Lost Ark Dreaming

"The key is never to forget. Memory must be kept alive. It helps us understand our past, situate ourselves in the present, and position ourselves for the future."

This new novel by Suyi Davies Okungbowa was on my list to read even before we read David Mogo for hashtag SFFBookClub two months ago. Perhaps understandably, post-apocalyptic climate disaster fiction seems to strike a real chord these days. Compared to his debut novel, I enjoyed this more recent novella quite a bit more.

This story takes place set in a set of skyscrapers off the coast of what used to be Lagos, after the Atlantic Ocean has risen. Its three point of view characters come from different levels of this stratified society and quite literally cross class boundaries to investigate a disturbance that turns out to have much larger implications for their whole society.

If I had any complaints about this book is that its novella length doesn't give a lot of room for any of the characters or the world to truly stretch their legs. The story even fades to black right after the climax--although there's a satisfying echo of the opening dream, it leaves plenty of unanswered questions about the world and the future.

That said, I love the interstitial poetry and redacted historical reports between chapters that add such color to this world. They carried metaphorical heft in terms of layers of ark mythology, exploitative capitalism both historical and contemporary, and the power of memory and stories.