Title: The Black God’s Drums
Author: P. Djèlí Clark
Genre: Alternate History/Steampunk
Trigger Warnings: Blood, death, guns, kidnapping, knives, mind control, slavery, sex work, sex (mention)
Back Cover:
Creeper, a scrappy young teen, is done living on the streets of New Orleans. Instead, she wants to soar, and her sights are set on securing passage aboard the smuggler airship Midnight Robber. Her ticket: earning Captain Ann-Marie’s trust using a secret about a kidnapped Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums.
But Creeper keeps another secret close to heart–Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, who speaks inside her head and grants her divine powers. And Oya has her own priorities concerning Creeper and Ann-Marie…
Review:
This book is short, easy to read, and very, very good.
It’s also a hard book to write a review about because you start off knowing very little and the story unfolds as you go along. It starts off with Creeper overhearing some information about some scientist and a weapon that everybody seems to want, and deciding to trade that information to Captain Ann-Marie in exchange for a place on her airship.
Oh, and Oya has given Creeper a vision that probably means something bad is going to happen to New Orleans.
I really don’t want to say any more than that because what exactly is happening gets unfolded throughout the story. Creeper and Ann-Marie are both interesting and distinct characters, and so is Oya even though she’s kinda doing her own thing in Creeper’s head, and the side characters are surprisingly good too for as little page time as they get.
I also want to talk about the world for a second, because I love it. It’s an alternate history, slightly steampunk-y version of New Orleans where the American Civil War ended in a complicated peace treaty where the South kept their slaves and subdued them with a mind-altering gas to keep them from running away, but New Orleans became a neutral area where everyone was free because it’s a major port city for airships coming between the North, the South, and the Haitian Free Isles and other Caribbean nations. It’s an interesting idea and I really want more books in this world because I want to explore it more.
The only real criticism I have of the book is the ending, which built up some really dramatic tension and then skipped over the actual culmination by jumping to the next morning with an “I don’t remember much of what happened last night” and you’re just expected to accept that the day was saved without actually knowing how it happened. I guess you’re just supposed to accept that Oya’s goddess magic did it? Personally, I wanted to know how Creeper fixed that entire disaster.
But despite that, it was an enjoyable read. I hesitate to call it “fun” because it is fairly dark (lots of death, discussions of slavery), but it’s a quick read and I’m very glad I picked it up.
And as a completely unrelated side note, every time I read Oya’s name the song “Oya” by Ghanan artist Azizaa Mystic popped into my head, because it’s catchy and worth listening to. (TW for strong language in the song.)
Bluejay Reads 