BEASTS OF CARNAVAL, debut Caribbean-set Taíno mythology-centered fantasy novel

BEASTS OF CARNAVAL
ROSÁLIA RODRIGO
MIRA Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, out now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: When night descends, el Carnaval de Bestias rises.

They come chasing paradise…

Within the shores of Isla Bestia, guests from around the world discover a utopia of ever-changing performances, sumptuous feasts and beautiful monsters. Many enter, but few ever leave—the wine is simply too sweet, the music too fine and the revelry endless.

Sofía, a freedwoman from a nearby colonized island, cares little for this revelry. Born an enslaved mestiza on a tobacco plantation, she has neither wealth nor title, only a scholarly pragmatism and a hunger for answers. She travels to el Carnaval de Bestias in search of her twin brother, who disappeared five years ago.

There’s a world of wonder waiting for her on the shores of this legendary island, one wherein conquerors profit from Sofía’s ancestral lands and her people’s labor. But surrounded by her former enslavers, she finds something familiar in the performances—whispers of the island’s native tongue, music and stories from her Taike’ri ancestors…a culture long hidden in the shadows, thrust into the light.

As the nights pass, her mind begins unraveling, drowning in the unnatural, almost sentient thrall of Carnaval. And the sense that someone is watching her grows. To find her brother and break free, Sofía must peel back the glamorous curtain and face those behind Carnaval, before she too loses herself to the island…

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I read this book back in May and enjoyed it; it was a good read, it hit many of my favorite notes of anti-colonialism, women empowering themselves to accomplish things, on and on. It's out this coming Tuesday so as I was picking Monday's review to write, I did the usual open-the-book-and-skip-around search for quotes...
...
...and reread the whole book. It's a magical fever dream first half, then the hangover...but still action packed...second half made up of problem-solving. It's a lot like The Maltese Falcon that way, only it's a more vivid first half than Chandler!

Sofía, a freedwoman who goes to Isla Bestia with her friend (and former owner) Adelina, to discover the fate of her five-years-missing brother Sol. Interesting that it was not Adelina who instigated this...Sol was valet to Reynaldo, her own father, the former main enslaver of both Sofía and Sol. The womens' multivalent relationship...owner/owned, friends, maybe more...intrigued me deeply because I found myself unable to predict what one would say to the other more than once in a while. Author Rodrigo's got "It" for dialogue in my ear. I wouldn't give her a note in that arena.

The problem is the two halves of the story aren't well knitted together. Like a sweater with rows of crochet holding the sleeves on, it's odd, but not *wrong*. The quest to Isla Bestia brings us into a world of Taíno mythology, bringing characters of whom I have no experience intensely alive. The events on the island lead us elsewhere, though, in fulfillment of the quest. So the hedonism, the vividness, the intensity of the pleasures so well evoked by Author Rodrigo's simile-rich prose, change to a more somber and menacing register when we get to Coaybay. It isn't a seamless transition, or an abrupt break; either of those would fulfil my desire for a narrative signpost that says "we're in a new narrative regime" clearly. It's a need I feel The Night Circus, which I *loved*, fulfilled a bit better than this read did.

I suppose this means I'm more like Sofía than anyone else here, the woman who muses that "{...h}ow much easier it would be to let faith patch the cracks in her knowledge, to accept that there were parts of this world not only beyond her understanding, but beyond all human understanding." She's not good at that, and neither am I. Her need to know, to be sure a thing's real and means what it's shown to mean, resonated with me. Myths are fun, interesting, but not real.

Until they are.

The questions that arise from that are the second half of the story. Adelina simply vanishes; she and her father just aren't involved after we leave Isla Bestia. There's a fascinating...fluidity...to meaning, definitions, certitudes in Coaybay. Gender roles there are, assigned by sex, not so much. It's one example of the intense Otherness that troubles Sofía, that causes her to feel she is not in control of the narrative of her life. Sol, whose long separation from her and residence in Coaybay have altered him into an Other to Sofía, offers more mysteries than certainties. For a twin, this is disorienting. Someone whose hearbeat was the soundtrack of your life, suddenly not reachable despite renewed proximity? This was less impactful in the positive sense; no exploration of what that means to the still-overworked-to-exhaustion Sofía's emotions. The world of Coaybay is, paradoxically, over-developed in its obstacles and under-developed in its sensawunda. Isla Bestia is the opposite.

A debut novel's issues, one and all. The lushness (yes, there are untranslated words, but you're not left to hang in tension by them) and the use of a fresh-to-me mythos was all the inducement I needed to finish the read twice.

A thing I very seldom do, read a story twice, since seventy is closer to me than forty is. Well done, Author Rodrigo!