Plucked from her life on the streets of post-apocalyptic Santo Domingo, young maid Acilde Figueroa finds herself at the heart of a voodoo prophecy: only she can travel back in time and save the ocean - and humanity - from disaster. But first she must become the man she always was - with the help of a sacred anemone.Tentacle is an electric novel with a big appetite and a brave vision, plunging headfirst into questions of climate change, technology, Yoruba ritual, queer politics, poverty, sex, colonialism and contemporary art. Bursting with punk energy and lyricism, it's a restless, addictive trip: The Tempest meets the telenovela.
This is a dense little book that's rich in ideas - about gender, sexuality, colonialism, art, environmentalism, Santería, folklore, capitalism. As someone with little knowledge of the cyperpunk genre Indiana is drawing on or of the intricacies of Dominican politics, I'm sure I missed a lot of the finer points of the novel. I found it a bit stomach-turning in places; there's a lot of sexual violence and a real disgusting misogynist whose thoughts we are privy to. I don't necessarily think that was gratuitous, but my tolerance for those types of things is growing thinner. The time travel plot was executed in a fresh and interesting way, and the writing was vibrant and exciting. It's not always easy to follow, which is fine; I don't mind a novel that makes me work or that leaves me with a lot to think about. And although the ending was perfect, serving as a warning about complacency in the face of environmental disaster fuelled by neocolonialism, I just wasn't completely satisfied with this book. I often feel this way about shorter novels and novellas; perhaps it's a function of the fact that I read them so quickly that I don't feel I have enough time to truly get into the story and world and characters. I like a fast pace, especially in a book that's straddling the thriller genre, but there was so little breathing room that I was left feeling like I didn't quite get the characters' motivations. This is a well-written (and well-translated) book with an interesting premise and promising execution, but this felt like another book that was primarily about ideas. That's all well and good, but it's hard to engage fully with such a variety of big ideas in only 130 pages. I just wanted more, and I was especially frustrated because the potential is so clearly there.
