Historical sf/f. Steampunk. In the late 19th century, idealistic (but somewhat misguided) socialists from Europe and formerly enslaved people from North America purchase territory in what is now the Congo from the brutal colonial regime of Belgium’s King Leopold II, and join forces with those already living there (some of whom have mysterious access to advanced technology) to resist the colonizer. They defeat Belgian colonialism and the story carries through to the end of the First World War. Clever premise and world building, but overall the storytelling didn’t work that well for me. Multiple perspectives and many mostly-short chapters, usually with months or even years between each. Which I think in principle is an interesting solution to the problem of capturing world-historic events spanning decades in a single novel, and exploring differently situated perspectives and voices as you do it. But it just didn’t quite work in its implementation, at least for me – I respected the effort, and thought it was quite smart, but it didn’t engage me and I didn’t particularly enjoy the reading of it.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.