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PRODUCT
This Great Hemisphere: A Novel
Product Description:
Price:
$14.99
Detailed description:
“This Great Hemisphere is an inventive and immersive epic that follows its brave invisible protagonist as she navigates a futuristic new world that often mirrors our own. A thrilling page-turner.” —Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half
From the award-winning and bestselling author of Black Buck: A speculative novel about a young woman—invisible by birth and relegated to second-class citizenship—who sets off on a mission to find her older brother, whom she had presumed dead but who is now the primary suspect in a high-profile political murder.
Despite the odds, Sweetmint, a young invisible woman, has done everything right her entire life—school, university, and now a highly sought-after apprenticeship with the Northwestern Hemisphere’s premier inventor, a non-invisible man belonging to the Dominant Population who is as eccentric as he is enigmatic. But the world she has fought so hard to build after the disappearance of her older brother comes crashing down when authorities claim that not only is he well and alive, he’s also the main suspect in the murder of the Chief Executive of the Northwestern Hemisphere.
A manhunt ensues, and Sweetmint, armed with courage, intellect, and unwavering love for her brother, sets off on a mission to find him before it’s too late. With five days until the hemisphere’s big election, Sweetmint must dodge a relentless law officer who’s determined to maintain order and an ambitious politician with sights set on becoming the next Chief Executive by any means necessary.
With the captivating worldbuilding of N. K. Jemisin’s novels and blazing defiance of Naomi Alderman’s work, This Great Hemisphere is a novel that brilliantly illustrates the degree to which reality can be shaped by non-truths and vicious manipulations, while shining a light on our ability to surprise ourselves when we stop giving in to the narratives others have written for us.
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Product group:
Categories: Best Books of 2024 So Far
Product name:
This Great Hemisphere: A Novel
Price:
$14.99
pablo –
The story is okay as a science fiction story, but the echoes of allegory as a story of black people is a bit much. Come for the science fiction, ignore the (overdone) allegory.
Ashley Dobson –
I loved this read! The world building was great and I loved unraveling new pieces of it throughout the entirety of the book. This cast is full of complicated characters, which are my favorite kind. The story seems made for a movie and the writing is so good that you can see scenes leap off the page. I didn’t love the ending, but mostly because I wanted more! Highly recommend!
Austin Gregory –
With This Great Hemisphere, Mateo Askaripour takes advantage of fantasy’s ability to make the familiar strange in order to underscore the unmitigated horror of the United States’ colonial and racist history. The novel takes place in a world where a portion of the population–coded Black–is invisible, and in turn violently subjugated by the Dominant Population. As in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the details of this world are deeply unsettling in large part because of their veracity: Invisibles work menial jobs, receive an inferior education, and are subject to the kind of persistent, creative physical and sexual violence that would feel cartoonishly grotesque if not for the echoes of slavery. Sweetmint, the protagonist, is an Invisible young woman whose efforts to navigate this inequality are complicated by her brother’s implication in an political assassination. As she learns more about the history of the place she inhabits, she becomes increasingly radical in her thinking and actions. One strength of the novel is its depiction of resistance: both the individual resistance that keeps people sane amidst daily indignities and the collective resistance that offers hope for a better future. The world that Askaripour has created in This Great Hemisphere is as imaginatively wrought and vividly realized as a fantasy lover could ask for, and it continues to haunt me days after I finished the novel.
While I found the novel’s world-building incredibly compelling, I was less taken by the novel’s central mystery. Sweetmint is, understandably, desperate to find her brother before anyone else does, but her path toward learning the truth about his disappearance is uncomfortably dependent on good luck, especially in a world where any luck at all is almost impossible for Invisibles to access. The best mysteries earn their twists, but by the time I reached the big reveal at the end of the novel, I was already frustrated by the uneven emphasis on minor characters and the feeling that no one was quite behaving the way I expected them to. Be warned that This Great Hemisphere appears to be the first entry in a longer series; perhaps I would have been less thrown by the ending if I didn’t expect at least some closure. Still, the novel’s cutting ingenuity makes it worth reading, and I’m looking forward to the next entry!
kathleen g –
A challenging read that turns a sharp eye on classism, racism and haves versus have nots. Sweetmint is searching for her brother in 2529- and know that the world building takes place over the course of the novel. There are many characters who often, like Sweetmint, have more than one name, which I found confusing but I was committed to understanding her quest. And they offer their POVs. Despite the setting, it’s not especially sci-fi but it’s definitely dystopian. I admit to getting lost about half way through, putting this down, and then coming back to it because I was intrigued by the story. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. Won’t be for everyone but it’s a worthy read.