Artsy with Mya

I honestly expected to like this book a little bit more than I ended up doing. The title and the description really did a lot to draw me into to the book and made me think that this story would be a little bit more than what it turned out to be. This story is a mystery story with a strong mixing of academic politics and a little bit of academic misogyny as well.   By the end of the book, I thought that the story was just fine. Fine but not something that I would seek out to read again.  The writing and formatting of this book did not help draw me into the story at all, but instead kept breaking my immersion into it. which I have found to be a pattern with this particular style of writing. The characters also did not keep my interest or draw me in in any way. I found them to be rather dry, superficial and insufferable.  I did finish the book and found the conclusion to be satisfying if not particularly surprising. The story was overall fine, but not really something I...

 This is a book about a topic that was not familiar to me, not I daresay it would be familiar to the general population  not close to the places in the book. Throughout learning about slavery and how the enslaved escaped to freedom, I never learned about the existence of this swamp and how so many enslaved people managed to escape and live in this huge swamp.  One thing that I found particularly interesting was the explanation and discussion of the different layers and types of maroonage that existed within the swamp. The way that the different layers of maroonage co-existed and worked with each other to survive was incredible to read about.  Perhaps the most documented types of marooners in the book were the ones that marooned and stayed along the edges and outskirts of the swamp either to use it as a passageway to freedom in the North or because their families were still enslaved and they wanted to stay nearer to them.  But some marooners that there is still n...