An unkindness of ghosts

An Unkindness of Ghosts is the first novel by the American writer Rivers Solomon, published in 2017 by Akashic Books. It is a generation-ship story about a society stratified by race, and it was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.

The ship, the HSS Matilda, has been carrying the last of humanity towards a promised land for generations. Its passengers are divided by skin colour: those on the lower decks live under harsh behavioural restrictions and work in service to the decks above, while the ship's rulers enforce a rigid moral code from the top. Aster Gray is a lower-decks healer, used to being called a freak and an ogre, and she keeps her own quarters, her own studies and her own suspicions. The Sovereign's death is what sets her moving through the ship, because the answers she wants are buried in the same archive as the story of her mother's suicide decades earlier.

Solomon gives each deck its own speech and its own customs, and the Matilda's hierarchy shapes every conversation Aster has. The book was shortlisted for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2018.