Thank you to netgalley for the free audio arc, unfortunately I just couldn't get invested in this book and was unable to finish it. I'm leaving a 3 star rating because I doubt that this is a bad book, I just wasn't hooked enough to get through it.

This book is an epic. A modern classic telling the story of one family in Segu, modern day Mali, from 1795 into the middle of the 19th century. We follow four sons and their sons across the world throughout West Africa, to Brasil and to London. The writing has a folkloric tone to it, it's a storytellers story, that weaves in pieces of culture and clothing, language and food, to build out a full world. It's a lot to keep up with and slips so casually between perspectives that sometimes it took a minute to keep up with which perspective we were in, especially as with the introduction of Islam and the slave trade multiple characters get multiple names.
It was a fascinating story and great for fans of historical fiction or high fantasy who like these genres for the strength of their world building, for while this story is set very much in a real world, the description reminded me of high fantasy as it doesn't use flowery language but give intense detail, introducing different cultures through so much description.
The narrator is close to the mind of each of the perspectives which sometimes made this a difficult read. There is repeated sexual assault including of children which is not spoken of with a modern perspective, but is not excused either. The selfishness of many of the characters in these moments, however, does make it hard to listen to.
The narrator did an excellent job, she was excellent at the emotion and at differentiating voices, and to my limited experience the accents were done well and didn't pull me out of the story as can happen.

Segu takes the listener to another time, place and culture. With the omnipresent narration, you're taken on a journey with a cast of characters and religions. The narrator was melodic and it was easy to listen to and the book contained so much detail it's one that you could easily listen to more than once and take different parts of the story away with you each time.

I enjoyed this, although I found it quite difficult to follow in audiobook form. It is intricately woven and beautifully built, but I found it somewhat dry, potentially due to its extensive scope. However, this may be on me and the fact that going into the book with no prior knowledge, I had to stop after a couple of hours and look up some reviews and summaries online in order to get a handle on who everybody was and what they were up to.