My appetite for Nisi Shawl’s Everfair has gone up and down since I first heard of it. It came highly recommended by multiple sources and ticked off so many intriguing boxes: a speculative, steampunk alternative history of an African nation by a woman of color. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. After I bought it earlier this spring, I noticed the Goodreads collective rating was on the low-ish side, and I’m not always as immune to popular opinion as I like to think I am. It […]
Everfair – Using steampunk to reimagine history
At some point this fall when visiting the bookstore, the cover of “Everfair” caught my eye. It went on my book wanted list based on the cover art and quote, “A book with gorgeous sweep, spanning years and continents, loves and hates, histories and fantasies… Everfair is sometimes sad, often luminous, and always original. A wonderful achievement. – Karen Joy Fowler”. The pairing of the mechanical and human hand with an intricate metal globed lamp between them suggested to me that this would be steampunk. […]
How to waste an unbelievably cool premise in execution.
I was realllly looking forward to this book. I mean, come on. An alternate history exploring what it would have been like if the Congo Free State (shudder) never existed due to the invention of steampunk-like technologies. Instead, and I’m gonna steal from the blurb here, “Fabian Socialists from Great Britain 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 […]