The Disability Book Archive

[ID: A book cover. The background is dark and dotted with different lights to look like stars. The figure of a young person can be seen, covered in stars. Their face is slightly turned and they appear to be looking out of the cover, at the reader. The title of the book, “An Unkindess of Ghosts”, is at the top in large white writing. The writing becomes slightly transparent on “Ghosts”. At the bottom of the book, the authors name, “Rivers Solomon”, in slightly transparent, smaller, white writing. /end]

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Content Warning:

• Ableism
• Homophobia, Transphobia
• Misgendering
• Racism
• Slavery
• Graphic Rape
• References to Sexual Assault
• Child Abuse
• Suicide and Attempted Suicide
• Self Harm
• Abortion
• Forced Sterilisation
• Death of A Parent, Death of A Child
• Polic Brutality
• Torture
• Lynching

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Summary:

Odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn, Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She’s used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, as they accuse, she’d be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remained of her world, save for stories told around the cookfire.

Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, who they consider to be less than human.

When the autopsy of Matilda‘s sovereign reveals a surprising link between his death and her mother’s suicide some quarter-century before, Aster retraces her mother’s footsteps. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer and sowing the seeds of civil war, Aster learns there may be a way off the ship if she’s willing to fight for it.

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Notes:

For more information on content warnings please see here.

Solomon is non-binary, intersex, on the autism spectrum and has ADHD. ‘An Unkindess of Ghosts’ is their debut novel.

This book has been nominated for several awards. In 2018, it earned Solomon the “Community of Literary Magazines and Presses’ Firecracker Award in Fiction”.

There is an audiobook.

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Archivist Comments:

Several people have come forward and suggested River Solomon’s work as an excellent source for queer, intersex and neurodiverse rep. The book also focuses very heavily on issues of race and class.

I’ve seen praise directed towards the worldbuilding of the story, but some comments saying that the plot was a bit loose and unbalanced. Some people say it’s depressing, some people thought it was riveting. The reviews are a very mixed bag, but it’s not actually rated too badly. Everyone who suggested it to me seemed to enjoy it.

The MC works as a doctor and an engineer.

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