I won a copy of this book from BookishFirst.com after reading the First Look. It looked intriguing about a new species of aquatic human created after pregnant African slaves bound for America were thrown overboard during labor, because of lack of supplies. I could not find any history of this actually happening to pregnant slaves but it did to male slaves. In this fantasy, the babies were born in the water and rescued by whales(?). It was all kind of fuzzy to me. To avoid the pain of remembering, every generation an Historian was chosen to keep all the racial memories. The current Historian is Yutu, but she was not prepared for the responsibility of being the vessel for their ancestors' memories and it is killing her. Annually, there is a ceremony, where the Historian shares all the history with the others for a few days and then take sit all back, but instead after sharing the history, Yuti flees to the surface, where she meets two-legged beings. Unfortunately, I found it very confusing, not helped with the inconsistency of the use of pronouns. I also found it very offensive in the Afterward, when the fictional throwing of thousands of slaves in labor overboard is called "the greatest holocaust the world has ever known", as if 6 million Jews murdered was nothing and a few pages later comparing this to a Passover Seder. Would I recommend this book? No.