Rating: 
Summary: bloody brilliant
Review: Complicated, sexy, rewarding. This is a book that stays with you long after you've finished it. This book is so rich! Weaving three different stories together, you'll never tire of any of the point of view characters, but be left wanting more. I wish Salt Roads was twice the length! I wanted to know what happened *after* the revolution. Sequel, please.Nothing Hopkinson has written disappoints. I just wish she wrote faster and edited less. I want a new book every six months! Nothing in this book is deliberately shocking or voyeuristic. Hopkinson simply tells it like it is. The people who call it shocking are saying more about their own limited horizons than this marvellous book.
Rating:
Summary: fabulous look at Afro-Caribbean mythos
Review: Early in the nineteenth century, on the French colonial Caribbean Island of Saint Domingue, three female slave women, led by Doctress Mer, inter a stillborn baby. During the burial ceremony, they pray to Ezili, the Afro-Caribbean Goddess of love and sex, to "use" the infant's "unused vitality". Mer knows first hand how Ezili resides inside them as the goddess lives within her to use her when needed for that is how she has the healing hands. Ezili employs other female African or Afro descendents as her channel. In the nineteenth century in Paris, Ezili lives inside mixed blooded Jeanne Duval, lover of poet Charles Baudelaire. In the fourth-century Nubian Meritet, changes from a prostitute to the founder of a religion when Ezili enters her. However, even Goddess' have fears that they will expire as Ezili worries will happen to her now that Jeanne' is dying from syphilis. Escape may be through Mer's prays, but at a moment when the Saint Domingue slaves seek freedom at any cost could still endanger the Goddess. Extremely complex in terms of the time paradox, Nalo Hopkinson shows why she is the leading fabulist of Afro-Caribbean mythology, religion, and folk tales filled with Mojo today. The plot spans time and place yet seems so right though readers will struggle with non-linear events (string theory anyone) connected via salt and the Goddess. The three women are fully developed, but surprisingly in a mystical sense so is Ezili. Nalo Hopkinson provides another winner with her insightful look at Afro-Caribbean mythos. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Totally overwrought and over the top
Review: From the initial scenes of lesbian sex, and telling one's fortune by peering into a chamberpot full of urine and a bloody tampon, this book tries to shock rather than say anything truly moving or unique about women. The graphic visual details such as this do nothing to advance either the sory or the characterization, of which there is little. Most of the characters are just moving body parts, usually the amatory ones. The whore who prostitutes for the great French writer who descends into sado-masochistic sexual highjinks is also not one of the high points of the book either. Everything becomes cliched and stereotypical by the end of the book. How complete crudity like this gets published as 'lyrical' I have no idea. It could have really used a good edit by someone who ccould focus the disjointed narratives into some sort of meaningful whole. Don't waste your time trying to decipher it. It is like an abstract painting hung sideways up upside down. Most people will not ntoice, let alone care.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth a Look
Review: I absolutely loved Ms. Hopkinson's debut novel, BROWN GIRL IN THE RING, so I was really hopeful about this ambitious novel.
THE SALT ROADS is a non-linear story in four parts. The narrative switches back and forth between women of color from all over the world. The characters are Mer, a Haitian healer on a plantation; Jeanne, a mixed race woman in Baudelaire's France; Thais, an Egyptian hooker in Greece; and Ezili, the goddess figure that loosely ties the narratives together.
SALT ROADS tells their tales of love and lost. While the premise is engaging, I was never really aborbed with it and didn't find any of the characters (except for Mer) engaging. Self-absorbed Jeanne, for example, is particularly unsympathetic and distant.
Hopkinson's strength is in her poetic use of language. Her scenes and dialog are lush and sensual but the story itself left me hanging. Most of the characters are so isolated that it's difficult to see how they truly interact with their surroundings.
In the end, I think I might have enjoyed the novel more had
Ezili been a more dominant character.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: I love this author! If you want to read something fresh and new, you must read her. Also, try her first two books: "Brown Girl in the Ring" and "Midnight Robber". Both are examples of speculative fiction at its very best!
Rating:
Summary: both craft and scope
Review: I tried very hard to "get into" this book... but I could no longer force myself after about 150 pages. I could not follow the storyline or ever really felt like I had any sense of which character was which.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't follow along!
Review: I tried very hard to "get into" this book... but I could no longer force myself after about 150 pages. I could not follow the storyline or ever really felt like I had any sense of which character was which.
Rating: 
Summary: The heritage of women
Review: In this mythic fantasy, Nalo Hopkinson braids together the lives of three distinct African women into a potent and sensual feminist vision. Mer is a plantation slave and a healer in what is now modern-day Haiti. She is the lover of Tipingee, but shares this love with Tipingee's husband. Jeanne Duval is a former dancer who is now the lover of struggling Parisian poet Charles Baudelaire. In ancient Alexandria, Thais is a prostitute, and her journey will take her to the outskirts of Jerusalem. Through their lovemaking and daily lives, these women host the spirit sometimes called Ezili, who echoes other names. Ezili can influence their actions, although she often is simply witness through their corporeality, even as she flails against her own bonds. Weaving these seemingly disparate threads together, Hopkinson illumines the lives of women as she explores sexuality, transcendence, spirituality, and personal freedom. Much like "Godmother Night" by Rachel Pollack and "The Female Man" by Joanna Russ, this novel reaches beyond the confines of genre to sing passionately with new rhythms.
Rating:
Summary: Amazingly Original, Breathtakingly Beautiful
Review: Mer, a healer and midwife, is an African slave on a sugar plantation on Saint Domingue (renamed Haiti in 1804). Jeanne Duval is an Afro-French dancer and courtesan living in Paris, and the mistress of 19th-century poet Charles Baudelaire. Meritet is a Greek-Nubian prostitute in fourth-century Egypt, better known to the world as Saint Mary. Something connects these three women across the span of time--something larger than any of these women could ever suspect.
When three Caribbean slave women, led by Mer, come together to bury one of the women's stillborn son, their powerful grief and prayers call the attention of Ezili, an African-Caribbean goddess. Using the unused life force of the dead child, Ezili moves back and forth across time, possessing and working her will through various bodies.
Jeanne is one of the goddess' most frequent vehicles--mainly because Ezili finds herself inexplicably tethered to the beautiful French dancer. She is free to inhabit other bodies only when Jeanne, slowly dying of syphilis, is in a deep dream state. Ezili plants the seeds of revolution in Saint Domingue through Mer, and sends Meritet on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
What all these women have in common is salt--in all its various forms. Whether the salt of tears, the salt of the ocean, or the salt of sweat, the goddess travels the Salt Roads to accomplish her goal. The question is "What is her goal?" Not even Ezili fully understands at first, but as she grows more powerful, and comes to know the many aspects of herself, all is revealed--both to her and the reader.
Author Nalo Hopkinson beautifully weaves her stories together in a broken narrative, jumping back and forth through time and between characters. Some readers may have a little difficulty finding the rhythm of her storytelling, but the reward for their perseverance is great. Hopkinson writes in a flowing, sensual, sometimes poetic, style, but her rich use of history keeps the book grounded in realism. While the stories of the three women are often heartbreaking, Hopkinson skillfully breaks up the sometimes heavy narrative with light touches of humor sprinkled throughout--the way a good chef uses salt.
Ultimately uplifting and filled with hope, The Salt Roads is a beautiful book-one that stays with you long after you close the cover. The Salt Roads is the winner of the 2004 Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Novel.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting....
Review: Nalo Hopkinson's The Salt Roads centers on the spirit, Ezili's (a goddess of love and seduction) emergence in three women throughout time. The reader gets a glimpse of her in Mer, a lesbian slave woman healer, in the early 1800's on the Caribbean island of St. Domingue (Haiti) during a burial of a stillborn child. The second appearance is in the 1880's within Jeanne, a mulatto Parisian dancer and mistress to a white poet whose purse strings are controlled by his domineering mother. The third woman, Meritet, is a prostitute in an ancient (340's A.D.) Egyptian brothel. Although these women exist during different time periods, Ezili seems to emerge, exist, and influence each woman simultaneously. With Jeanne, she appears in dreams, and wants to live, act, and breathe through her until Jeanne is physically scarred and disabled from the ravages of a sexually transmitted disease. Mer receives her awakening during a riverside burial ceremony of a stillborn child and Meritet has an instance of self-awareness that allows her to experience the independence of Ezili. Aside from the Ezili storyline, each main character has her fair share of drama, heartbreak, and intrigue. Each are a victim of circumstance; in worlds that were cruel to the black woman. Mer deals with the harsh reality of plantation life and the impending slave revolt that secured Haiti its freedom from colonial rule. The author expertly embeds regional history and folklore into Mer's story. An aging Jeanne struggles with securing her future as a courtesan in a world in which her skin color places her at a disadvantage and Meritet journeys from whoredom to sainthood. This book is full of symbolism (the incorporation of the value, taste, and healing power of salt, etc. throughout the novel is superb). It also has a mystical and esoteric feel to it; the stories are heart wrenching and the characters are memorable. The author embellished a bit at times with the transcendental themes causing lapses that were very vague and abstract; however for those who enjoy heavy, lyrical prose and surreal themes, it is worth picking up. Overall, it is a wonderfully imagined story that dabbles with the supernatural and issues of self-worth, survival, and redemption. Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub, The Nubian Circle Book Club
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