Solenne Bonet is DoS—a Descendant of Slave—and has always known that her destiny would be in the service of men. At school, it is what she has been trained for, waiting for an algorithm to assign her to a white man, one of the thousands who sign up to be contract holders. She knows that there are girls who hope to be more than Maid or Mammy, who whisper about how they will get a white man to sign their freedom, how they will be sweet, but not sweet enough that he would be tempted to keep her for good. After her mother pulls strings to get Solenne an assignment as a Council archivist, Solenne attracts the attention of Bastien LeBlanc, a high-ranking white government official and rising star in the Order. He promises to make Solenne his wife, and more importantly, to grant her freedom.
Ambitious in its themes and were it a bigger book, more specific in its world-building, and were the parallel narratives treated with the same depth as the main story, the novel could have presented a much more powerful statement on the interminability of the Black woman’s struggle to assert her own personhood ... Gaps in the picture Rashad paints raised questions for me, speed bumps that interrupted the flow of the reading experience ... But perhaps these are the concerns of someone who has read too much speculative fiction ... When the novel explores these questions, it is at its most fascinating. And its most impressive.
Provocative ... Rashad is terrific at characterization — we feel deeply Solenne's confusion, pain and hope. As she ponders her mother's words and tries to take control of her own life, she springs to vivid life.
