Rosewater by Tade Thompson

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

Rating: 4/5

This was assigned for my local scifi group. I didn’t finish it in time to make it to the discussion, but I really enjoyed the book. It’s a scifi set in about 2050 in Nigeria after aliens have started to invade Earth. The main character, Kaaro, is one of a few people who acquired psychic powers when the aliens landed. He is currently working as a spy for the Nigerian government and as psychic security for the bank (blocking psychic hackers).

This book has a ton of really fun ideas. Some feel totally fresh and some feel a little familiar, like the reanimates who are basically zombies. I don’t want to spoil the good stuff, though, so you’ll have to read it yourself…

This book is really well written and funny. When Kaaro is being forced to take on his first spying mission, this little scene happens:

“A fish bone gets stuck in my throat and I cough, drink some water, and cough some more. I gesture to the guard, point to my own back, but the man is a hologram or a statue. When the bone dislodges, I give the guard the middle finger and continue my reading.”

The part that bugged me and made me take it down from a 5 to a 4 is the horniness of the male protagonist. It’s at least acknowledged by the other characters that Kaaro is a womanizer but for me as a female reader that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable. Experiencing this book is a lot of reading about Kaaro’s penis and detailed descriptions of the sex appeal of every woman he meets.

Like this from when he’s driving with a female client:

“The woman crosses and uncrosses her legs. The movement causes a puff of perfume to tickle my nose. I have a sudden powerful erection and I trap it between my thighs so it isn’t visible.”

There’s a lot of pretty explicit sex in this book, though most of it is between Kaaro and his girlfriend, but some of it is with a succubus in the psychic realm. The way sex is described is very physical, not emotional and it often feels stark and awkward.

“As we rut, the field around us fills with butterflies of different colors and sizes. I read somewhere that they do not fly in the rain, and I cannot ever remember seeing one. My claws extend and dig into Molara’s flesh where I am holding onto her shoulders. I gouge my curved beak into her neck for more traction. Blood wells up, but it is washed away in the rain. The blue gossamer wings rip to shreds with the force of our copulation. I cannot help myself; I stretch and flap my own wings. Conjoined, we take to the air together, surrounded by butterflies.”

Even though this scene is taking place in the psychic realm and there’s fantastic stuff going on all around them, it doesn’t feel sexy (at least to me). It’s almost like bodies fulfilling their own needs with no brain controlling them. Maybe it’s just that it sets up the scene with the word “rut”, which is probably the least sexy word to describe sex and makes me think of livestock. It could be on purpose because Molara is seducing him, though?

Kaaro is supposed to be an outlier in this regard, but in the context of science fiction there are a lot of protagonists like this, it’s just not quite as overt, extreme, or explicitly stated. On one hand I appreciate the honesty but on the other hand it feels gross to read.

Rosewater was originally published by Apex (I reviewed the Apex Best of collection in January) and Apex tends to publish scifi on the edgier end of the scifi/horror spectrum, so I can see how it fits in with that aesthetic.

I know I’m making it sound bad by talking more about the womanizing but there is really a lot to like in terms of plot, ideas, characters, and the interpretation of Nigerian people and culture, which we don’t see a lot of here in the US. It made me kind of want to go to Lagos sometime (also Drew Binsky has a YouTube video of 1 day spent in Lagos, which I recommend!). All of the female characters are very strong and independent and there are a good handful of them (and they talk and act in pretty realistic ways, which is hard for male authors to pull off sometimes).

Still, I think I’ll give the next books in the series a pass (for now at least… I have too much to read). I was really into it at the beginning, but the protagonist grated on me (though I kind of like his humor at times? I’m conflicted.) and the plot became a little too crazy with too many cool things thrown in without feeling properly integrated into the story. It ends pretty abruptly, too.

This is very cinematic, so I’m wondering if it’ll get an adaptation and how they’ll handle the *cough* “edgier” elements… I could see Netflix doing it, since they do a lot of sexual content and also science fiction.

I don’t know if I would recommend this to people who are not heterosexual males, though… the ideas were cool and all, but personally I don’t think the intellectual interest to discomfort ratio would be worth it for most women.

Side note: I’m not sure if I should continue with my science fiction book club… there are a lot of sexist books chosen and I’m getting a little sick of it. The next book on deck is Polaris by Jack McDevitt which is interesting in that it’s archeological murder mystery scifi, but its female characters are horribly wooden (even the female protagonist… there’s a scene where a 50-something male client says “I would never turn down dinner with a beautiful woman” and the mid-20s female protagonist thinks “I like this guy already!”) and awfully described (there’s a comment about an older woman “not having her life together despite her age” because she looked tired that made me roll my eyes).

That’s it, I’m setting a goal to read only women in 2020… I need a break. haha

I’ll try to focus on knocking some books off my WOC challenge this year. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish all of them but I’m hoping to make some more progress on that. 🙂