This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Sky Full of Elephants will be released on September 10, 2024.

Sky Full of Elephants, Cebo Campbell’s debut novel, has been marketed almost entirely outside of genre spaces, but an audacious speculative premise and a family story at the core had me intrigued, and after a terrific experience with my last debut-marketed-outside-genre-spaces (Chain-Gang All-Stars), I decided to give it a try and see what it was all about. 

Sky Full of Elephants pulls no punches with an eye-catching opening that features the mass suicide of white people across America. The lead, an engineering whiz fresh off decades spent imprisoned on false charges, is trying to help those who remain to build a better and more sustainable society when he’s contacted by an estranged, biracial daughter who needs help navigating a dangerous journey to a part of the country that had gone totally silent. What follows is part road trip and part reckoning with past trauma, a tale about finding a way forward, both personally and in society. 

I promised an honest review of this book, and while I’m here doing my best, I really don’t think I’m the right person to review this book. I don’t necessarily object to a premise in which I would be among the dead—otherwise, I wouldn’t have requested the book in the first place—but this feels less like a story that uses the premise to make a point for a general audience (as, for example, Chain-Gang All-Stars talks about the prison system with an audience that very much includes those outside that system) and more like a mix of encouragement and discussion fodder for Black audiences. I can say what worked and didn’t work for me, but I’m saying that as someone outside the target audience. 

Though the story gestures a few times at the difficulties that come from suddenly losing a massive portion of your population, the world of Sky Full of Elephants has generally gotten better for the people in the story. One of the main characters is no longer imprisoned on a false accusation, and the other must slowly unravel all the ways in which her white family had raised her to hate that part of herself that came from her father. Meanwhile, on a broader societal level, the collapse of the existing systems has given those who remain an opportunity to build better ones, more sustainable and with less focus on profit. There’s certainly plenty of trauma to work through, but the trauma was largely caused by the old world, and the new one gives people a chance to recover. 

Campbell could’ve easily chosen more complicated storylines—characters whose past problems had been self-inflicted, or systems lost that had had genuine value—and for a good chunk of the novel, I was wishing he’d done just that. But as the story progressed, it became clear that the obvious improvement of the world was necessary to set up the book’s big question: is it right to pursue healing for your people in a way that will irrevocably harm those whose families have hurt you? It’s a heavy topic, and it only makes sense to ask in a world where such harm to one group genuinely does lead to another’s healing; that is to say, the world of Sky Full of Elephants had to a better one to really investigate the theme. 

And while I’m not sure I’m completely sold on the way the novel answers the question, I appreciate the careful meditation on a difficult question and the genuine searching for a healthy way forward. I still prefer my characters a bit on the messier side, but Sky Full of Elephants is written in an engaging style and digs into difficult themes, and that’s enough to come together for a good read. 

On a more negative note, as a Christian reader with a healthy appreciation for the way that the Black church in America has persisted through oppression and led some of the most pivotal movements in the nation’s history,  I was disappointed to see the way in which it was pushed to the side in Sky Full of Elephants. The conversation was driven primarily by characters steeped in the spirituality of Africa-via-Haiti, with Christianity reduced to little more than white evangelicalism. This isn’t a simplification that will bother every reader, but unlike the straightforward healing for the people and systems, it’s not a simplification that meaningfully strengthens the theme. 

But on the whole, Sky Full of Elephants is a pretty good book. The prose is engaging, and there’s enough interpersonal conflict and worldbuilding mystery to hold a reader’s attention. It does feel like a book that’s written as part of a long-running conversation in Black American culture, so other readers may get the feeling of looking in on a book written for someone else, but there’s still something to like for readers outside the target audience, and I imagine it’s a fascinating read for those inside it. 

Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for Author of Color and Published in 2024, and it features Dreams, Multiple POVs, and Entitled Animals. 

Overall rating: 15 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.