Dwayne E. Hackett’s People of Nyame: The Emissary is a bold Afrofuturist space opera that follows the Umoja Compact, a civilization founded by descendants of the African diaspora in the Nyame Cluster. Finally, the Umoja has settled in an interstellar colony, far from the cycles of destruction and exploitation back on Mother Earth. But an incursion by the Sol Concord, the dregs of the imperial powers on earth, threatens their ordered life. The Dyson Almond becomes the center of the struggle, an ancient alien archive vessel that enters the Loango’s Reach system, selecting anthropologist Dr. Ashley Walker, who has visionary dreams, a mute boy orphaned by the violence of the Concord, and a captured soldier known as Kaleb Morgan. With the help of the Almond’s intelligence, manifesting as mythical characters like Ptah and Anansi, Ashley must navigate a pool of consciousness that preserves civilizations while fending off attacks from the Concord. Will she allow the destruction of the Concord or choose restraint in this battle for life or extinction?

What fascinated me about this book was the humanist character work. Dwayne E. Hackett creates compelling characters and allows them to evolve against the backdrop of fleet warfare, cosmic horror, and intimate relationships. There is something I loved in each of the characters, like the illuminating relationship between Ashley and the gifted engineer named Ricardo; the stoic leadership of Commander Ezekiel Blackman, and Xavier’s trauma. The worldbuilding in People of Nyame is remarkably sophisticated, and the author brings Caribbean, African, and Afro-Latinx traditions into the Umoja Compact. These traditions are brilliantly translated into the Unity tongue and the Ubuntu system, languages, and political structures. The story is filled with action, which is occasionally slowed by meditations on the human condition and greed. The storytelling effectively mixes a compelling narrative voice with clinically based “observation logs” from the Almond to create the dichotomy between machine detachment and human emotion. This book is a great read for those who dare to dream about a better, healthier world.

Dwayne E. Hackett’s People of Nyame: The Emissary is set in 2495, where Ashley Walker is a Umojan scholar living on Ubuntu, the capital world of a people who left Earth and built new homes in the Nyame Cluster. Her planned research mission to the Dyson Almond, a vast alien object near Loango’s Reach, is halted when the Sol Concord invades to seize the object and the people linked to it. After Freedom’s Landing is attacked, Ashley survives inside a refugee tunnel while her husband, engineer Ricardo Clarke, tries to reach her aboard a secret Umojan ship. Captain Ezekiel Blackman searches for a missing boy named Xavior Baptiste, whose drawings may connect him to the Almond. As the war closes in, Ashley must face a force that is studying humanity before deciding its future.

Dwayne E. Hackett’s The Emissary is expansive Afrofuturist science fiction, and the author does an excellent job with the tech and world-building. I love that the Umoja are descendants of the African Diaspora who settled the Nyame Cluster after leaving Earth. They even have a shared language, Unity. Ashley is a wonderful lead. She's intelligent and determined, and a rare gem in a genre where women are woefully under-represented. On the flip side, Hackett gives us the Sol Concord, represented sharply by Captain Ambrose, who rebrands an assault as containment, reducing civilian deaths to little more than policy. Hackett is particularly gifted in visual settings, the standout being The Almond’s interior: an artificial sun over an ocean where an island rises from water, with a curved horizon above pale stone. Readers who enjoy space operas with political history, alien archives, and Afrofuturist world-making will adore this book. Very highly recommended.