Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - The Deep

I didn’t hate it, but I typically prefer more depth and complexity to plots and characters. The allegorical symbolism didn’t go unnoticed (ie, understanding the complex emotions produced by generational trauma of the oppressed due to white supremacy). I enjoyed the portions that leaned into that message, but looking beyond that I felt the story lacked. Which made it feel simple- more like a grim fable than a novel. Probably intentional, but doesn’t mean I have to like it 😅

Truthfully, the afterword made me appreciate the novel more than actually reading it.

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gandalf_a's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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numerous_bees's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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pacifickat's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This was a wonderfully original fantasy novella with excellent world building, a unique culture, and themes of collective memory and belonging in tension with the main character's desire for self-determination and autonomy. It is also set against the horror of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the cruel deaths of so many abducted Africans at sea. The Wajinru, children of African pregnant mothers thrown overboard by cruel captors and transformed into merpeople, have a history marked by tremendous grief. What I liked best about the storytelling was the lyrical style employed when describing the Wajinru in the first half of the story, and again toward the end. As a chorus, their voice is stunningly rendered.

However, there was a section toward the middle where

Yetu, the main character and ‘memory keeper’ for her people, is separated from the rest of her culture. This was less interesting to me in terms of style, but necessary for the plot of the story. Yetu longs for self-determination, individual freedom, and to be an ‘I’ in a culture of ‘we’. It is her voice that annoyed me a bit, the inclusion of details about her romantic inclinations and sexual preferences as well as her personal curiosity regarding biological distinctions between humans and merpeople. I found the unique history and anthropology of the Wajinru far more captivating than the nitty gritty of their biology. Yet Yetu’s individuality is part of the point of the story, that she doesn’t want to be swallowed up and erased in a collective oneness with her people. And what is more individual than that which a person chooses to love, and how they choose to express their affection?

Ultimately this is a story about finding balance, between a traumatic past and a hopeful future, between individual and communal identity, between colonizing forces and indigenous cultures, and between the land and sea itself. It is also about remembering.

"Remember. […] That was all remembering was, prodding them lest they try to move on from things that should not be moved on from. Forgetting is not the same as healing.” - Yetu

"One can only go so long without asking, ‘Who am I? Where do I come from? What does all this mean? What is being? What came before me, and what might come after?’ Without answers there is only a hole, a whole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities.” - Amamba

Yetu bears all of her people’s generational trauma, that is her role as ‘memory keeper’ in a society where long-term memory has largely been erased to give her people the freedom to thrive in the present unhindered by a painful past. She is their matriarch, but she is ill-suited for the role.

Out of an instinct for self-preservation, being unable to hold all of her peoples’ pain alone, she ultimately is the one to bring the wisdom of balance to the Wajinru.

"She couldn’t determine which was worse, the pain of the ancestors or the pain of the living. Both fed off her.”

"She learned how to make an inch for herself.”

"She touched each one of them, figuring out how each Wajinru was outside of the oneness the remembrance brought. That mattered. Who each of them was mattered as much as who all of them were together.”

"They could bear it all together.”

It is also a story about the function of memory in culture-making and identity.

One poignant detail is that Yetu and her romantic human interest, Oori, turn out to have come from the same distant ancestors. When Oori’s homeland is swallowed up by the sea, their history washed away, both characters lost something deep and sacred. However, they gained something as well, in the relationship they chose to forge in the present together.

In the afterward, The Deep is described as “a game of cumulative telephone.” The concept began as a song and was adapted over time by different musical groups until this novelization was produced.

“Each new telling of The Deep has been productive rather than destructive, and each new iteration has been carried out with admiration for the previous, […] happily taking on adaptations of each new interpreter into the future.”

This is a wonderful description of culture-making, the turning of ‘I’ into ‘we’, of carrying our stories, traumas, and longings together, erasing loneliness in the context of a communal tribe. It is forming collective memory, adapting a shared history into a cohesive perspective, a meaningful and unifying mythology.

"The living put their own mark on the dead.”

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shugentobler's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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smuttymcbookface's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This was a beautiful story of how to best handle a horrific and tragic past for a set of beings, the Wajinru.

The first Historian, in an attempt to save her people from knowing the truth of their births, kept the knowledge to themselves until nearing death, when they passed it on to the next Historian. Capable of taking the traumatic events from other Wajinru's, even when dead, the Historian's job within the community evolved into holding all harsh memories, and storing the collective pains of their people. The exception to this being the Rememberance, where the Historian shares the history with everyone for a few days, before reabsorbing them, allowing their people to understand the importance of their knowledge, but not requiring them to know the specifics once the ceremony is completed.

This story mostly follows Yetu, the latest Historian, as she struggles to live whilst carrying her people's traumas. Knowing that she'll likely die if she reabsorbs them at the end of the Rememberance, she flees to land, where she meets Oori. A relationship slowly forms where Yetu learns that Oori has lost all of her own people's history when everyone but her was wiped out from an illness. This leaves Yetu wondering if her people were then correct to sacrifice one Wajinru's life and identity, the Historian, so that the remaining Wajinru can live unburdened.

This is a beautiful story with very little plot; mostly exploring feelings of belonging and self-identity. It was both beautiful and difficult to read, and despite being a novella, perfectly built this world where the ocean returned life where humans destroyed it. It was also refreshing to read of love and identity being unquestioned and just a way of existing.

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pages_and_cacti's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Yetu, the Historian for the Wajinru, descendants of pregnant African slave women that were thrown into the ocean by slavers, wants to live a life of freedom from the history she holds for her kind. She must learn that her history is what makes the Wajinru who they are.

My thoughts: I actually enjoyed the story as a whole and the meaning of the importance of one’s history. I love the line, “We cannot understand a people that would willingly choose to cut itself off from its history, no matter what pain it entails”. Our history is who we are and should never be lost. The problem I had with the book, other reviews touted this as an LGBTQ+ book and I am not as convinced. While Yetu and Oora did develop a relationship, Oora was human and Yetu was a “mermaid”. The Wajinru were described as fish, had both sex organs, and also called an “animal” in the writing. This relationship would seem to be more like beastiality than a lesbian relationship. I understand that this is likely not what the writer meant to portray, but it came across that way to me.

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maeverose's review against another edition

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5.0

I don’t have the words to properly review this but this book is beautiful and everyone should read it (though check content warnings first, there are some heavy themes in it).

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