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The main reason I use ŷ������ is the beauty of finding new great books because of the book friends that I made here. This is exactly how I came across Rosewater which somehow never even registered on my book radar. So thanks, friends - carol and Samuel! This was quite good.

“I am not curious. I want to leave. This thing I do is not beautiful. It is filth.��

Set in the near future (2043-2066) in Nigeria, it shows us a world not much different from the one of our present, with the rough hard edges and unpleasantness and criminality and money worship and poverty and intolerances and prejudices - but with one very important difference: the aliens, of the space kind. Back in 2012, a giant alien lifeform, colloquially known as “Wormwood�� landed in London and is now moving through Earth’s crust, not even the first of its kind, and strange things have happened, and America has “gone dark��, and in Nigeria a giant alien biodome has eventually popped up in 2055, occasionally radiating apparently healing rays (also capable of raising zombified dead at times and cause grotesque transformations in some), and an entire city has sprouted around the dome - the eponymous Rosewater (named so sarcastically, because the open sewage in its early days smelled anything but).

“We have more experience than any Western country in dealing with first contact. What do you think we experienced when your people carved up Africa at the Berlin Conference? You arrived with a different intelligence, a different civilisation, and you raped us. But we’re still here.��

The story is unfolding in three separate timelines, told in blunt, non-nonsense voice of Kaaro, a former thief and now a press-ganged agent of a secret arm of the government secret police because of his valuable and rare gift:

“This is my job. My real job. I read minds for the government.��

Kaaro and few other like him can connect to the xenosphere - a psychic link to what appears to be the world’s stored consciousness, and this gift is a direct consequence of the aliens and their “soft�� invasion. Somehow certain people - the “sensitives�� - can form links with the alien fungus-like organisms (“x��ԴǴڴǰ�������) that make up the xenosphere. And apparently the sensitives are dying - or maybe being killed off. Bad news for Kaaro.

“What we call the xenosphere is larger than we think. What we use is the tiny periphery that connects us and the people in our immediate environment. You’ve heard of how photosynthesis involves quantum physics? This lattice of xenoforms connects throughout Earth’s atmosphere, but not just at the present time. It is in the past and the future, and in alternate versions of our planet. It is an easy place to get lost in.��

I have to say - I loved Kaaro and his narration. Cynical and blunt, no-nonsense, no-frills voice coming from a person who is clearly not a hero, but not an archetypical antihero either. Kaaro has no illusions about the world; he’s middle-aged and has been around the metaphorical block a few times. He’s focused on pragmatical and practical survival and egoism over idealism, and suffers from apathy from which he gets shaken up despite his wishes. He does his best to remain as detached as possible, with self-interest, self-preservation and personal gain being the driving force behind many of his decisions and actions. He is lonely, although often by choice, and bitter and probably could use a few therapy sessions. He can be crass and at times a bit sexist and rude and indifferent - but also at other times compassionate and brave and, although he’d deny it - pragmatically idealistic (although not for long). He’s a bit of a diamond in the rough - quite a bit of rough. Yeah, he’s kind of an asshole - but a compelling one.

As his dossier states:

“When suitably motivated, Kaaro can be a valuable asset. That said, he is sexist, materialistic, greedy, insolent and amoral. When he was young, he stole regularly even though his parents were not struggling financially. He is not violent and does not tolerate the threat of violence well. To recruit him we used a combination of these factors, offering his freelance rate of pay as well as exposing him to extreme violence done to others.��

The alternating timelines are structured to provide just enough revelations about this world to keep me glued to the page and my imagination rolling. It’s really the journey of discovering the world, building the coherent picture out of puzzle pieces and context and time jumps - and the worldbuilding is nicely paced. Rosewater and the other corners of this world that we see are vivid in my mind, and the character of the place is well-captured - rough, hard-edged, cruel, brutal, and often unforgiving, and not as far removed from our present as one would hope. The worldbuilding is creative yet firmly grounded, and therefore quite enjoyable. There’s no shortage of profanity and unpleasantness and bodily acts and fluids - but it never ventures from gritty to prurient, and for that I’m thankful. And the great thing about the time jumps is that we get to see the changes in Kaaro’s outlook and personality after time and the world have their way with him - the changes that are very interesting when placed side by side. Despite his best efforts, he’s certainly not static, and I enjoyed seeing the glimpses of growth, both positive and negative.

“This is a psychofield, a thoughtspace, essentially unstable. While most people conceptualise thinking as this straightforward linear thing, I see ideas spreading out into alternatives before one is selected. In this place every notion can potentially become reality.��

The premise of the story, the constant connection through the xenosphere, raises interesting questions in our increasingly more and more connected - at least on a superficial level - world. The unavoidability of alien-propagated connections opposed to the deliberate disconnection of parts of the world, and the ability of the government through those like Kaaro to literally look inside your mind - it’s all can lead to quite a wealth of ponderings and parallels to the current world, of course.

And of course, the culmination of the events by the end of this book sets interesting stakes for the rest of the trilogy, and I am quite curious to see where it all goes. Although it can still be read as an open-ended standalone, I suppose, as Kaaro’s questions do get somewhat answered, although those answers do lead to more questions.

“The idea of a singular hero and a manifest destiny just makes us all lazy. There is no destiny. There is choice, there is action, and any other narrative perpetuates a myth that someone else out there will fix our problems with a magic sword and a blessing from the gods.��

It’s clever, complex and entertaining, and was a welcome change from a few lackluster books I’ve read recently.

Solid 4+ stars.