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!

ROBINSON CRUSOE, specifically Restless Books' gloriously illustrated Three-Hundredth Anniversary Edition of it

ROBINSON CRUSOE
DANIEL DEFOE (illus. Eko; introduction by Jamaica Kincaid)
Restless Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$19.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Restless Classics presents the Three-Hundredth Anniversary Edition of Robinson Crusoe, the classic Caribbean adventure story and foundational English novel, with new illustrations by Eko and an introduction by Jamaica Kincaid that contextualizes the book for our globalized, postcolonial era.

Three centuries after Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe, this gripping tale of a castaway who spends thirty years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being ultimately rescued, remains a classic of the adventure genre and is widely considered the first great English novel.

But the book also has much to teach us, in retrospect, about entrenched attitudes of colonizers toward the colonized that still resound today. As celebrated Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid writes in her bold new introduction, “The vivid, vibrant, subtle, important role of the tale of Robinson Crusoe, with his triumph of individual resilience and ingenuity wrapped up in his European, which is to say white, identity, has played in the long, uninterrupted literature of European conquest of the rest of the world must not be dismissed or ignored or silenced.”

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: You really don't need me to mention anything about Defoe or his writing. Or, if you do, go to gutenberg dot org and download a free ebook of the text. You need to read it. Go on! Scoot! Come back when you've downloaded the ugly version. Or, if you're really lazy, go read the Wikipedia article to find out what it's about, so you can look at these illos with a properly appreciative eye.

This gorgeously illustrated tricentennial edition is entirely meant to be celebratory not introductory. I mean, look!


What stunning artwork, no? Any of them, but most especially #2 and #4 above, would work as wall art for me.

This is an elegant, easily-shelvable edition that will give you an æsthetic thrill every time you look at it. Anyone who already loves this fantastical story would enjoy the look and feel of it. Anyone who enjoys pretty editions of books as shelf decor would like it too, though I admit I frown on buying books that sit in one spot their whole lives by design. SOMEONE ought to read it. That's what a book is for!

Still and all I do not run the world (terrible oversight on the goddesses' part) so you enjoy things your own way. O.o

As Yule comes screaming in blazing hot like the ball of destruction it is on one's budget, reasonably priced beautiful things like this are welcome gifts. Especially to yourself.

THE BALLAD OF JACQUOTTE DELAHAYE, ladypirates who love ladies

THE BALLAD OF JACQUOTTE DELAHAYE
BRIONY CAMERON
Atria Books
$28.99 hardcover, available romorrow

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: This epic, dazzling tale based on true events illuminates a woman of color’s rise to power as one of the few purported female pirate captains to sail the Caribbean, and the forbidden love story that will shape the course of history.

In the tumultuous town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, Jacquotte Delahaye is an unknown but up-and-coming shipwright. Her dreams are bold but her ambitions are bound by the confines of her life with her self-seeking French father. When her way of life and the delicate balance of power in the town are threatened, she is forced to flee her home and become a woman on the run along with a motley crew of refugees, including a mysterious young woman named Teresa.

Jacquotte and her band become indentured servants to the infamous Blackhand, a ruthless pirate captain who rules his ship with an iron fist. As they struggle to survive his brutality, Jacquotte finds herself unable to resist Teresa despite their differences. When Blackhand hatches a dangerous scheme to steal a Portuguese shipment of jewels, Jacquotte must rely on her wits, resourcefulness, and friends to survive. But she discovers there is a grander, darker scheme of treachery at play, and she ultimately must decide what price she is willing to pay to secure a better future for them all.

An unforgettable tale told in three parts, The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye is a thrilling, buccaneering escapade filled with siege and battle, and is also a tender exploration of friendship, love, and the search for freedom and home.

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

My Review: I think this is a story of two halves: the first half, a survival story rooted firmly in its rime and place; the second more of a fantasy fulfillment that didn't follow the rules of the first half.

The delights, so to speak, of feeling transported to the slave economy of Santo Domingo, there to meet Jacquotte and see the milieu she was destined to live in...many. The characters, the situations, the atmosphere of the town, were all set up sufficiently clearly that I invested in them. That's most of the battle in my reading world. So I was rockin' along, expecting a five, or at worst high-four, star read.

Then came the twenty-first century.

Jacquotte and company all start having very modern conversations about rights and feelings and equality. I suspect this is not realistic not because we haven't seen it before...the cultural conversation has been dominated by the white oppressors for millennia, how would it get reported?...but because this woman and her cohorts have, until now, behaved and spoken more or less like the period demands. The shift was the jarring part, not what was shifted to.

There's action, there's love, there's a lot to like. When we go off into the second half's fantasia, it's still a good read with swashes being buckled and derring being done. It just wasn't congruent with the first half. They're both enjoyable, make no mistake. I'm glad I read the story. I'm glad to get to know Jacquotte.

Be better prepared to suspend disbelief than I was and get even more out of the story.br />