2025/142: Everfair — Nisi Shawl

He had been warned, but had thought Everfair too remote, too obscure, for Leopold's dependents to seek its destruction. He had thought that because this land had been legitimately purchased they were safe. He had trusted to his enemy's basic humanity to preserve them. [p. 95]

Everfair is a steampunk-flavoured alternate history, beginning in 1889. The Fabian Society, instead of founding the London School of Economics, purchases land in the Congo as a refuge for those fleeing the oppressive, violent regime of the Belgian government and their rubber plantations. Everfair, as the new country is called, is initially populated by African-Americans and liberal whites, as well as escaped slaves. King Mwenda, whose land it was before the Belgians stole it, is not wholly pleased with the way that Everfair is run: but he and his favourite wife, Josina -- a fearsome diplomat -- are playing a long game.

The steampunk aesthetic is strong. Many of those formerly enslaved have been mutilated: a young Chinese engineer known as Tink (his name is Ho Lin-Huang) creates artificial limbs for them. (Fwendi, a young woman who's survived the loss of a hand, revels in the fireworks and weaponry that her assortment of prosthetics provides.) There are 'air canoes' and steam-powered bikes; uranium as a power source; ingenuity and artifice.

There is also, of course, race. Shawl explores many aspects of racism and colonialism, including the white saviour / white martyr trope; the tension between Christian missionaries and the spiritual world of the indigenous people; the social consequences of having a Black grandparent; the white horror of 'miscegenation'; the unspoken assumptions and the privilege that underlies even the best intentions of Everfair's founders. Shawl's characters illustrate these tensions and tropes: a Christian preacher who becomes an acolyte of the forge-god Loango; a Frenchwoman with a Black grandfather who decides not to 'pass'; a character who's enthusiastic about the idea of a 'white martyr' to rally British readers to the cause, until the martyr turns out to be someone close to her...

There is a lot in this novel -- which reads more like a set of connected short stories, spanning a period of around thirty years, than a single arc -- and a plethora of viewpoint characters. There is romance both queer and heterosexual; many women with agency and competence; atrocities and joys; spiritual and scientific revelations. There are also supernatural elements. (I loved Fwendi's cats!) And yet for me it fell a little flat. It felt very dense: it felt as though there was a trilogy trying to get out. And perhaps because it's so dense, some of the characters felt less realistic, less rounded, than others. That said, I'm wishlisting the sequel Kinning, which sounds splendid.