Read via NetGalley and the publisher, Tordotcom. It’s out in April 2024.

To be honest I don’t even know where to start with reviewing this novella.

To say that it’s breathtaking is insufficient. I can say that it should be on every single award ballot for this year, but that only tells you how much I admired it.

I could try and explain how it explores ideas of slavery, and the experience of the enslaved; ideas of control, and social hierarchy; about human resilience and human evil. Draw connections with Ursula K Le Guin’s “The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas,” and probably a slew of stories that connect to the Atlantic slave trade and which I haven’t read (mostly because I’m Australian).

There are odes to be written to the lyricism of Samatar’s prose, but I don’t myself have the words to express that. Entire creative writing classes would benefit from reading this, and sitting with it, and gently prying at why it works the way it does.

I could give you an outline? There’s a fleet of space ships, and they’re mining asteroids, and mining is dreadful work so you know who you get to do the dreadful work? People that you don’t call enslaved but who are indeed enslaved. There’s an entire hierarchy around who’s doing the mining in the hold, and who’s a guard and who’s not a guard, and the people at the top have convinced themselves there’s not REALLY a hierarchy it’s just the way things need to be. Sometimes someone from the Hold is brought out of the Hold, and then has to learn how to be outside of the Hold… and then someone starts to see through the system, and maybe has a way to change things.

The outline doesn’t convey how powerful the story is.

I should add: the main characters are never named.

Just… everyone should read this. It’s not long, so there’s no excuse! But it will stay in your head, and it will punch you in the guts. In the good way.