Scan barcode
A review by birdykinsreads
Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
4.0
My feelings for this book fluctuated a lot while I was reading, it starts out with a bang--5 star worthy premise and build up--but slowly starts to go downhill for me. I'm still thinking about it, and there's lots to ruminate on, so I'm going to lean on the side of generous and go 4 stars but I did have quite a few issues with the writing style, characters and ending.
Sky Full of Elephants has an ambitious premise--what would happen if one day all the white people in America walked into the sea (or nearest body of water)--and the beginning really rises to the occasion. Charlie is an ex-con who has been liberated from jail with "the event" he now teaches at Howard where a new mandate of those who know teach, those who want to, learn. It's interesting what Cebo Campbell posits might change, the way community and ease might permeate when white supremacy and its systems ostensibly cease to exist. I loved how these cities rise and fill the gaps with innovation and community. When his estranged biracial daughter contacts him to help her after her entire family drowns themselves he sets out on a cross-country trip with her to find out if there is a community of survivors, some of which might be her relatives, like she's heard there are.
What they find is not what they expect. I really loved the character of Charlie, I felt he was very strongly written. But, half the book is told from Sidney's POV and I really struggled to believe it. Sidney is stuck in a mindset that I didn't find very realistic and I felt the way Campbell interrogated her identity and grief could have been a lot more nuanced and would likely have been more complicated than portrayed. I just felt with her in particular something was really lacking. And then, when several other characters in the city Mobill are introduced, they all felt one-dimensional to me as well. Because the characters weren't well-rounded enough, I found myself unable to sink into the story a lot of the time which was a shame because the ideas at play here are so interesting.
Similarly, Campbell's writing style felt a bit overwrought and heavy-handed to me, which made this pretty slow going in parts. However, the science and reasoning behind "the event" ends up being super fascinating so I'm really willing to forgive a lot of the bumpy execution. I wanted to love it. I was ready and willing to love it. Speculative fiction is one of my favourite things to read. But, this was grasping for something just out of reach.
This book started so strongly, bold as hell, and then fizzled out by the end. Still, I find the ideas at the heart of it really strong, the core of hopefulness, and think its version of utopia is gorgeously radical, revolutionary, and for some readers very provocative. This will likely be big book club fodder and I'm curious to see its reception when it comes out. Definitely ambitious and worth reading despite its stylistic shortcomings.
My thanks to Simon & Schuster for sending me this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Sky Full of Elephants has an ambitious premise--what would happen if one day all the white people in America walked into the sea (or nearest body of water)--and the beginning really rises to the occasion. Charlie is an ex-con who has been liberated from jail with "the event" he now teaches at Howard where a new mandate of those who know teach, those who want to, learn. It's interesting what Cebo Campbell posits might change, the way community and ease might permeate when white supremacy and its systems ostensibly cease to exist. I loved how these cities rise and fill the gaps with innovation and community. When his estranged biracial daughter contacts him to help her after her entire family drowns themselves he sets out on a cross-country trip with her to find out if there is a community of survivors, some of which might be her relatives, like she's heard there are.
What they find is not what they expect. I really loved the character of Charlie, I felt he was very strongly written. But, half the book is told from Sidney's POV and I really struggled to believe it. Sidney is stuck in a mindset that I didn't find very realistic and I felt the way Campbell interrogated her identity and grief could have been a lot more nuanced and would likely have been more complicated than portrayed. I just felt with her in particular something was really lacking. And then, when several other characters in the city Mobill are introduced, they all felt one-dimensional to me as well. Because the characters weren't well-rounded enough, I found myself unable to sink into the story a lot of the time which was a shame because the ideas at play here are so interesting.
Similarly, Campbell's writing style felt a bit overwrought and heavy-handed to me, which made this pretty slow going in parts. However, the science and reasoning behind "the event" ends up being super fascinating so I'm really willing to forgive a lot of the bumpy execution. I wanted to love it. I was ready and willing to love it. Speculative fiction is one of my favourite things to read. But, this was grasping for something just out of reach.
This book started so strongly, bold as hell, and then fizzled out by the end. Still, I find the ideas at the heart of it really strong, the core of hopefulness, and think its version of utopia is gorgeously radical, revolutionary, and for some readers very provocative. This will likely be big book club fodder and I'm curious to see its reception when it comes out. Definitely ambitious and worth reading despite its stylistic shortcomings.
My thanks to Simon & Schuster for sending me this ARC in exchange for my honest review.