The town of Rosewater with the huge biodome at the center is an interesting construct in an area of the world often overlooked in science fiction. The setting marks the book out as something different from the outset. It is a startling an original piece of fiction. Everything revolves around Kaaro, but why? Why Read Rosewater by Tade Thompson?Įverything I heard about this book is true. He had a criminal past before being enlisted in the ASF, he also had an early brush with the alien lifeform at the center of Rosewater. Kaaro is unreliable in just about everything he does, including, we suspect, narrating his story. Kaaro is an operative for the ASF the secret service that operates around Rosewater. This makes Kaaro and people like him extraordinarily valuable for both law enforcement offices and crime syndicates. He can even manipulate their thought patterns, should he desire. Kaaro is a “sensitive.” He has an ability that enables him to read people’s minds. In the middle of this sits Kaaro who, we learn early on, has been involved with the dome since it very first arrived, before Rosewater ever sprang up. So, we have a peculiar township set up in the middle of Nigeria that functions almost entirely to service the dome and the people who flock to it for its miraculous healing. The US has gone dark almost nobody comes out and nobody goes in. London and Hyde Park were destroyed by a similar (the same) alien landing there. This healing is so efficient it even brings back the dead, albeit as zombie-like “reanimates.” The dead of Rosewater are buried well out of the city limits.įor a wider context, planet Earth is much different to how we might recognize it. Little is understood about the alien(s) except that periodically the biodome opens, and the people of Rosewater are healed of whatever ails them. The novel is set in the fictional township of Rosewater, which has sprung up around an alien manifestation in Nigeria. It’s set mainly in 2066, but it cuts back to 2055 and times in between. Rosewater is the first book in the Wormwood trilogy. I think I was worried Rosewater might be the same that the idea of reading Rosewater might be better than the reality of reading Rosewater. It can be a little too “out there” for me. I often have a fear with seminal, much talked about science fiction, that I won’t quite get it. I’ve had Rosewater by Tade Thompson sitting on my to-be-read pile for months, but such is the nature of to-be-read piles they tend to grow rather than diminish and so I never quite got to it. Sometimes you just need to get on and read whatever everybody is saying you should read.
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