Tade Thompson’s Rosewater was the science fiction debut of last year, and its sequel, the second part of his Wormwood trilogy, continues the good work ... As before, Thompson adopts a multiple-viewpoint narration that hops back and forth in time. This disorientating, kaleidoscopic approach pays dividends as the plot strands come together in a coruscating, propulsive tale of colonisation.
The series speeds up from noir Rosewater’s unraveling admission of an invasion plan into political thrillers of invasion action and resistance ... unlike Rosewater, the middle and final novels are narrated through the rotating perspectives of several engaging characters, with familiar figures like the xenospherically sensitive human Kaaro, his secret agent girlfriend Aminat, and time-traveler Oyin Da joining new actors like mayor Jacques, his assistant Lora, and Alyssa, the first Homian alien uploaded to a human body. The rotating narration increases the speed of delivery, with readers jumping to and through different selves ... The concluding books of the Wormwood Trilogy answered most of my questions from Rosewater — I hope fellow readers also delight in getting to briefly experience Molara and Wormwood’s personal takes on the action. Fans of Kaaro and Aminat will be excited to rejoin them as the final books push the breaking point of romantic, community, and self affiliations ... Insurrection and Redemption wild reads. They wrap up threads and suggest new ones. They land a bit close to home ... The Wormwood plant is enticing and bitter. It stays with you. The Wormwood Trilogy is aptly named. Parts of the series keep rising to the tip of my tongue, even now, long after I’ve consumed it. I think I’ve developed a craving to taste it again in its full complexity.
The many narrative threads in this fast-paced future-noir novel will best be understood by readers of Rosewater (2018), but Thompson ably sheds light on the alien agenda while keeping individual personal struggles front and center.
... the pace is faster, the stakes far more immediate, and the characters as vivid as ever. I’d speculated in my review of Rosewater that Thompson might be setting the stage for a radically posthuman world, and he still might be, even though some important new ideas emerge toward the end of The Rosewater Insurrection that might change things entirely. Either way, the final volume of the Wormwood trilogy will be something worth waiting for ... as the plot develops, as the action heats up, Thompson’s decision to broaden the novel’s perspective comes into its own ... The highlight of The Rosewater Insurrection is a single chapter, the longest in the book, told from the perspective of Walter Tanmola, a writer, living off the fame of his previous work, who has been asked by Jack Jacques to document the insurrection. Walter’s wry sense of humour, his suspicion of those in authority, his visceral descriptions of the siege, and his unconventional relationship with Jacques’s assistant provide a sense of intimate tragedy that might have been lost if all Thompson had focussed on were the shambling zombies, alien weeds, exploding robots, and furious gun-battles. By the end of the chapter, I found myself close to tears, the human cost of insurrection laid bare. Thompson’s willingness to push himself as a writer, to not just rely on his strengths – the zippy dialogue, the sharp story-telling – is the reason I will continue to follow his career, why I will read whatever he writes.
When it comes to big ideas, weird science, futurism and the vastness and multitude of the alien stuff crammed into Rosewater—the city and the books—Thompson excels: he builds a world full of dizzying, terrifying marvels and the compelling necessities of the quotidian. Rosewater is a fantastically interesting city, and Wormwood, a fascinating device with which to interrogate humanity and human nature: this is a novel engaged in conversation with the classic science fiction topoi both of alien contact and of the colonisation of worlds by technologically superior visitors. With setting, with politics, with the grand scale and its interaction with smaller individuals—there, Thompson’s at his best ... It’s not his fault that I find The Rosewater Insurrection’s characters to fall on a spectrum between the unlikable and the insufferable. It may be that my lack of concentration is at fault, or it may be that Thompson and I value different things in storytelling ... sharp and full of hard edges. It is fast and tense and fascinating, and I really want to like it. But I don’t. I admire its craft and its sheer panache, its explosive approach to worldbuilding and its willingness to fuck shit up, but I don’t enjoy it ... That’s about me, not about the novel, though. If this is the kind of science fiction thriller you like, then The Rosewater Insurrection is a good book for you.
As with the first entry in this series, Thompson lays out the narrative in a non-linear fashion through multiple perspectives, resulting in a story that feels alternately epic and almost claustrophobically intimate. The slow pacing and numerous moving parts make this ambitious tale somewhat dense and difficult at first, but the exciting second half and intriguing ending set the stage for what promises to be a fascinating conclusion.
