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3.5 

The Salt Roads

By Nalo Hopkinson
The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

From the SFWA Grand Master, a“sexy, disturbing, touching, wildly comic . . . tour de force” that blends fantasy, women’s history, and slavery (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
 
In 1804, shortly before the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue is renamed Haiti, a group of women gather to bury a stillborn baby. Led by a lesbian healer and midwife named Mer, the women’s lamentations inadvertently release the dead infant’s “unused vitality” to draw Ezili—the Afro-Caribbean goddess of sexual desire and love—into the physical world.
 
As Ezili explores her newfound powers, she travels across time and space to inhabit the midwife’s body, as well as those of Jeanne—a mixed-race dancer and the mistress of Charles Baudelaire living in 1880s Paris—and Meritet, an enslaved Greek-Nubian prostitute in ancient Alexandria.
 
Bound together by Ezili and “the salt road” of their sweat, blood, and tears, the three women struggle against a hostile world, unaware of the goddess’s presence in their lives. Despite her magic, Mer suffers as a slave on a sugar plantation until Ezili plants the seeds of uprising in her mind. Jeanne slowly succumbs to the ravages of age and syphilis when her lover is unable to escape his mother’s control. And Meritet, inspired by Ezili, flees her enslavement and makes a pilgrimage to Egypt, where she becomes known as Saint Mary.
 
With unapologetically sensual prose, Nalo Hopkinson, the Nebula Award–winning author of Midnight Robber, explores slavery through the lives of three historical women touched by a goddess in this “electrifying bravura performance by one of our most important writers” (Junot Díaz).

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81 Reviews

3.5
“3.5 stars. This book tells the story of three completely separate lives, connected through the goddess Ezili/ Lasiren. She embodies one or several women in 3 different contexts - ancient Alexandria, slave-era Haiti (Saint Domingue during the French colonial era) and 1800s Paris. In all three stories we have characters who have existed in real life, probably the most famous being Charles Baudelaire, but the book is a complete work of fiction with historical/ mythical elements peppered throughout. What it lacked for me was cohesion and depth? I can't really say depth in how it was written, but regarding the depth to which each story went - I could see this turned into a trilogy of the goddess, with each book focusing on one storyline. Each story in itself was beautifully written, but the connection between them was weak. Probably the part of Jeanne and Charles took up most of the book and it was a shame - to me, it was the least interesting thread and I would've really wanted more "screen time" for the characters in the other two threads. The elements are a bit blurred and at times it's hard to follow the thread of events. I loved reading about Thais and her story, but the correlation with the saint felt, again, a bit forced - those passages from real-life catholic texts are supposed to add context to what's happening, but they feel a bit out of place. I now want to read more about the Haitian revolution and Haiti's history. So this is a win for me.”

About Nalo Hopkinson

<DIV><B>Nalo Hopkinson</B> was born in Jamaica and has lived in Guyana, Trinidad, and Canada. The daughter of a poet/playwright and a library technician, she has won numerous awards including the John W. Campbell Award, the World Fantasy Award, and Canada's Sunburst Award for literature of the fantastic. Her award-winning short fiction collection <I>Skin Folk</I> was selected for the 2002 <I>New York Times</I> Summer Reading List and was one of the <I>New York Times</I> Best Books of the Year. Hopkinson is also the author of <I>The New Moon's Arms, The Salt Roads, Midnight Robber,</I> and <I>Brown Girl in the Ring</I>. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, and splits her time between California, USA, and Toronto, Canada.</DIV>

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