First off, if I was rating this for myself, I'd probably give it four stars - I love political science fiction, and people (especially women!) questioning cultural traditions - but I'm also grading it for my own reference to refer back to when choosing books to recommend to students. And while it's exciting, it's a hard sell for middle schoolers.

I think the only reason this is categorized as YA is because the protagonist is a teenager; if nothing else were changed (except maybe exploring the effects of a tri-level segregation, but honestly there's the sequel to do that) and Ang was aged up, this would be a full-on pulpy adult science fiction novel. Which is not to say it's bad! That's my favorite genre! But it's a hard sell to younger kids, when a lot of the appeal is someone working withing the limits that society has tried to confine her to and a lot of my kids simply don't have that experience (and this the interest). When the whole plot hinges on that (the fact that Berrit is Lani, the fact that Ang is darker and doesn't have all the access she needs, the fact that the theft of the Beacon was a cover for the secret land deals) and you try to remove it to sell it to someone, you're selling the novel short.

Otherwise, there's a lot of action and some fun turns in the drama. I found myself making connections before Ang and getting frustrated that she wasn't (yes, of course that old dead black man you found is the same old black man Mnenga was looking for! Yes of course this is connected to the government!), the mystery was solid and I wasn't able to put it all together myself. ( )

I liked this quite a bit, fascinating world building and a really relatable and likeable main character. It reminded me just a little of a more grown up [b: A Pocket Full of Murder|24885734|A Pocket Full of Murder (Uncommon Magic, #1)|R.J. Anderson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1441586898s/24885734.jpg|41394634]. ( )

Interesting book and an original setting. I had trouble engaging with it, but it wasn't the book's fault - I was too distracted to give the fairly complicated mystery the attention it deserved. ( )

RGG: Good world building, excellent main character development, mystery fell a bit flat. Thumbs up for fantasy dealing with race, colonialism, indigenous people. Reading Interest: 13-YA.

Pros: brilliant world-building, fascinating protagonist, complex mystery

Cons:

Anglet Sutonga is a steeplejack. When she was younger she cleaned chimneys. At 17 she’s too big for that, so now she works the factory stacks. After a series of events, including the theft of a city landmark, she’s hired to investigate a series of crimes that the police are ignoring. Meanwhile race relations in the city of Bar-Selehm are breaking down between the white upper class, the black Mahweni (those assimilated to city life as well as the tribesmen living traditional lifestyles outside of it) and the brown Lani, brought to the city by the whites as indentured servants and still not much better off, making her job urgent. And as tensions rise in the city, war between their northwest neighbours, the Grappoli, seems increasingly likely.

Bar-Selehm is a unique setting based on 19th Century South Africa but with fantasy overtones. The book is very contained to the city and its immediate surroundings, only mentioning Grappoli but not the wider politics of the outside world. Which keeps the book focused on the city and its problems. I loved that Anglet was able to mix with people of different races in different ways - depending on their social status, and how status and race were shown to be holdovers from the past, despite the current ideology that everyone is equal. There’s a great quote later in the book which sums up a lot of modern racism - and blindness towards it:

“We say we are all equal in Bar-Selehm, but you know as well as I do that that is not even close to being true. You cannot simply take people’s land, property, freedom from them and then, a couple of hundred years later, when you have built up your industries and your schools and your armies, pronounce them equals. And even when you pretend it is true, you do not change the hearts of men, and a great deal of small horrors have to be ignored, hidden, if the myth of equality is to be sustained.”

When going to the Drowning, where most of the Lani live, Anglet encounters hippos, monkeys, an ibex, and other creatures. She also mentions a few things that are made up, like weancats, which make the world feel both real and other at the same time. Similarly, the mineral that Bar-Selehm was built up on, luxorite, is made up, but the trade concerns, her brother-in-law’s stubborn effort to pan more, and how society interacts with the mineral is explored in some depth.

The author brings in just enough minor details of taste, smell, sight, and touch to make the world feel 100% genuine without bogging down the narrative at all.

I loved Anglet as a character. She’s necessarily tough and has to make a series of difficult decisions that change her life. I loved that her choices had consequences, and that as the book went on she often questioned the decisions she’d made. In several situations there was no good outcome, just the best she could do for now.

I liked that she encountered a wide variety of people during her investigation. The paper girl was probably my favourite, but Anglet meets people from several levels of society and cleverly finds ways to interact with them.

The murder mystery was tightly twisted so that while I figured out two of the twists at the end, several others were complete revelations. Looking back on the book as a whole the clues were there, but you take such a roundabout way to the end that it’s hard figuring out everything that’s going on. I found the ending quite a shock and really felt for Anglet.

It’s the first in a trilogy, but can easily be read as a standalone as the mystery is entirely wrapped up at the end. This a great novel with all the things people in SFF circles have been asking for. I can’t believe it’s not being more widely read and talked about. ( )