Tag Archives: New Orleans

The Black God’s Drums: A Moment in Speculative Fiction

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It would seem I’m becoming quite the P. Djeli Clark fan on this blog. I wrote in my review of The Book of Witches that “. . . this author just has my number. It seems like I’ll come out drooling no matter what he’s written.”

This has certainly been true for any of the books in his A Dead Djinn in Cairo series, but also for his more horror-focused works like Ring Shout.

Perhaps I wasn’t drooling at the end of The Black God’s Drums (I’ve been working really hard on that lol) but I can genuinely say I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Clark is becoming THEE Steampunk author in my mind, the one whose themes and tropes I will associate with the genre moving forward.

The Black God’s Drums, shares many elements of Clark’s other works, namely queer representation, richly detailed alternate history, and truly great cast of leading women.

Where I felt The Black God’s Drums stood apart from Clark’s canon, was its setting, and the prominence of Orisha gods and goddesses.

Focusing a bit more on the setting, I found that I could not wholly divorce Clark’s New Orleans from that of other short stories and novels I’ve read recently which took place in that (kinda weird but never dull) city.

Indeed, The Black God’s Drums felt as if it could have been happening right alongside N.K. Jemisin’s “The Effluent Engine”, which was published originally for a fundraiser in 2010 (A Story for Haiti), and then again in an anthology Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories (2011).

Effluent Engine was published twice more in 2018 — the same year as The Black God’s Drums debuted — once in Lightspeed Magazine, and finally in How Long Til Black Future Month (which is where I read it). This seems significant somehow and though this is pure conjecture and feels entirely too well conceived and executed, I would not be surprised if it had something to do with 2018 being New Orleans’s tricentennial.

Of course, The Ballad of Perilous Graves was never far from mind either and even though I didn’t pick out any shared elements (besides things that fly that “shouldn’t” (like boats or buses)), Clark’s novella certainly felt like it could have existed in Perilous Graves‘s history.

I felt this conversation (which might not have been intended at all; but also might have been) with other New Orleans based speculative fiction was a feature of the story, and not a bug. Much in the same way The Deep had a history which added significance and meaning to its existence beyond just the story within its pages, so too did The Black Gods Drums acquire a kind of place within the geography of speculative fiction (even if only in my own mind).

I also mentioned Orisha gods and goddesses earlier, and it would be a shame not to return to them now as they were also one of my favorite parts of the book. Because of their use and inclusion in the story, I think we might also be able to consider TBGD part of the Godpunk genre as well.

My previous experience with the Orisha pantheon, and Yoruba religion, stems mostly from books like David Mogo Godhunter, and the Nsibidi Scripts (Akata) series from Nnedi Okorafor.

I didn’t recognize Oya and Oshun from either of those books (although the Okorafor books I read a LONG time ago), so it was cool to encounter two new (to me) goddesses. Their appearance in a setting outside of Africa seemed noteworthy and if their actions in the story are anything to judge by, powerful and badass.

It’s worth mentioning that this book was nominated for a Hugo in 2019, against heavy hitters like Martha Well’s Artificial Condition, Seanan McGuire’s Beneath the Sugar Sky, and Binti: The Night Masquerade. Of the novellas I’ve read from that year, I probably would have chosen Binti, but Murderbot is also high on my list. While everything I’ve mentioned above means that The Black Gods Drums is an excellent story and well worth reading, it just didn’t quite reach the level of those other nominations for me.

Give This One Read?

Definitely. There is so much to consider in these scant 107 pages that I feel like my review is longer than the text itself. For me, Clark has proven himself to be THE Steampunk author, and this novella is a great addition to his canon. In many ways it resembles his other works, primarily in its themes of queer representation, detailed alternate history, and a great cast of female characters.

But it is also different. It’s setting in New Orleans connects it with other author’s works of the time, marking it as part of a moment in SFF. The use of the Orisha pantheon connects it still further with similar work, but also just ups the cool factor in general.

While I would not have awarded this one the Hugo myself, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still an incredible book. I hope to see Creeper and the captain in another steampunk New Orleans adventure soon!

That’s all I have for this week! What are your thoughts? Have you read this one before? Would you consider giving it a shot? What are your favorite P. Djeli Clark stories? Your fav Steam punk? Any other stories set in NOLA that I should read?

Can’t wait to read your thoughts in the comments.

Until next time!

A Shot of Pure Imagination: The Ballad of Perilous Graves

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I could hardly wait to read this book when I first heard about it back in June of 2022, but I held my not-quite-alive-but-not-dead horses about it and waited until recently for my turn to select it for our monthly book club.

See, in real life, New Orleans is the type of place that doesn’t even need the suspension of disbelief required of a book or other work of fiction. I Googled a history of the city, and the first result, History of New Orleans from neworleans.com, reads like the wiki page of a fantasy novel. Highlights include:

  • Colonial New Orleans
  • Beset by Pirates and Privateers
  • Mardi Gras (of course)
  • Highest concentration of Millionares in mid 1800s
  • Victorian New Orleans
  • The Dawn of Jazz
  • Katrina

I’m sure I could pull soo much more out of the article too if only I could sit still long enough to do more than skim something these days. Anyway, the point is, New Orleans is already its own speculative reality.

I’ve been twice, and can confirm, the city is exactly as surreal and baffling as it sounds. Music of all kinds seems to leak from any open door, window, or crevice. There’s no shortage of new and interesting kinds of food. In one bar we went to (which had no sign and required a passcode), there were literal vampires, and someone had struck up a conversation about opening their third eye.

(I’ve also recently learned that cab drivers won’t pick up fares in certain areas because there are too many ghosts which often disappear before the ride is done and stiff the driver)

And of course, perhaps the most fantastical element of real-life New Orleans: you’re ALLOWED TO DRINK OUTSIDE. Like pretty much anywhere . . . so far as I could tell.

Anyway, what if a writer was to pour his considerable imagination and love for this amazing city into a piece of fiction? What might we find there? A super human girl who can lift cars? Floating 3D graffitti which gives people such a pleasureable high that they abandon jobs and families and lives to follow these tags around like a bunch of technicolor zombies? Actual zombies? Driving undead carriages through a part of town reserved for those who are quite dead but not quite gone?

Whatever the F*@k a nutria is?

These are the promises of Alex Jenning’s The Ballad of Perilous Graves, and in those promises, the book succeeds in droves. Somehow, he is able to take an already heightened reality and turn it up even more. Way past 11. Maybe 12, or even 20.

There is no shortage of imagination in this book. I think perhaps most readers will give a raving review on these merits alone. I nearly did myself as I’m pretty much a worldbuilding junky.

However, my main critique (and seemingly the same complaints of the others in the book club), is that this book is LONG. It takes a long time to read and it’s not just because the book is 453 pages. It’s because the reader cannot go nearly a full one of those pages without a break in scene, a jump backward in time, or a jump . . . sideways? . . . . in time?

The cast of heroes is thankfully not too large (4 ish really), but this gets somewhat complicated by the (slight spoiler) fact that some of them have doubles which aren’t delineated very clearly until three quarters through the book when they start interacting with each other.

There are at least three main villains. On the order of nine McGuffins and a whole host of bizarre settings of which an underwater bar in the renovated hull of a crashed UFO is not even the wackiest (again 20/10 worldbuilding).

Within all of that, we also have a post-op trans man as one of the main characters. I’m undecided as to whether or not I would have liked to see this element brought forward more. I understand that every story with a trans person does not need to be ABOUT being trans, but also these kind of details are not for nothing. If there was a greater significance (or message) present within his inclusion, it seemed (to me) to get lost amongst the rest of the noise.

Given all of these elements, it’s pretty much a miracle the book is as comprehensible as it is. However, I eventually did find myself weighed down by keeping track of all of these elements and by the last third I just wanted to get to the end.

Give this One A Read?

If you’re someone who doesn’t mind feeling a bit (ok a bunch) lost while reading a book and are interested in a concentrated shot of pure imagination, definitely give this book a read. I cannot imagine a better tribute to such an amazing city.

If you’re going to get annoyed trying to keep about a million details in your head, and frustrated if they’re not consistent (they may be I just stopped checking after a while), perhaps this is one to pass on.

That’s it for me this week. Has anyone read this? Which part of Hidden NOLA would you like to see in “real” NOLA (I’d say sky trolleys FTW!)? What were your favorite parts? Your least favorite parts? Please let me know in the comments!