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Tade Thompson

Rosewater (The Wormwood Trilogy, 1) Paperback – September 18, 2018

by Tade Thompson (Author)

585 ratings

Book 1 of 3: The Wormwood Trilogy

Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

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Rosewater is the start of an award-winning trilogy set in Nigeria, by one of science fiction's most engaging voices.

*Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, winner
*Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel, winner

Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry, and the helpless -- people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers.

Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care to again -- but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realization about a horrifying future.

Tade Thompson's innovative, genre-bending, Afrofuturist series, the Wormwood Trilogy, is perfect for fans of Jeff Vandermeer, N. K. Jemisin, and Ann Leckie.

Praise for Rosewater:

"Smart. Gripping. Fabulous!" —Ann Leckie, award winning-author of Ancillary Justice

"Mesmerising. There are echoes of Neuromancer and Arrival in here, but this astonishing debut is beholden to no one." —M. R. Carey, bestselling author of The Girl with All the Gifts

"A magnificent tour de force, skillfully written and full of original and disturbing ideas." —Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of Children of Time

The Wormwood Trilogy
Rosewater
Rosewater Insurrection
Rosewater Redemption

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Orbit
Publication date

September 18, 2018
Dimensions

5.5 x 1.25 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0316449059
ISBN-13

978-0316449052
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Mesmerising. There are echoes of Neuromancer and Arrival in here, but this astonishing debut is beholden to no one."―M. R. Carey

"Smart. Gripping. Fabulous!"―Ann Leckie

"Nothing short of brilliant.... A captivating, cerebral work of science fiction that may very well signal a new definitive voice in the genre."―Kirkus

"A magnificent tour de force, skillfully written and full of original and disturbing ideas."―Adrian Tchaikovsky

"Thompson's genius in displacing his tale of successive xenobiological attacks from the West onto the developing world is matched by his breathtakingly smart prose.... Deeply engrossing."―The Seattle Review of Books

"One of the most thoughtful and inventive alien contact tales of recent decades."―Locus

"A sharply satirical, ingenious thriller about an alien invasion that's disturbing familiar. Tade Thompson has built a fascinating world that will suck you in and keep you guessing. This book will eat you alive, and you'll like it."―Annalee Newitz

"Compellingly strange yet accessible... a character-driven, morally grey tale of hope and potential redemption."―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Intriguing Afrofuturistic tale [that] features an incredible mashup of alien contact and human-centered power, delivering a stark and gritty story that will keep readers engaged."―Library Journal

"Deeply imagined characters and vibrant, startling imagery... An author to watch."―B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

About the Author

Tade Thompson is the author of Rosewater, a John W. Campbell Award finalist and winner of the 2019 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2017 Nommo Award for African speculative fiction. Born in London to Yoruba parents, he lives and works on the south coast of England as an emergency room psychiatrist.

Product details

Publisher : Orbit; Reissue edition (September 18, 2018)
Language : English
Paperback : 432 pages
ISBN-10 : 0316449059
ISBN-13 : 978-0316449052
Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
Dimensions : 5.5 x 1.25 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #117,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #837 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #1,716 in First Contact Science Fiction (Books)
- #2,001 in Alien Invasion Science Fiction

Customer Reviews:
585 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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J. Campbell

Imaginitive

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2018

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I really wanted to like this book. It was creative, had interesting characters, and was thoroughly tedious for me to read. I gave it 3 stars because I know it was good, just not my kind of book. I cannot stand China Mieville either. Let me explain.
1. Too many cultural references that I had no clue about and we're not explained til much later if at all.
2. Too many thesaurus words when not needed. He was trying to invoke the feeling of poverty in the location, but used words that even I had to look up, and I read 3-5 books a week and have done so over 50 years.
3. Flash backs, flash middles, flash forwards
4. No continuous story telling. I love good descriptive story. This had none. You had to piece it together from all the flashes.
5. The character was neither likeable or hateable. He was your average Nigerian guy(I guess, not my culture) doing average things in anaverage way when stuff happened to him.
I get this is the new SciFi. People must like it, or it wouldn't sell. I like story telling. It can be scientific, Peter Hamilton is great. It can be about other cultures as long as you don't assume the reader knows that culture. I won't be reading this author again. I don't read China Mieville either. I am sure it is no great loss to either of them.

105 people found this helpful

Helpful

A. Trotter

Yowza.

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2018

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Well. Where do I start?

One, it's an amazingly well written book. Two, it does something *new* which I have not seen before, and I read a lot of sci fi.

The main character is pretty dang cool. He's a criminal, a coward, a badass, a non-hero, in all the most interesting places. The book moves forward and backwards in time through his life, and jumps around, but I didn't have much trouble keeping track of when I was.

I had to look up a few words, which was cool. I love learning new stuff in my fiction.

If you want something fresh, this is it.

51 people found this helpful

Helpful

A unique, bone-rattling, world-jarring, and essential modern Science Fiction novel

Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2018

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Science Fiction and Fantasy genres are teeming with writers and items these days. BUT... unique voices? Not very many. I am not busting or harping on quality. If you have been reading the genres as long as I have, you notice that they tend to dissolve into one another. Sometimes the memory of a read is fleeting soon after. It just happens when there are too many overlapping themes, views, or voices.

Rosewater destroys those notions. It is memorable. Unique. Terrifying. Complex.

It will rattle complacent readers with time jumps, an international tone, and a weary narrator. It will push you immediately out of some comfort zones. Rosewater is not your typical read, nor your standard North American centric view of the world.

It is a much-needed divergency on the classic trope of alien contact. A deep thought-provoking spin on the effect on society, and society's impact on the visitors.

Now add sharp dialogue, powerful imagination, and a narrator who isn't exactly the most reliable or noble, and you have a grand work that is a much-needed breath of fresh air full of fungi and Xenomorphs. You might need some pack some Clotrimazole.

So get reading.

31 people found this helpful

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Amy

Rosewater

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2019

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Rosewater is a city in a near-future Nigeria that formed around a mysterious alien biodome that appeared eleven years ago. Every year, the dome opens and releases healing to those gathered around the dome. This is known as The Opening, and it attracts people from all over, especially those with medical issues.

Kaaro is a sensitive whose ability has brought him into the notice of a government agency, S45. He has lived in Rosewater from the beginning and has even been inside the biodome, an occurrence he has no intention of repeating. But when other sensitives like Kaaro begin dying, he’ll have to go against his superiors in order to figure out what’s really happening.

Tade Thompson’s Rosewater presents such a strange and fascinating future. But it’s the fact that it’s not so different from our present that makes certain aspects truly eerie.

Rosewater follows a “then” and “now” narrative showing the beginnings of Rosewater and then the current state of sensitives dying respectively. The story drives almost towards an intersection of these timelines as we get closer to learning about the possible motivations for the lifeform landing on Earth.

Kaaro is an interesting choice as our main character. He doesn’t fill what one would think of as the classic hero role. He even on occasion says essentially that same sentiment. His working for the government has been a role more forced upon him than a mutually agreed upon job. He’ll buck authority, yet also fulfill the tasks given to him, he just likes to do it in his own way, in his own time.

The world in Rosewater was particularly intriguing. It’s a rather contained story with everything taking place within Nigeria. But every time another place in the world was mentioned in passing it would always draw my attention. Like the fact that America has apparently cut off all communication with anyone outside the continent. I’m so interested to find out what is going on in the rest of the world, and how it’s all connected to the alien lifeform currently in Rosewater and the event of its “landing.” Tade Thompson doesn’t give readers much in the way of answers to these musings, and with the title of the second book being The Rosewater Insurrection I can’t imagine that we’ll move out of our current location.

There are a lot of interesting secondary characters that Kaaro encounters. The ending of Rosewater left me feeling that it equally tied up Kaaro’s conflicts yet left the overarching conflicts open. I’d love to see another character take up the mantle and see the world from their perspective. If anything is for certain, Rosewater is full of the unexpected.

22 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

CDG

Imaginative dystopia but the violence and a misogynyistic protagonist made this hard to read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2019

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When a novel has won many plaudits and even awards, I sometimes feel that it is more difficult to review than with something I have read with no preconceptions. There is almost a pressure to not go against the flow and disagreeing with more “eminent” voices by writing something that is not a completely glowing review can seem a bit presumptuous. However I feel it important to give my own honest opinion.
ROSEWATER was originally published in the USA by a small press and has now been re-issued by Orbit, with a further two novels in the trilogy planned. It was a finalist for the John W Campbell Memorial Award and won the inaugural Nommo Award (for African writers) for Best Speculative Fiction Novel.
A few alien “meteors” have landed on Earth, London is destroyed and the USA has gone silent with no-one aware of its fate. In Nigeria, an alien “biodome” has appeared and over about twenty years, the town of Rosewater has grown up around it. Mostly the dome appears inactive with few noticeable effects here of the “invasion”. One effect is the release of microscopic fungal spores into the air to create a “xenosphere”. A few people are able to use this and can mind-read, psychically find things/people and communicate telepathically with each other. Once a year the alien biodome also opens and anyone nearby will be healed, although this is not perfect leading to badly mis-shapen, insane, violent or even “empty” re-animated bodies, which the local police force then has to brutally destroy. The story is told by Kaaro, a very gifted sensitive. Initially using his new abilities to enhance his career as a thief and petty criminal he is later conscripted by a secret government agency to find people and objects and to telepathically interrogate “terrorists”. Over the space of the novel he gradually comes to realise that sensitives like him are dying off and out of self-interest starts to investigate the origins of his gift and the disease that is threatening him.
The writer clearly has talent and the novel is ambitious and I can to an extent see why other people are so enamoured of this book. The worldbuilding is very detailed and presents a very believable, if not particularly pleasant society. The alien invasion story also works on two levels and is clearly also a metaphor about the effects of colonialism, much as the 1956 film THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, played upon fears of communist invasion and takeover. Some reviewers have commented that the slow, microscopic invasion and alteration of humans is also a new departure but I disagree. For example, John Carpenter’s THE THING and the 2005 TV series, Threshold have also used the concept to a degree. The narrative structure is also quite challenging. Everything is told from Kaaro’s point of view, but subsequent chapters jump back and forth across about twenty years, in no particular order and the reader has to work hard to piece together the exact chronology of events and their significance and at times I found this very confusing. Also, Kaaro himself is not written to be a pleasant character. He is violent, misogynistic, narcissistic and extremely self-centred. In particular I found his treatment of women hard to read. Although the character is consistent with the society he has sprung from, as he is the narrator this means there is little or no relief for the reader and I found this book a very depressing read with many disturbing elements such as “necklacing” of people etc. In essence, this book is a kind of “grimdark” SF (ie dystopian, violent and with characters who possess few redeeming qualities). Fans of that kind of SF/Fantasy may well enjoy this book but it was one I really struggled with despite the obvious abilities of the author

68 people found this helpful

HiuGregg

I’ve never read anything quite like Rosewater.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 20, 2018

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This is a unique book in many different ways. It’s an almost-fantastical science fiction set in a future Nigeria that features telepaths, reanimated corpses, aliens, and secret government agencies. The story has a non-linear structure, meaning that there is a central storyline set in the present (the year 2066) with snippets from the past sprinkled throughout to provide context.

Our main character is Kaaro, a sensitive that works for a government agency. Sensitives are able to enter the “xenosphere”, which is a mysterious alternate space where sensitives can meet each other, manipulate their appearance, and interact with our own reality in the form of reading other peoples’ thoughts (among other things).

Kaaro is an interesting, flawed character. He isn’t exactly the nicest person in the world, and he has used his gifts in the past for personal gain—despite knowing that it was to the detriment of others. He is reserved, perhaps a little bit judgmental, and has a remarkable ability to take almost anything in his stride. I didn’t exactly like him, but I was intrigued by him. Tade Thompson does an excellent job of making Kaaro’s past—and the world itself—seem fascinating.

Rosewater is a masterclass in worldbuilding. It can be tremendously difficult for authors to communicate the specifics of a high-concept world in an interesting way, and so quite a few authors will resort to long, often-tedious paragraphs of exposition. Thompson neatly sidesteps this issue by raising questions for the readers to ask… and then denying them the answers unless they read on. The desired information is then drip-fed through various flashback chapters which explore Kaaro’s enigmatic past, and complement the story unfolding in the present.

This is a novel which drives you forward with questions. Why are the sensitives dying off? What is the biodome? What is inside the biodome? What did Kaaro see inside the biodome, and why does it matter now?

This is a very well constructed story, with plot, character, and setting interlinked in the most delightful way. It’s not hard to see why this novel won the first ever Nommo Best Novel award.

Rosewater is a brilliant read. It offers an honest and slightly cynical view of how our world would be should things take a turn to the fantastical. I’ve never read a sci-fi book like this, and I doubt I will again.

Well… at least not until the sequel.

18 people found this helpful

P. G. Harris

Colonialism in the quantum multiverse

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 5, 2018

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Nigeria, the second half the 21st century. A shanty town has built up around a massive alien artefact. Periodically the artifact opens, releasing spores which cure the pilgrims who gather around it. The cures go beyond what is desirable, bringing the dead physically back to life,giving the story a zombie sub plot. Kaaro has been differently affected. He is one of a small number of people whom the spores have networked, giving them seemingly psychic powers.

Kaaro is a flawed hero. As his powers developed in adolescence he used them for personal gain and gratification, living a life of petty crime and meaningless sex. As the spectacularly non-linear story develops, the jigsaw of Kaaro's life and the history of the alien artifact comes together, piece by non sequential piece. The Kaaro of the present day (2066) has two lives, one as a bank worker, protecting his employer from psychic hacks, the other as a reluctant agent of the state, using his powers to interrogate criminals and enemies of the government.

When Kaaro forms a relationship with a new girlfriend at a party, it leads him to final unravel the puzzle he has inadvertently been working on for his entire adult life of where his powers come from, what the aliens' true intentions are, why "sensitives" like him are dying, and what happened when similar alien presences appeared in the UK and US.

This is one of the most pleasingly adult pieces of SF I've read for a while, peopled by real, flawed human beings whose motives are confused, devious and frequently contradictory. The reaction, for example, of politicians and their human tools to the presence of an alien creation of unknown purpose is credibly sub-optimal, owing more to personal advancement than to confronting the true implications.

Rosewater contains a strong allegorical theme about the effects of colonialism. Indeed the author refers to this overtly on a number of occasions with his characters suggesting that the alien is less of a culture shock to Nigeria than to the UK, as the former has a more recent history of invasion.

While the non-linear narrative works for most of the book, towards the end it does tend to splinter towards the realms of incomprehensibility as an element of quantum confusion comes into the story as it makes use of the multi-universe school.

All in all, intelligent, original, and well worth a read.

5 people found this helpful

J. Heritage

Really different, really enjoyable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 1, 2019

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It's so refreshing to read science fiction set somewhere other than the USA and Europe. Africa! Nigeria! Yay!

Even more intriguing to find out that when the book starts America has "gone dark" and all of London inside the M25 is cut off. And yet life goes on!

There are so many rich and curious threads in this novel I'm not going to pick any out for specific mention - plenty of other reviewers have done a précis. I didn't find it overly violent, and although plenty of people have misogynistic attitudes I don't think the writer has - his women are strong and smart. Their physical attributes are described in a way that men's aren't, but that's a horny male narrator for you.

I'm looking forward to the next one and have just bought it. Say more.

2 people found this helpful

Mrs H

interesting concepts but gets very confusing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 10, 2019

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I read this for my book group ( someone else's choice) and I really liked the concepts - especially the idea of aliens taking over by slowly replacing bits of humans with technology, although the technology is already being used so its not really a new idea, but it was interesting. Such a lot of the "world" seemed to be just the same as it is now though, and the author used so many literary techniques it became confusing at times - its written in the first person, and set in Nigeria with little or no background given to any of the characters when you meet them, the chronology jumps back and forwards between "now" - 2066, and "then" 2055, and the author occasionally uses a dialogue style where its difficult to know who is speaking. I suspect a different editing style would have made it more accessible.

2 people found this helpful

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