This book started a bit slow for me, not because I wasn’t interested, but because figuring everything out while adjusting to the Creole dialect it was written in was challenging. This is not a bad thing! I do think maybe I should have tried the audiobook, it sounds like it would have been beautiful.

The events of the book also were very challenging and exceptionally dark. I felt that the symbolism, the layered folklore of Tan Tan the Robber Queen, and the world-building were so engrossing, that while it was not fast-moving, I was really hooked. I think this book reminds us that even the descendants of those who have survived a terrible thing can turn around and do that same thing to someone perceived to be more vulnerable and “lesser” than they are. Sadly we see many real-world parallels of this, too.

This book also reminds us of the weight of trauma and abuse. It changes our brains, our relationships with others and with the world, and it forces folks to develop coping strategies that may not be the most adaptive, but they serve their purpose.

This book is dark, but it is not without its glimmers of light. Family that is found proves to be more healing and supportive than are blood relations, and, given a hero to look up to, a person can find strength and even become their own hero, a legend in their own right.