Descend- First Steps

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James McGregor is a professional diver hired to recover some important items aboard a sunken yacht off the coast of Kingston by the wealthy and secretive Arthur Wayne. The job looks to be an easy pay off until McGregor discovers the yacht he’s to investigate hasn’t sunk yet. Despite this dip in the third act and an ending that felt slightly less satisfying than I had hoped, Annis' journey is one worth taking. As Ward herself states on the cover of my advanced copy by way of introduction, "It is difficult to walk south with Annis. Her narrative descends from one hellscape to another, but I promise that if you come with me, you will rise. It will be worth the walk, worth the walking."

The prose is eloquent and expressive. The characters are vulnerable, scarred, and strong. And the plot is an exceptionally enthralling tale about life, loss, strength, bravery, hope, survival, violence, injustice, racism, slavery, and death, all interwoven with a thread of the supernatural.

Annis is enslaved, living in the South before the Civil War. It was an awful time, and awful things happen to her. This isn't a story for the faint of heart, and my own heart bled with hers. The human capacity for cruelty shames me. Descendants 3: Good to Be Bad • Queen of Mean • Do What You Gotta Do • Night Falls • One Kiss • My Once Upon a Time • Break This Down • Dig a Little Deeper

Beautifully written with vivid descriptions and imagery. I enjoyed the magical realism and the way Annis, and the spirits interacted. I enjoyed learning about the strong women in Annis's family tree. Their inner strength and determination were inspiring. This book was one big journey in a young woman's life. It is not always easy reading as the slaves suffer through starvation, mistreatment, rape, being separated from loved ones, worked hard, bought and sold, and beaten to name a few. Annis experienced so many things in her young life and showed strength, compassion, courage, fear, heartbreak, and love throughout it all. Among them are books published for the first time such as Joyland and The Colorado Kid by Stephen King.

Ward’s novel is a mythic tale about Annis’ hunger to resist and rise, to put into practice her warrior legacy. To thrive, and emerge from this inferno intact and victorious. Annis’ sense of hope springs from her imagination and belief in her own strength, to be regarded, and to regard. “She taught me that the ancestors come if you call them.” For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Annis is strong, though, and draws strength from her mother and stories of her grandmother. They are warriors, whose hands are weapons. And they support and love each other, finding ways to help and show gentleness even in the the worst situations. Annis never gives up, determined to find her freedom. I only read this book because it was written by Michael Crichton under a n0m de plume but I am glad I did. I have to put a massive disclaimer this book is OLD it was set in the early 70s. So if you read it and apply your SJW sensitivities to it you will not be happy. But if you lived through the 70's you can probably handle it. Annis used to hear the white children being taught the epic Italian poem, The Divine Comedy, especially the first part, Dante’s Inferno. The first line of the Inferno is: “Let us descend, and enter this blind world.”

HOOK - 1 stars: >>>"Starting in the early dawn light, he had driven up into the mountains...then don through lush valleys...damp in the misty morning wetness...up once more to the cold air of the peaks..."<<< opens this novel. The writing is raw and visceral, with not a word wasted. The sentences are short, but the imagery and language made me feel like I was there. Bees provide guides and respite, and references to Dante's Inferno draws us all deeper down. In November 2008, unfortunately, Crichton passed away, so in 2013 the remaining 6 books were released. Having loved Sing, Unburied Sing, I knew I'd love this one and I did! Although it's heartbreaking, Ward's lyric qualities make this book such a joy to read! Annis, the daughter of a slave is taken with many of her people to New Orleans after her own mother is sold. Her mother had taught Annis how to fight using their ancestors' bones dug up from makeshift graves, but of course she will rarely get that opportunity as they are all chained together for the arduous journey. Annis "sees" Aza frequently and gains wisdom that she takes to heart. And even though this is heartbreaking and difficult to read sometimes, Ward shows us the resilience and inner strength that kept the downtrodden hopeful and ready to face the cruel world. So lovely! This book gave me so many mixed emotions. It is beautifully written with lyrical prose that pulls you into the heart of the book and the body of Annis as she makes her way through life.As Annis learns in this novel, if you call on spirit they will come. Annis is very much in tune with spirit and that sustains her in this harrowing tale of the grind of enslavement and the toll it takes on the mind body and soul of those who experienced that particular horror. The story is generally handled gently and the brutalities are kept to a minimum. Every generation, there comes along a storyteller who doesn’t just tell the story of America, but who sings it. Jesmyn Ward is one such griot. She spins sentences made of silk that land solid as stone. In this story about the love of women—a mother’s love, a mother’s mother’s love, and a daughter’s trust—readers are gathered together in the name of hope. CAST - 3: MacGregor as the narrator/diver is an ex-Marine and good with spears to fend away hammerhead sharks. Standard villains...but most really aren't who you think they are: Crichton does a nice job with a "whose good/whose bad" element. And the best cast member of all is the eerily named yacht, "Grave Descend," which has surprises of its own. Let Us Descend – the title, from Dante’s Inferno, reflects the hell its characters experience – doesn’t break new ground in fiction about slavery (unlike Morrison’s Beloved, Butler’s Kindred or Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad). But it’s the internal journey of Annis that makes it in the end worthwhile, as she matures, from suffering the weapon of her mother’s hand to developing her own resourcefulness and strength. “I am the weapon.”

I highly recommend this book to all who enjoy historical fiction but with the caveat that it contains a large element of magical realism. I found that fit in beautifully with the character and actions of Annis and her story of trying to exist in a world that doesn’t see her as a person at all. Pretty soon, though, her mother is sold, Annis is alone, and then she herself is chained to her fellow enslaved people and taken on a long trek to Louisiana. The world is rendered in a careful lyrical style – the march is “this wide, cry-choked hell”; Annis’s light complexion is “the middle mud of my skin” – but this is where the trouble for the reader begins. There is a genuinely exciting escalation of action and struggle toward the end Descendants: Rotten to the Core • Evil Like Me • Did I Mention • If Only • Be Our Guest • Set It Off • Believe In 1972, with The Terminal Man under his own name, he realised that his career was now a writer, not a doctor, so he put the pseudonym in the bottom drawer.Let Us Descend is an atmospheric, moving tale that sweeps you away to North Carolina during the mid-1800s and into the life of Annis, a young woman of mixed race trained by her mother in more than just servitude who, after being sold one year after her beloved Mama, is forced in chains on a gruelling march from the rice fields she’s only ever known to the sugar plantations of New Orleans where with a little help from the spirit world beyond she endures extreme hardships and brutal savagery until she can find an opportunity to finally slip free.