidence, just as I dived into Barnes's work because he was scheduled to be our Author Guest of Honor at CoKoCon in 2020, an appearance blocked by the COVID-19 pandemic, Heather Alexander, after transitioning into Alexander James Adams, was our Filk Guest of Honor in the previous year. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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