Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Root
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 12/10/1988
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/06/08/the-big-idea-naamen-gobert-tilahun/ * http://qwillery.blogspot.com/2016/06/interview-with-naamen-gobert-tilahun.html * http://www.thebigclickmag.com/authors/naamen-gobert-tilahun/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born December 10, 1988.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and podcaster. Cocreator and cohost of The Adventures of Yellow Peril + Magical Negro podcast.
WRITINGS
Contributor of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to journals and Web sites, including io9, Big Click, Full of Crows, Stone Telling, Faggot Dinosaur, Angry Black Woman, and So Speak Up.
SIDELIGHTS
Na’amen Gobert Tilahun is a freelance writer. He is the cocreator and cohost of The Adventures of Yellow Peril + Magical Negro, a podcast. Tilahun has published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in a number of journals and Web sites, including io9, the Big Click, Full of Crows, Stone Telling, Faggot Dinosaur, the Angry Black Woman, and So Speak Up.
Tilahun published his first book, The Root: A Novel of the Wrath & Athenaeum, in 2016. Former child actor Erik struggles to live life as a normal teenager in San Francisco after leaving his boyfriend and his acting career behind. After an unexpected encounter with a supernatural being, Erik learns that there is nothing normal about him at all. In fact, he discovers that he is a descendant of gods. Embracing his birthright, Erik transforms into a soldier for the greater cause of the gods. Meanwhile, angel apprentice Lil, a young black woman, tries to find her place in the world.
Writing in the Whatever Web site, Tilahun talked about the creation of his two protagonists and the difficulties he faced in developing them. Tilahun realized that both Erik and Lil “would have hard journeys because they were trying to save two worlds and that’s no easy task. However, Lil’s story had to be even more nuanced than Erik’s because of my lack of personal experience with that identity. I wanted to show the way she’s dismissed as so many women of color are, her intentions misconstrued, her protestations ignored. I wanted to show Lil’s strength, not some mythical black woman strength that meant she didn’t get hurt or could take more punishment because of her black womanhood, but the strength in knowing what she was doing was right.”
Reviewing the debut novel, Booklist contributor Carolyn Ciesla declared that “explosive action sequences and amusing dialogue will keep the reader turning pages.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer opined that “Tilahun’s strengths lie in writing family dynamics.” A contributor to the Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together Web site exclaimed: “It is amazing to me to find a book with such a diverse cast, where queer characters outnumber straight ones, where characters of color outnumber white ones. I love all the ways the characters connect.” The contributor concluded: “In the end, I think the novel succeeds magnificently at setting the ground rules for the setting and revealing an amazing cast of characters and just enough of the world to make for a compelling and deep experience. While there are a few things that are left to be ironed out in later books, this first taste has left me ravenous for more and I very much look forward to seeing where the series leads.” Writing in Starburst Magazine, Kieran Fisher reasoned, “With this novel, Tilahun has laid the foundations for a very promising trilogy. The world building is mightily impressive, but more importantly, its world is inhabited by characters you’ll want to embark on future journeys with. All in all, it’s highly recommended.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2016, Carolyn Ciesla, review of The Root: A Novel of the Wrath & Athenaeum, p. 70.
Publishers Weekly, June 1, 2016, review of The Root.
ONLINE
Big Click, http://www.thebigclickmag.com/ (February 21, 2017), author profile.
Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, http://www.nerds-feather.com/ (August 19, 2016), review of The Root.
Qwillery, http://qwillery.blogspot.com/ (June 9, 2016), author interview.
Starburst, http://www.starburstmagazine.com/ (February 21, 2017), Kieran Fisher, review of The Root.
Whatever, http://whatever.scalzi.com/ (June 8, 2016), “The Big Idea: Na’amen Gobert Tilahun.”
Na’amen Gobert Tilahun
Na’amen Gobert Tilahun is a big ole geek whose writing has appeared in Faggot Dinosaur, StoneTelling, So Speak Up, The Dead Animal Handbook, Collective Fallout, Full of Crow, io9, The Angry Black Woman, The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 2: Provocative Essays on Feminism, Race, Revolution and the Future, Fantasy Magazine and most recently the Hugo-nominated Queers Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the LGBTQ Fans Who Love It. He’s always working on a novel, it’s finishing them that’s remained elusive.
Thursday, June 09, 2016
Interview with Na'amen Gobert Tilahun, author of The Root
Please welcome Na'amen Gobert Tilahun to The Qwillery as part of the 2016 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. The Root was published on June 7th by Night Shade Books.
TQ: Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?
Na'amen: Thanks for inviting me! I started writing pretty young, just little things here and there. Not to toot my own horn but my self-made book (more short story) did get an honorable mention in my seventh grade literature contest. Try not to be too jealous. (P.S. My mom still has that book somewhere and really wants me to be famous so she can sell it on eBay.) I didn't get really serious about writing until college though.
As for why, well, I've always had stories in my head that I would tell, even just to myself. For example when I would walk home from night classes I would hear a noise and freak out over the normal things (like serial killers or clowns) but I would also wonder if maybe it was a newly turned werewolf that was going to maul me and then I would end up turned and the pack would take me away to some compound in Texas to train me in the ways of the wolf (this is an actual thought chain that resulted from one of those night walks). I figured if I was always going to e coming up with stories I should share them.
TQ: Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?
Na'amen: I'm definitely a hybrid. I'd say 25% plotter & 75% pantser. I generally know where my characters are going to end up, and some of the scenes that I want to happen along the way but their journey to the end happens organically as I write. I feel like I learn more about my characters and the story as I write it which is part of the fun for me. Then I lean back and look at the big picture and try to make notes about the connections and themes I want to highlight in the first rewrite/edit session.
TQ: What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?
Na'amen: Distractions. I am a total information nerd who is easily distracted which is an amazing/horrible combination. I'll start out working on the book and then click over to the internet to do a little bit of necessary research and then that triggers a thought and I’m researching an actor who played a bit part on some 80s sitcom for ten minutes and then there’s an article on women vikings and down the internet rabbit hole I go. I have a few tricks for motivating myself, mostly a reward system where for every 90 minutes of writing I get to either watch an episode of a show I’m currently hooked on (right now it’s Grace & Frankie or Veep) or read a chapter in the books I’m currently reading (right now it’s The Devourers by Indra Das or Golden Girls Forever by Jim Colucci).
TQ: What has influenced / influences your writing?
Na'amen: Stories. I love stories, fiction or not, that’s where most of my influences come from. I have some favorite authors but more often you’ll hear me talking about favorite books or series because that’s what moved me, whatever was written on the page. It also doesn’t much matter to me the medium - books, graphic novels, TV, movies, music, plays, poetry - they all have positives and negatives but all of them can convey a wonderful story. Anything that affects me, influences me, because that’s what I want to do to my readers. I want to make them feel, I want them to care and I want them to be moved.
Some of the storytellers whose works have/do influence me are Octavia Butler, Rebecca Sugar, Sophie Campbell, Joanna Russ, Ntozake Shange, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Afua Richardson, Julie Taymor, Marjorie Liu, Ursula Vernon, Beyoncé and a whole lot more.
TQ: Describe The Root in 140 characters or less.
Na'amen: In The Root, urban and epic fantasy meet, a darkness devours worlds and our best hope are two damaged teenagers. We might be fucked.
TQ: Tell us something about The Root that is not found in the book description.
Na'amen: I try to play a lot with mythology and religion in the book. I identify as an atheist but I've always been fascinated by world religions. It was something I studied in college and since then on my own and so there's a lot merging of mythologies but also an attempt to keep things vague and shrouded in conflicting stories as the origins of most older religions tend to be. Plus the angels are biblical style, you know - balls of fire, goat-heads, mounds of eyes - none of the pretty Hollywood style angels here.
TQ: What inspired you to write The Root? What appeals to you about writing Urban Fantasy?
Na'amen: I've loved Urban Fantasy ever since I read Bordertown years ago. I love the idea of the mix of our world and magic, the ways this can be combined or go wrong is almost infinite. However I dislike Urban Fantasy that doesn’t actually feel urban. A lot of books are set in diverse cities but the only people we run into are straight white people, that was never my experience in a city and I wanted an Urban Fantasy that reflected my own lived experience. Also I wanted to explore/mess with the stereotype of the overly aggressive/violent black man and expand that simplistic idea into a three dimensional character and one of the heroes of the text.
TQ: What sort of research did you do for The Root? Why did you set the novel in San Francisco?
Na'amen: Most of my research focused on my knowledge on religion and mythology. I read a lot of books on symbols and mystery cults and religious wars.
Growing up I spent my summers in San Francisco and I loved it so much when it was time to go to college I decided on SF State. While I'm sad and angry about the gentrification and other entitlement that has become so much a part of San Francisco in the last ten years I still love what it used to be and remember it fondly.
The first novel is establishing a lot and so doesn't tie into San Francisco as much and neither does the second novel because the majority of it takes place in an alternate dimension (though there are chapters that take place in San Francisco and other cities in our dimension). The third novel The Fruit is heavily San Francisco focused and I'm hoping to bring in a lot of the quirky, dark, interesting and fucked up local history that I know about the city into the work.
TQ: In The Root who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?
Na'amen: Lil was easiest for me to write because there was a lot more distance between myself and her character. I was able to get a broader perspective on her wants and her choices. She’s a character I adore but our personalities are very different.
As for Erik, I wouldn’t say he’s me (I’m not 18 or a former TV star for two things) but I have more traits in common with Erik than any other character in the book and that made it more difficult to gain some perspective on him as a character. I would slip into having Erik do things that I would do in the situation rather than what Erik, with his completely different history, would do.
TQ: Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in The Root?
Na'amen: My characters are definitely aware of social issues and acknowledge them. Erik especially is very aware of race and sexuality and how the attitudes of others has shaped his world. I didn’t want the focus of the story to be on his sexuality or race but leaving him ignorant of how these things affect him everyday would have just felt false and like I was pandering. I’m a queer black man in the western world and not a day goes by that I’m not reminded that I’m not “normal” and while I didn’t want to delve into that too deeply in this trilogy. I wanted to show how their identities affect each character, in fact there’s a scene towards the end where all the women and people of color in the room react to something that’s said about people’s places in the world & hierarchy but it’s subtle and most readers probably won’t notice it or tie it into identity if they haven’t experienced that.
That being said the story doesn’t deal with their identities directly very much because I wanted more of a story where the characters happen to be people of color and women and queer because that’s the real world. I wanted the story to be about people like me and my friends having a messed up, dark adventure.
TQ: Which question about The Root do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!
Na'amen: Why name it The Root?
Multiple Reasons.
-There’s a spoilery plot reason I won’t go into.
-The tree imagery ties into a lot of religions’ important stories.
-The phrase “put a root on someone”.
TQ: Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Root.
Na'amen:
“It’s a real world explanation. The real world is messy. What some people think of as truth isn’t necessarily true and sometimes there’s no objective truth at all.”
TQ: What's next?
Na'amen: I'm working on the sequel for The Root, and second in the Wrath & Athenaeum trilogy, The Tree. It will be out June of next year. I'm also hard at work on two YA novels, one is a more contemporary supernatural story about family, black women ancestors and history called The Red Road Home. The other is a high fantasy about a young black girl raised by pirates who fights to be an astronaut called The Link Between Water and Sky.
TQ: Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.
Na'amen: Thank you so much for having me!
About Na'amen
Na’amen Tilahun is a bookseller and freelance writer who split his early years between Los Angeles and San Francisco. His fiction, poetry, and critical writing are published across the web at io9.com, The Big Click, Full of Crows, Stone Telling and more. He is the cocreator and cohost of the geek podcast, The Adventures of Yellow Peril + Magical Negro. Follow him on Twitter at Naamenism (the name of the cult he one day hopes to start).
The Big Idea: Na’amen Gobert Tilahun
JUNE 8, 2016 JOHN SCALZI7 COMMENTS
For today’s Big Idea, Na’amen Gobert Tilahun looked at how people like him are imagined to be, and for his novel The Root, how to make positive the qualities that are often perceived by others to be negatives.
NA’AMEN GOBERT TILAHUN:
A lot of the plot ideas in The Root are actually smaller ideas that become bigger and more expansive in the second and third books of the trilogy. Some deal with family or religion or betrayal or all three. I was struggling to decide which to talk about when I realized that with most of them it would difficult if not impossible to avoid spoilers. So I thought back to the ideas that got me writing The Root in the first place, the two ideas I thought were small and the idea that joined them together. In The Root many of the characters get a few scenes from their point of view, but the two main characters are definitely Errikos Sabastian Allan and Lilliana Blackthorn Johns, or Erik and Lil for short. Both of them started as a bare sketch, a broad idea for a character in response to something.
I’ve been a large black man all of my life and I’ve experienced the fear and suspicion that comes along with that. I’ve had people clutch their bags at the sight of me, tell me seats were taken when they were later given away, even cross the street to get away from me. These are just a few of the assumptions of anger and violence that I experience every single day. One day I thought: What if I wrote a black man whose power came from his anger? What if that angry black man was one of the heroes of the story? What if that angry black man was shown to be so much more than his anger? What if he was allowed to be smart and noble and vulnerable and all the things a hero should be? What would that character look like?
For me, it turned out to look like Erik. Writing him proved difficult because we have so much of the experience of a black man in America in common,, but in other aspects we are completely different. I often found myself having to go back and correct the story so that he would act in a way that was about what Erik would do in that situation, not what I would do. I hadn’t anticipated this problem but I should have, because not only was I crafting a character similar to me but also the kind of character I wanted to see more of as a reader. I also had to resist the urge to make him the perfect hero, because I had been so in need of characters like this. I wanted him to be everything to everyone which is impossible. I had to remember I didn’t want an idealized protagonist, I wanted a real one who was nuanced and could allow people to see him as a fully human person, deserving of all the respect that entails.
I’ve never been a black woman but I have spent most of my life around them as mothers, sisters, friends and cousins, as family who I loved and cared for and an intrinsic part of my community. I’ve also seen them called loud, obnoxious, ugly, stupid and far darker things. Black woman are not respected by our society at all, I’ve watched what we say they are in our media, how we erase them from history, how we ignore the things they contribute to society. And I thought: What if the black woman’s very power lay in her voice? What if you could not silence her no matter what? What if by voice I didn’t just focus on physical voice but also on the way she walked in the world, the things she thought were right, and would not be silent about? What if what she wanted more than anything was the truth? What would she do for it?
And so Lil was born. Writing Lil was challenging for different reasons than Erik. Unlike Erik, when the book opens she still has some bit of innocence left, she clings to her belief in certain people. I knew the first book was going to be a hard road for her because seeing someone lose that belief?
It’s rough.
Both of my characters would have hard journeys because they were trying to save two worlds and that’s no easy task. However, Lil’s story had to be even more nuanced than Erik’s because of my lack of personal experience with that identity. I wanted to show the way she’s dismissed as so many women of color are, her intentions misconstrued, her protestations ignored. I wanted to show Lil’s strength, not some mythical black woman strength that meant she didn’t get hurt or could take more punishment because of her black womanhood, but the strength in knowing what she was doing was right. I had to show this without slipping into any of the tropes and horrors that follow the depictions of black women in our society. I didn’t want Lil’s story or pain to feel exotified of exploitative and the stories told and revered in our society encourage us to use women’s pain as window dressing, as something to spice up a tale. Luckily I have my friends to look to, all the black women in my life that counter this message simply by existing and telling their own stories.
Once I had the ideas for both of these characters the rest of the story began to grow out from them. I didn’t have everything worked out yet but I knew that these two characters, all too rare in speculative fiction for being black and queer and three-dimensional, would be the center of the story I was telling. Then around these two ideas/characters developed another big idea like some delicious flaky crust. These two characters, these reactions to real life stereotypes could and would exist between the covers of an adventurous, fantasy story that was not solely focused on their identity.
Maybe that’s why at first I didn’t think of these things as big ideas. First because it was born of all these smaller ideas coming together to form a story and secondly it’s what I’ve always wanted to write. For Lil and Erik, their pasts affect them and influence their decisions as with any good character, but their identities, the colors of their skin, their sexualities are not all that they are by any means. I wanted to see people like me and my friends concerned with surviving, with fighting bad guys, with saving the world, with falling in love, with living through an urban fantasy landscape that all too often didn’t look urban at all.
I sometimes still hesitate to call that a Big Idea because it seems so obvious to me but from a lot of the reactions I’ve gotten – the anger AND the thankfulness it seems like it’s more of a big idea than I ever thought.
The Root
Carolyn Ciesla
Booklist. 112.19-20 (June 1, 2016): p70.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
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The Root. By Na'amen Gobert Tilahun. June 2016. 320p. Night Shade, paper, $14.99 (9781597808637).
Former child-actor Erik left showbiz, left his boyfriend, and is struggling with life as a regular teenager in San Francisco. All of that is turned upside down during an encounter with an otherworldly being. Erik learns that he's not a regular teenager after all--he is a descendant of gods. Suddenly, Erik discovers that he's about to become a soldier in the ultimate multidimensional war. At the same time, apprentice Lil (learning and working in San Francisco's dimensional double, 'Zebub) finds herself at the center of a mighty battle. Erik's mixed-race background and his interaction with the world place this title at the center of current conversations calling for an increase of diverse characters and authors. There are numerous characters, and the plot is slightly convoluted at times, but Tilahun's world building is majestic and vivid, and his characters are authentic and flawed. Explosive action sequences and amusing dialogue will keep the reader turning pages. Fans of traditional urban fantasy looking for something a little different would do well with this one.--Carolyn Ciesla
YA: Erik faces challenges familiar to many teenagers. Racial identity, LGBTQ issues, and family dynamics make this an approachable title for YA readers. CC.
The Root
Na’amen Gobert Tilahun. Night Shade, $14.99 trade paper (420p) ISBN 978-1-59780-863-7
The Root
BUY THIS BOOK
A gay former child star discovers that he’s descended from gods and destined to fight supernatural creatures in this muddled debut from podcaster Tilahun (The Adventures of Yellow Peril & Magical Negro). What starts out promisingly descends swiftly into cliché with its two engaging characters, human Erik and angel Lil, in need of a better story. Erik, whose Disney career ended when he came out as gay, is blasé about stumbling into a world of angels and demons; Lil suffers from a lack of exposition, as it takes too long for the reader to understand who she is and what motivates her. By the time the true threat emerges, it’s hard to care. Tilahun’s strengths lie in writing family dynamics—Erik’s clash with his father, Lil’s interactions with her sister—but there’s very little real or metaphorical magic here. (June)
FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 2016
Microreview [novel]: The Root by Na'amen Gobert Tilahun
You'll want to set aside some time in your calendar to do nothing but read this book...
Erik thought things were weird enough being a former child television star and current social pariah having to navigate bullying and a home life that's…well, not exactly the most peaceful. When he finds out that he has honest-to-goodness super powers and is part of a conflict stretching back into prehistory? Well, what defines "weird" officially changes. And it kicks off an adventure ripe with secret organizations, parallel worlds, mysterious and hungry darkness, and more hidden agendas than a dozen spy movies. In short, it's a lot of fun, with a chorus of amazing voices and characters, a deep and interesting setting, and a fast pace and brilliant action with just enough tragedy, romance, darkness, and hope to keep me glued to the pages and grumpy af that I have to wait for the next book to come out.
If it sounds like that is a lot to fit into one book, I kind of agree with you. It's not short and it is full. Mostly it splits its action between two parallel stories. In the one, Erik is learning about his powers and the political situation on Earth between the Organization and the Agency, two rather faceless entities that come down on opposite ends of an ages old feud between the children of the gods. In the other, Lil is being trained in magic languages in Zebub, a dimension that mirrors Earth but that is being attacked by a mysterious and deadly force. In both settings, powers determine hierarchy and privilege, and in both children are being trained as warriors to fight in this ancient war whose origin has been lost through conflict. And having the true origins of this war be lost is an interesting choice because at the same time that it allows the characters to sort of handwave the particulars away as "unknown" it also means the reader isn't bogged down with how all these religions could possibly be brought into one explanation. It might not be the most satisfying for those really wanting to dig into how it all works or got started, but for me it was a way for the book to say "hey, try not to think too hard about that and maybe look instead at all the awesome and off-the-wall shit happening." Which worked for me because that's the situation Erik finds himself in, having to put aside his questions in favor of trying to do good now.
It's also a lot to fit into one book because there's a lot of things to keep track of. The plot is split between the two storylines that slowly converge but there's also a number of viewpoints within each storyline that fleshes out the worlds and offers some hints and insights into things that the main characters aren't aware of. Juggling so many perspectives is by no means easy but the novel pulls it off with style, giving each person a unique voice and mission, popping into certain characters' heads only once before darting away to the next thing. None of these asides from Erik or Lil felt insignificant, though, and each helped to push forward the plot and solidify various motivations and intrigues slowly simmering in the background. For all that Erik and Lil take up most of the real estate, this novel is about factions and loyalty and betrayals, something that the jumping around helped me keep track of and which made the individual personalities that much more real and compelling. The personal beats are definitely present, the jealousies and the budding loves and the everything.
And can I say that I just love all the different relationships and people in this book? Because it is amazing to me to find a book with such a diverse cast, where queer characters outnumber straight ones, where characters of color outnumber white ones. I love all the ways the characters connect and form friendships and rivalries and alliances. The way that Erik starts to have feelings for his mentor while still dealing with the shit from his impressively dramatic breakup with his first boyfriend who ended up in jail because of it. The way that Lil finds herself coming into her own power and her own feelings and sexuality and there is just so much to like about this. I want more, okay? I want whole books that explore the side characters because they are so alive. No one is treated as disposable, as flat. They all have inner lives and inner fires and I want to see them all get their own books. Their own series! Their own shared movie universe! And I might be getting ahead of myself a bit but seriously this is about the most fun I've had with a book in a long while.
And really this is one of those reads where most of my frustrations stem from the fact that it's the first book in a series. That the world building could have been a bit clearer to me in parts didn't really bother me because I expect the lingering questions to be answered in future books. What exactly happened to sever the Blooded from their Zebub counterparts is hazy but I'm guessing that central mystery will push forward the overall plot of the series, and the book definitely earned my trust that it will be awesome when the reveal eventually happens. Similarly, the book covers a lot of ground and in doing so seeded a lot of conflict that didn't exactly get a chance to breathe. Just when it seemed like some hinted-at plot was about to be revealed something completely different would happen and kind of shatter my expectations. Which again, I liked, but it did mean that by the end there was a whole lot still hanging in the air that didn't feel resolved. This gives a lot of momentum going into the rest of the series but I fear this might mean I will definitely have to reread this first book directly before the next to be able to remember all that was going on. Which isn't the worst problem to have, I'll admit, given how fun the novel is.
In the end, I think the novel succeeds magnificently at setting the ground rules for the setting and revealing an amazing cast of characters and just enough of the world to make for a compelling and deep experience. While there are a few things that are left to be ironed out in later books, this first taste has left me ravenous for more and I very much look forward to seeing where the series leads.
The Math:
Baseline Assessment: 8/10
Bonuses: +2 for OMG ALL THE QUEER CHARACTERS AND RELATIONSHIPS :D
Negatives: -1 for not tying up loose ends so much as throwing a dozen news threads into the mix at the end of the book
Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 "very high quality/seriously go read this now and then weep that the second book isn't out yet" see our full rating system here.
--
POSTED BY: Charles, avid reader, reviewer, and sometimes writer of speculative fiction. Contributor to Nerds of a Feather since 2014.
Reference: Tilahun, Na'amen Gobert. The Root [Night Shade Books, 2016]
THE ROOT: A NOVEL OF THE WRAITH AND ATHENAEUM
PrintE-mail WRITTEN BY KIERAN FISHER
The Root: A Novel of the Wraith and Athenaeum is the debut novel from Na’amen Gobert Tilahun and the first in a planned trilogy of urban fantasy fare. The book focuses on two troubled teenagers tasked with the arduous task of saving their worlds as they encounter secret government agencies, the forces of magic and a host of supernatural wonders and mythological beings. Erik is an ex-child star whose celebrity career has taken a complicated turn following a scandal which resulted in his ex-boyfriend being imprisoned. To make matters worse, he also learns that he’s a descendant of the gods - a being known as a Blooded - and a corrupt government agency is selling off his kind to an inhuman organization in an alternate dimension.
Elsewhere – in said alternate dimension – Lil is an orphan investigating the mysterious death of her parents, which is connected to a dark history those in power would rather keep hidden. She’s an outsider, segregated in a world where she’s viewed as a lesser being because of her societal status. However, just like her otherworldly counterpart Erik, she must stand up to a looming threat with the power to destroy each of their universes.
As a sprawling fantasy, The Root is a grandiose feat of imagination and cross-dimensional storytelling. It provides the escapist thrills and chills the fantasy genre is built on, and it’s bound tickle the fantasies of those who read stories of this ilk to immerse themselves in mystical adventures. That being said, it’s also a story that’s firmly rooted in human drama, exploring themes such as the nature of race, celebrity, the media and society’s perceptions of sexual orientation, gender and class division. On one hand, it’ll titillate readers who love conspiracy thrillers, epic fantasies and action-packed entertainment; but it’ll also connect with those who have ever felt shunned because they don’t fit in with the status quo. In both regards, The Root is a triumph.
With this novel, Tilahun has laid the foundations for a very promising trilogy. The world building is mightily impressive, but more importantly, its world is inhabited by characters you’ll want to embark on future journeys with. All in all, it’s highly recommended for fans of young adult fiction first and foremost, but you can never be too old to appreciate storytelling this marvellous. If you want excitement and fun, it has it; but it also leaves you with some food for thought to ponder should you choose to. At times dark and gritty, at others uplifting, this is a multi-layered story worth checking out.
THE ROOT: A NOVEL OF THE WRAITH AND ATHENAEUM / AUTHOR: NA'AMEN GOBERT TILAHUN / ARTIST: CHARLIE BOWATER / NIGHT SHADE BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
8/10 stars