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A review by golem
Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott
5.0
So intense and so good. Wonderful as an audiobook--thrilling and tense and satisfying. I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much had I not listened to it. I very much appreciate the low-key queer (f/f) and even lower-key m/f romances and the possibly non-binary soothsayer, as well as the Black representation and many mentions of African heritage in Roman/post-Roman Britain.
I found the ending too abrupt--what happened to all of Vort's other men??--and also I wasn't keen on the didactic zoom-out relating the book to all of women's history in Britain. I didn't like this book because I think that British women are unmemorialized or neglected by scholarship, an authorial point of view that will annoy many of us whose ancestors did not colonize the whole world, steal its tombs and papers, and teach it British history. As a book about a very particular historical mystery--how did that Saxon brooch get into the Roman ruins of Londinium? How did misfits, migrants, and queer people survive in post-Roman Britain?--it is magnificent. It is also a fantastic story about trauma, ghosts, and love and survival in ruins.
I found the ending too abrupt--what happened to all of Vort's other men??--and also I wasn't keen on the didactic zoom-out relating the book to all of women's history in Britain. I didn't like this book because I think that British women are unmemorialized or neglected by scholarship, an authorial point of view that will annoy many of us whose ancestors did not colonize the whole world, steal its tombs and papers, and teach it British history. As a book about a very particular historical mystery--how did that Saxon brooch get into the Roman ruins of Londinium? How did misfits, migrants, and queer people survive in post-Roman Britain?--it is magnificent. It is also a fantastic story about trauma, ghosts, and love and survival in ruins.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent
Moderate: Violence and Sexual harassment
Minor: Sexual violence