Nalo Hopkinson’s novel Blackheart Man begins with the protagonist, Veycosi, striking out to clear a blocked pipe supplying his fiancé’s side of town using the bold technique of a phosphorus bomb. Though the town council forbids him from this technique, reminding him he is but a lore-keeper “and a student one at that,” not a crafty “ingenieur,” Veycosi thinks otherwise: “Fuck that. He could reckon instructions as well as anyone with a brain.” Veycosi’s headstrong commitment to “doing the needful thing, no matter who would gainsay it”–and the tension between this commitment and his tangled motives–soon develop Blackheart Man into a fantastic deluge of slapstick, reflection, and drama in a magical Caribbean world.

Hopkinson’s story centers on Chynchin, a multicultural island inhabited by descendants of a successful slave revolution of Indigenous and displaced people, including descendants of the soldiers the foreign Ymisen enslavers compelled to fight rebels. Veycosi is the clear protagonist, though other points of view interrupt his gallivanting: the island’s twin gods fondly musing on their people, a revenant awakening in the tar pit the islanders used to drown the invading force, an expatriate guiding Ymisen colonizers back to Chynchin’s shores, and even the stories of his culture’s founding Veycosi collects along the way. Indeed, Veycosi’s journey of misadventure and moral education runs through menacing imperialist imposition as much as it does his mismanagement of his polyamorous relationships, drowned soldiers rising from enchanted pitch, and the mysterious disappearance of local children.

All these obstacles demand more learning than Veycosi expected, particularly as he encounters those with different perspectives on Chynchin’s lush island life. After another abortive attempt to explain himself to a potential partner, Veycosi reflects:

It was always so when he talked with Samra. Matters between them would be going along well, and he would buck up against some difference in how life worked for her kind that he had never kenned before. It was as though he and she lived in different countries, not the selfsame one.

In large part, Veycosi’s journey entails grasping how he never "kenned" (knew) the racism, sexism, and interlocking oppression that makes Chynchin a “different country” for those without the social safety net and societal privilege that enable his reckless ways. His slow understanding of his own complicity at once textures the world and engenders similar reflection in the reader. Yet in spite of Chynchin’s systemic flaws, Hopkinson foregrounds its incredible wonder and diversity. Polyamory and homosexuality are considered normal, nonbinary people—even Ymisen’s naive and bookish heir—are accepted, and amputees receive societal support. Simultaneously, Chynchin breathes charming and humorous magic. As expatriate Androu proclaims after a marketplace incident involving a bolt of cloth, a goat, and a pyramid of eggplants, “Is so I know I’m back in Chynchin! Only place in the world where a watermillion could bounce.”

“Watermillion,” “ingenieurs,” and “kenned” form some of Hopkinson’s magnificent foundation: language enriched by variant spellings, patois, and precise syntax. This linguistic brickwork builds the world of Chynchin while demonstrating the wealth of real-world Caribbean culture. In that sense, Veycosi’s development in a land of caiman-gods, tar-transmuting witches, and child-eating demons brings the reader home as well, forcing us to confront the moments when we ourselves put the need for applause before “needful things.” I’ve never met a book I wanted to throw across the room as much as I wanted its next part to complete its protagonist’s comeuppance, and I am proud to report Blackheart Man intact. Veycosi’s antics–and their explosive end–will stay with me long past any destructive urge.