Everfair by Nisi Shawl

Everfair

by Nisi Shawl

Everfair is a wonderful Neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonisation of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britian join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated. Shawl's speculative masterpiece manages to turn one of the worst human rights disasters on record into a marvellous and exciting exploration of the possibilities inherent in a turn of history. Everfair is told from a multiplicity of voices: Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex relationships with one another, in a compelling range of voices that have historically been silenced. Everfair is not only a beautiful book but an educational and inspiring one that will give the reader new insight into an often ignored period of history.

Reviewed by nannah on

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DNF @32%.

I went into the reviews a little bit when I thought about putting this down to see how someone could understand this without honestly taking a “Silmarillion approach” to it: print out family trees, the cast list from the beginning (which was greatly appreciated), and perhaps a historical timeline with notes on where I left each PoV character last. Unfortunately, I just didn’t enjoy the writing style, the characters, and especially the storytelling format enough to do any of that. In the reviews, it seems like most people were as confused as I was.

Everfair has about eight characters who take turns with the PoV--which isn’t a problem, but each chapter is around two to three pages each, and it often skips several weeks, months, or even up to five years each time it revisits a character, making me flip back to the last time I read about them. Oftentimes major events would happen in these gaps, leaving me with a character thinking something maybe like, “It’s been ___ months since he’s left me,” and it’s like, he what now? Or someone died, or someone’s madly in love with someone else, and I saw none of the falling in part of it.

I really wanted to love this, like I loved the concept. I got as far as I could, but it’s time to put it down.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 11 September, 2022: Finished reading
  • 11 September, 2022: Reviewed