Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson

I really enjoyed this book. Nalo Hopkinson is a phenomenal writer. I had previously read her Brown Girl in the Ring, a dystopian urban fantasy, last fall and also very much enjoyed that.

Tan-Tan is a little girl growing up on a colony world called Toussaint. Technology is bountiful and productive, with most tasks handled by AI-controlled robots. This leaves the people of Toussaint free to engage in other activities. Tan-Tan's father, Antonio, and mother, Ione, like to fight and then sleep with other people, which results in Antonio challenging one of Ione's lovers to a ceremonial duel. It's intended to be a bloodless affair but Antonio cheats by coating his blade with a poison. He knows that he will be sentenced to exile for the crime but resolves to go on his own terms, and take Tan-Tan with him. They travel via dimensional rift to New Halfway Tree, the prison planet, where there is no technology. Free of the ever-present eye of Granny Nanny, Antonio begins to show his true colors with disastrous results for Tan-Tan.

A lot of this book revolves around privacy. How much AI-governance is helpful, how much is creepy? Should people be left to their own devices if it gives them the opportunity to hurt others? Or should they be constantly monitored for their own good? The book presents these questions obliquely, leaving the reader to form their own answers.

It's also very focused on storytelling. Not just in telling the story of Tan-Tan, but the ways in which legends and myths shape our history as humans. Reading it feels very much like sitting around a campfire being told a nested series of stories that build off of and weave between each other. I'm totally jealous of Hopkinson's ability to do this. It's also written completely in a mix of Trinidadian and Jamaican patois. Personally, I think it added to the oral history atmosphere but some people might find it jarring.

As a warning, this book deals with some very dark events like rape and child abuse. I don't want to spoil the story, but I do want to give a head's up.

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