The Black God's Drums

Creeper is a girl living on the streets of New Orleans when she overhears some men talking. She takes what she hears to an airship captain and together with the captain and her crew, she races to stop disaster. Creeper lives during the late 1800s, in a steampunk New Orleans that exists as a free city on the edge of a Confederacy that fought the Civil War into an uneasy standstill. She also lives with an Afrikan goddess living in her head.

This is a novella that packs in an enormous number of elements. The world building here is just fantastic. Clark is an historian and there's a depth of knowledge that informs his alternate world, which he wove into the story in a natural way. And with both Creeper and Captain Ann-Marie, Clark has show more managed to create complex and interesting characters in very few pages. This genre is not at all in my wheelhouse, but I really liked this and I wanted to learn more about this world. show less

The Black God’s Drums
Author: P. Djeli Clark
Publisher: Tor/Macmillan Publishing
Publishing Date: 2018
Pgs: 111
Dewey: F CLA
Disposition: Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
Steampunk New Orleans is a free city between the Free Isles, Haiti, the Confederates, the Union, and the European powers. Airships, Voodoo, Storms...and weapons of mass destruction birthed by calling forth the Gods of Africa in storm and waves and veangeance. Calling them forth and waking them up, may do you no good if you can’t put them back to slumber...and if they decided to stay and continue, a neverending hurricane that’s the fear if Shango’s Thunder is ever used show more again. And a Haitian scientist has gone missing. And some Confederate agents are in New Orleans trying to find him. Creeper overhears bits and pieces. She has to find someone to help...for a fee, of course, street children in New Orleans know that information is worth money in this Casablanca style city caught between hot and cold war. Oh, and Creeper has an African storm goddess in her brain. The Black God’s Drum has only played once and it helped free Haiti, the Isles, and New Orleans. If it plays again, the world fears it may never stop.
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Genre:
Science Fiction
Fantasy
Steampunk

Why this book:
Steampunk mixed with Afrofuturism...I’m in.
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The Feel:
You are there. You feel these characters, especially Creeper. The opening of The Black God’s Drum has an incredible voice, rich, deep.

I am a girl on the verge of womanhood, L’Afrique heritage, in steampunk New Orleans with a god in my head...that’s how good this is written. The escapism is spot on. It sucks you in.

Favorite Character:
Oya, the goddess in Creeper’s mind, reminds me of my great grandma. There isn’t a single thing in the performance that I can point to that reminds me, but it surely does.

Sister Eunice and Sister Agnes are great characters.

Favorite Concept:
The worldbuilding in htis book is awesome. My heart swelled a little bit when they started talking about General Tubman fighting a guerilla war in the South and running escaped slaves to the North.

Hmm Moments:
Steampunk New Orleans plus alternate history, I guess the Confederates showing up should have been expected.

Juxtaposition:
If the real world had something like the Black God’s Drum, they wouldn’t even be thinking about it. They’d be firing super hurricanes at each other whether we ended up with something like Jupiter’s Big Red Spot or not.

Missed Opportunity:
Russian Kalifornians? Would be interesting to see a map of this steampunk world. Love the worldbuilding.
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Pacing:
Great flow.

Last Page Sound:
Love it. Really happy that instead of being handled as just a part one, this story stands on it’s own and if the author wants to return to this world to tell more stories, it is set up to do so. I much prefer this to the cliffhanger in novel form.

Author Assessment:
Incredible. Will definitely read more stories by this author.
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"The Black God's Drums" is one of those rare books where all I really want to say it: "READ THIS: IT'S WONDERFUL" and then add as a postscript:

@HBO please spend a few million making this into an award-winning piece of television.


"The Black God's Drums" is a novella of only 112 pages yet in terms of world-building, character-building and plot twists, it stands up against novel two or three times its length.

Djèli Clark pulls off a first-person narrative that delivers a clear view of a complex alternative history and sustains a level of tension and excitement. The dialogue is perfect, especially the use of dialect, which brightens the storytelling and deepens the characters.

This a sparkling little novella is set in an original and show more uplifting alternative history in which, in the late nineteenth century, New Orleans and Haiti are independent nation-states and the Civil War has a different ending.

The story involves a wicked plot that could bring great destruction, a swashbuckling Haitian airship captain who is strong on technology but refuses to give ground to the old African Gods who call to her, innovative steampunk-ish science that has a dash of magic in it, two black nuns who seem closer to voodoo than Christianity, fanatical soldiers with a scary leader and, at the centre of it all, an engaging, fourteen-years-old goddess-possessed black street child who calls herself Creeper.


Creeper made the book for me. We see the world through her eyes and she is full of fire. At one point, Creeper manages to rescue a key character in the plot. They have never met before and the person being rescued expresses surprise it's just Creeper affecting the rescue.


“Wi. It is just . . . you?”


Creeper's response tells you a lot about he:


"I scowl up at her. I happen to think I’m plenty."

One of the things that I liked about this story was that all the good guys are women or girls, all but one of them is black and all of them kickass in their own ways.

I'm now a P. Djèli Clark fan. I've bought another of his novella, "A Dead Djinn in Cairo" and I'm hoping that he will go on to write some full-length novels. show less

In an alternate 1884 where the civil war divided the country and left a Free New Orleans in between, young Jacqueline - known as Creeper - sees a transaction between some men asking for the Black God's Drum. She knows it's danger for her beloved city, even without the warning from the god Oya, who is somehow a part of her.

The world-building is almost dizzying in this novella and the writing (including the dialog) quite stylized, so you have to kind of go along for the ride and hope it all makes sense. It was a little much for me, but that has more to do with how my brain works than the fault of the story itself. Clark is a master of creating a believable, fully realized world, and he does so here in a very short amount of time while show more still carrying a compelling story. It's not my favorite of his works, but it's a solid, recommendable read to get a sense of his style. show less

The best part of this book was its first-person narrative voice, told from the perspective of a black street urchin with an African goddess in her head-- in a steampunk New Orleans in a timeline where the Civil War ended in a draw, but New Orleans is neutral territory. The main character must get help from an airship smuggler captain when it turns out Confederate racists are building a superweapon in secret, in violation of the treaty. It's good fun, with strong worldbuilding and character. Its main weakness was that it felt a little set-up heavy, with not enough actually happening. It reads like Clark envisions there will be a sequel... but I would read a sequel, so maybe he gets away with it.

Creeper is a young girl living on the streets of an alternate, steampunk, late-1800's NOLA. She makes her way as a pickpocket, but dreams of working on an airship. Her dream moves to the realm of possibility when she gets information about a scientist getting kidnapped for his knowledge of a secret and very dangerous weapon called the Black God's Drum, but she'll need to grapple with the tension between her desire to see the world and her ties to the city she loves. Oh, and she also has an orisha sort of living in her brain...
It's quite short (clocking in at just over 100 pages), but boy, this one packs a good storytelling punch. Anyone who can weave such a good yarn, create such interesting characters, build a fascinating world, and show more set a perfect atmospheric scene in such a few pages is clearly a talent to be watched. Highly recommended. show less

This is the alt history Confederacy story you're looking for.

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for racism.)

The magic of those old Afrikin gods is part of this city, ma maman used to say, buried in its bones and roots with the slaves that built it, making the ground and air and waterways sacred land. Only we forgot the names that went with that power we brought over here. Since Haiti got free, though, those gods were coming back, she’d said, across the waters, all the way from Lafrik. Now here’s two of them in a bordello in New Orleans. Who knows what that means.

The year is 1884, and the Union is still divided. In this alternate steampunk version of American history, the Union and show more Confederacy called a truce after eight years of war, in the Armistice of Third Antietam. Any states not already a part of the Union were abandoned, its enslaved citizens left to perish in bondage. As if the reality of slavery wasn't (isn't) horrific enough, Clark throws in an especially chilling detail, reminiscent of the Sunken Place: slave owners dose their human chattel with a drug called drapeto vapor, which zombifies them into compliance.

I’ve seen the tintype photographs from inside the Confederacy. Shadowy pictures of fields and factories filled with laboring dark bodies, their faces almost all covered up in big black gas masks, breathing in that drapeto vapor. It make it so the slaves don’t want to fight no more, don’t want to do much of nothing. Just work. Thinking about their faces, so blank and empty, makes me go cold inside.

Against this backdrop we meet a plucky AF heroine, thirteen-year-old Creeper (given name Jacqueline). Orphaned three years prior when her mother died of yellow fever, Creeper lives in the nooks and crannies of Les Grand Murs, the Great Wall that surrounds free New Orleans, protecting it from the superstorms that plague the coast - ever since the Haitians let loose a supernatural weapon called The Black God's Drums in order to drive Napoleon and the French from their country.

While hiding in her alcove, scoping out some potential marks, Creeper overhears a plot to deliver a Haitian scientist to the Confederacy. Supposedly this Dr. Duval has found a way to recreate The Black God's Drums, thus unleashing the power of the Gods here on earth once again. With such a powerful weapon in their hands, the Confederacy could actually win the war. Now it's up to a tween pickpocket, an airship captain named Ann-Marie St. Augustine (previously her mother's paramour), a pair of renegade nuns, and a feral child descended from plantation owners to foil the plot and save the day.

And oh, let's not forget the two sister-wife goddesses (or pieces of goddesses, rather) that have attached themselves to Creeper and Ann-Marie.

The Black God's Drums is amazing, and my only complaint is that we don't get to spend more time in the spectacularly captivating world Clark has created here. While Creeper shines (I'm a sucker for girls disguised as boys), every single character is multi-dimensional and engaging. I really love the interplay between Creeper and Ann-Marie - and their goddesses, Oya and Oshun. The relationship between Ann-Marie and Rose adds another layer to an already complex situation. And Sisters Agnès and Eunice are all kinds of awesome.

Clark paints a colorful and vibrant picture of 1884 New Orleans, from the mixed-race and gay-friendly bordello Shá Rouj to the crumbling plantations claimed by the swamps. The alternate history is fascinating, though it's frustrating that we don't learn more about the circumstances leading up to (and fallout of) the treaty; I really, really hope that The Black God's Drums won't be the only glimpse we get into this 'verse. The titular Black God's Drums, particularly how Clark weaves it into Haitian history, is just the icing on the cake.

I need more. Maybe a twenty-something Jacqueline, now a college graduate and bonafide member of the Midnight Robber, helping Ann-Marie and the rest of the crew to take down the Confederacy for good? Bonus points if guerilla fighter Harriet Tubman makes a cameo. Not to typecast her, but Aisha Hinds has to play Tubman in the film version. (She's just too perfect, once you see the monologue episode of Underground you won't ever be able to picture anyone else as Minty.)

And yes, this needs to be a movie like yesterday. Get on this, Hollywood.

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