A very fun and heroic alternate-history-Civil War story with Orisha magic and sky pirates. New Orleans is an independent city-state whereas the rest of the US is split apart by an elongated Civil War. The main character is a girl who has a connection with the goddess of storms, Oya. She overhears a transaction where a scientist from Haiti plans to give a terrible weapon known as The Black God's Drums over to the confederates, quickly followed by an ominous vision from Oya. She knows she has to intervene somehow, and who better to recruit than a piratess/smuggler with an airship.

This was a great, quick romp about unlikely heroes and an interesting Civil War retelling. I wish it was longer and involved a little more character development. ( )

So Much Potential...

CW: Racism (Against Black people - shown as appropriately wrong, Slurs against Asian people included in dialogue and narration - not addressed), Slavery, Injury Detail, Sex Work

Alternative history steampunk New Orleans with a diverse crew of sky pirates and god powers.

There are so many elements to this novella that are great -- The alternative New Orleans and the general worldbuilding and set dressing, the gods and how they travelled with the people and connected to certain individuals, and some lovely turns of phrase and passages. But there are also a number of things working against it for me -- The length and depth of the story, which seemed like it would have been better served as a tighter short story or expanded on and allowed to breathe as a novel, the narrative itself that is great in theory, but didn't work as well for me and was overshadowed by other elements being so strong (both of which contribute to or are exacerbated by the pacing being a little unwieldy, and the repeated inclusion of a slur as a name for a character without any commentary. This last point is linked to how the protagonist sees and names people by a single seemingly obvious fact about them, whether this be their nationality/ heritage, religion, etc. There is a Mongolian character, who frankly only seems to be included for this weirdness, she mistakenly believes is Chinese who she names a slur. The character is corrected about their origin, but the pejorative is never addressed. I am unsure where this book was published, but the word used is absolutely a slur in the UK and I have seen North American comedians discuss the slur. It's especially weird in a book that includes the Confederates and slavery.

I really wanted to love this and adore the idea on paper and some of the passages, but the negative elements detracted too heavily from the wonderful concepts and some moments of brilliance. I would still like to check out more from this author for sure.

The narrator is phenomenal and truly imbues the words with drama and emotion.

Shout out to the people taking reviewing this book as an opportunity to be extremely racist, play down the evils of the Confederates, bemoan a book having an "unrealistic" diverse cast, and even calling the simple fact of having a Black femme on the cover "virtue signalling". And by shout out I mean WTF get out of here with that BS and get help. Also, please learn that racism requires a sociopolitical power imbalance, so you should be incorrectly whinging about perceived prejudice instead. ( )

Take some super good fantasy with a good African/Caribbean flavour, season with a nice hint of steampunk, and bake slowly for a few of hours in an althist New Orleans: what more can you ever want from a book?

This good length novella is from around the same time as Djèlí was writing the Dead Djinn series, and with all of these stories you really pick up on the time in Djèlí's writing that he begins to introduce steampunk elements into his unique and wonderful style of fantasy.

A really well written, really enjoyable read.

For my next P. Djèlí Clark story, i'm going back in time.   I managed to track down some earlier stories of his that i missed: gotta read them all.   First up of those will be The Things My Mother Left Me. ( )

Summer 2019 (Hugo Award Nominee 2019 - Novella);

This was stunning. After a little surprised blinking, struggling, and sinking I fell right into this world, with its indepth point of view and dialogue vernacular that grabs you by the hand, and starts you running, expecting you to keep pace and pick up everything as you are going.

The world around this book is a lush, dark New Orleans with rumblings of lives still touched by the gods. It is the tale of a young urchin carrying one goddess and rogue carrying her sister-goddess, on the path of trying to save the world.

I love that our main character is so young, naive, gullible, and unaware. So often we are given characters in full presence of the situations they are in, the conversations they must take part in, the cost and consequences of the choices and mistakes they make, none of which are available her. We are privy the hunger of our young ingénue as she is volley between goddess avatar, once beloved orphan, street thief, threatening dreamer, and full circle, ten-year deal marker, who understands the necessity of education.

I would love to see more of this series and will definitely be keeping an eye on Clark. This came off far more glorious than my opinion of "Washington's Teeth" and I'll definitely be looking for more books and short stories of theirs in the future. ( )

Picked this up because OMG LOOK AT THAT BADASS COVER!

It’s short, well written, interesting. It has steam engines, and gas emissions, and bombs, and magic, and beautiful captains, and queer people, scientists, magic, orishas, nuns, and strong women! What more could you ask?

Well, you could start by adding at least another hundred pages or so, and maybe a second POV narration.

The story goes like this. We have a protagonist, Crepper, who’s very young and living on the streets. She overhears a shady deal, and sells it to the awesome, queer, super hot, amazing captain I’m kinda literary in love with, Anne-Marie. The two of them, along with some people from Anne-Marie’s crew, must fight some backwards racist scum to save a scientist that has an invention that could ruin the whole city. Oh, and they both have parts of deities living inside them.
Can you tell this story in a hundred pages and make the bonding between the women feel real and their motives understood and felt by the reader? I think not.

The world building is very thick and feels real but we do not get to spend enough time with the two women in order to get to know them. Thus the story becomes a bit boring, even though many exciting things keep happening. It’s because we haven’t had the time to bond with both women.

I’d have loved it if it were longer, and maybe if it also included captain Anne-Marie’s POV so we can see her denial of the deity within her, her inner struggle with all this power and the fight to retain her sense of self. See how maybe she learns from Creeper how to be freer, and how they end up forming an unlikely connection as sisters. I wanted more. It has the elements to be more and I really hope there gets to be a sequel that’s the appropriate size.
( )