TITLE: The Black God’s Drums
AUTHOR: P. Djèlí Clark
112 pages, Tor.com, ISBN 9781250294715 (softcover)
DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): In an alternate New Orleans caught in the tangle of the American Civil War, the wall-scaling girl named Creeper yearns to escape the streets for the air--in particular, by earning a spot on-board the airship Midnight Robber. Creeper plans to earn Captain Ann-Marie’s trust with information she discovers about a Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums.
But Creeper also has a secret herself: Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, speaks inside her head, and may have her own ulterior motivations.
Soon, Creeper, Oya, and the crew of the Midnight Robber are pulled into a perilous mission aimed to stop the Black God’s Drums from being unleashed and wiping out the entirety of New Orleans.
MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
MY THOUGHTS:
The Black God’s Drums is one of those genre-blending novellas that squeezes an inordinate amount of world-building into a short 110 pages without feeling over-packed and without sacrificing character and plot. The book is “retro-Afrofuturism,” to quote Tade Thompson. It is steampunk, wherein airships abound. It is alternate history in which what would be the continental US is four smaller countries in an uneasy truce, while the Caribbean is home to The Free Islands. It’s also fantasy, with African gods interacting/bonding with humans to affect the physical world without ever physically manifesting themselves). And it’s a coming-of-age story featuring a thirteen-year-old protagonist, but I hesitate to call it a “young adult” novel based on the tone and style.
At the center of all of this is Creeper, an orphan street urchin. Creeper’s life could be more comfortable – several of the adults she’s acquainted with offer her a way off of the streets but accepting would mean giving up independence and being forced to conform to gender “norms,” including clothing expectations, that Creeper has no interest in complying with. She’s a complexly written protagonist with goals and insecurities, struggling with the loss of her parents and the precarious situation her city is in. She’s eminently likable. You want her to succeed. She’s also connected to Oya, orisha of wind and storms, and the visions and feeling Oya sends her are not always in synch with what Creeper wants for herself.
Captain Ann-Marie, the Free Island smuggler/privateer, has a similar problem thanks to Oshun, orisha of water. The interplay between the woman and the girl – where they are in life, how they cope with being a vessel for a god’s personality and power, how they each perceive the other – is part of what makes the novella so compelling. It’s a wonderful dynamic that avoids the twin tropes of “only talking about men” and “romance between the two female leads.”
Another compelling aspect is how Clark has crafted and layered in his alternate history. So much 1800s alternate history is focused on the Confederacy winning the Civil War and taking over. Clark gives us a North America in an uneasy peace between four geographic factions, Free New Orleans being the most precariously positioned of them all thanks to both politics and geography. The Free Islands are in almost as much danger as New Orleans, saved mostly by the existence of the titular weapon.
The supporting cast is also interesting, from the orishas who work through the leads, to Captain Ann-Marie’s multi-cultural and multi-gendered crew, to the Sisters Agnes (blind) and Eunice (a bit maniacal), Creeper’s all-knowing contacts at the local convent. The Sisters especially play a crucial role in the proceedings in a wonderfully written scene full of banter, backstory, and just a hint that these women may be more than they appear. I’d read a novella focused just on Agnes and Eunice and their ward Féral.
The Black God’s Drums does tell a complete story, but I really hope this is not the last we’ve seen of this world. There’s so much hinted at in the tragic histories of New Orleans and the Free Islands, the swamp people and the Jeannnots, and the Captain’s airship, the Midnight Robber, that I’d love to see explored.