Sorrowland

Infused with the spirit of Octavia Butler and loaded with meaning for the present day, An Unkindness of Ghosts will appeal to a wide variety of readers. Solomon's impassioned, speculative, literary book is sorely needed on library shelves.

Booklist

Lee Child on An Unkindness of Ghosts: Immediately immersive and sophisticated. This is a phenomenal piece of work.

Lee Child

On An Unkindness of Ghosts: Solomon debuts with a raw distillation of slavery, feudalism, prison, and religion that kicks like rotgut moonshine...Stunning.

Publishers Weekly

On An Unkindness of Ghosts: What Solomon achieves with this debut - the sharpness, the depth, the precision - puts me in mind of a syringe full of stars. I want to say about this book, its only imperfection is that it ended.

NPR

A fantastical, fierce reckoning ... Sorrowland is gorgeous, and the writing, the storytelling, are magnificent. This country has a dark history of what it's willing to do to black bodies, and Rivers Solomon lays that truth bare in a most unexpected, absolutely brilliant way.

Roxane Gay

Sorrowland is a wonderland of fantastical and frightening, magical and real. At the centre of this world and leaping off the page is Vern: unstoppable, unforgettable, and unlike anyone you have ever seen before.

Marlon James, Booker Prize-winning author

A furious utopia. Utterly compelling, brilliant and terrifying. Sorrowland seizes the history of white supremacy, racist medical experimentation, and the dream - and danger - of the commune and gnashes it into something magnificent and truly reparative. An epic fantasy that interweaves righteous, large-scale confrontations with power, extremely sexy and moving erotic gothic horror, and exquisite, meticulous renderings of the daily life of parenting. This is a fairy tale for adults, spangled in the wreckage of the world. A gorgeous, singular, and profound work.

Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox

The writing is visceral and soul-clenching. The characters - bold, creative, and memorable. The action, heart-stopping. This is imaginative storytelling at its finest. Once I started, I could not put down Sorrowland until I reached the end. And then I wanted more!

Djèlí Clark, author of Ring Shout

Sorrowland is a raw, powerful, and visceral read. Nature, joy, science, belonging, human metamorphosis, generational oppression, strength, and sheer lust for life: if Toni Morrison, M. Night Shyamalan, and Marge Piercy got together they might, if they were lucky, produce something with the unstoppable exhilaration of this novel. Sorrowland is sui generis.

Nicola Griffith, author of Hild

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon contains so much wisdom and insight, wrapped in an abundance of passion and fury and tenderness. There is so much going on in this book: the spectre of what happens when rebellion is co-opted, our longstanding practice of using Black bodies for cruel and unethical experiments, the audacity of queer love. The arc of this book takes Vern and her babies away from civilization and then back to it - but they return changed, and they change everyone else, and this book restored my faith in our potential to transform just when I needed it most.

Charlie Jane Anders, author of All the Birds in the Sky

Vivid and gut-wrenching

SFX

[T]his twisty adventure, in which the blood-and-guts thrills and breathy sex scenes ultimately act as a delivery mechanism for an urgent affirmation of the necessity of social justice.

Daily Mail

A stirring sense of the epic animates this striking novel. Anything that remains of Vern's faith is rooted in the vastness of life, and when she meets her nemesis, it's only fitting that it should turn out to be a creature "so looming that being next to it was like falling". This capaciousness is echoed in the sheer range of Sorrowland's timely preoccupations. It's about escape, self-acceptance and queer love. It's about genocide and the exploitation of black bodies, selfdelusion and endemic corruption, motherhood and inheritance. Its frame of reference is generous - in some ways, it's clearly rooted in Afrofuturism, but it nods as well to Giovanni's Room , Robin Hood and folklore from multiple cultures.

Observer

Rivers Solomon's Sorrowland (2021) is a powerful and vital work of speculative fiction, one with its roots in the gothic past but with tendrils reaching out beyond the limits of the New Weird... Uncompromising, haunting and unforgettable, Solomon has crafted a modern masterpiece of fantastic fiction.

Fantasy Hive

Dark, magical, and incredibly satisfying, Sorrowland is a fantastical tale that grapples with America's history of racism and marginalised communities ... This gripping gender-bending yarn from UK-based American author Rivers Solomon is yet another fine offering from Stormzy's #Merky Books.

Emily Pennink, Independent

A gothic techno-thriller in which the trauma of the past is parried with defiance and a thirst for understanding, as embodied by an electrifying young hero ... A stirring sense of the epic animates this striking novel ... This capaciousness is echoed in the sheer range of Sorrowland's timely preoccupations ... Its frame of reference is generous - in some ways, it's clearly rooted in Afrofuturism, owing plenty to Octavia Butler, but it nods as well to Giovanni's Room, Robin Hood and folklore from multiple cultures.

Hephzibah Anderson, Guardian

An exhilarating journey to the outer limits of science fiction, steeped in the southern gothic tradition and grounded in the physical and social realities of being poor, powerless, black and female in America ... A furious, justified anger drives this novel, drawing on the US history of racial oppression, but it's also joyful and wildly entertaining.

Guardian

Dark and magical, Sorrowland is a fantastical tale that grapples with America's history of racism and marginalised communities

I Paper

Solomon captures Vern's journey in a gripping narrative that is equal parts speculative fiction and Gothic tale, all while unravelling a fictional world that is not dissimilar to our own, particularly in its depiction of racism and white supremacy.

TIME MAGAZINE (Europe)

Solomon's most powerful work yet.

The New York Times

SORROWLAND is a highly atmospheric, addictive read.

The White Review