The Black God's Drums

by P. Djèlí Clark

[celinenyx]

The Black God's Drums is a fun alternate history/steampunk novella featuring Creeper - a plucky orphan who becomes embroiled in a plot to destroy independent New Orleans.

The writing of The Black God's Drums is very 'voicey', written in a way that closely resembles the main character's inner dialogue. This can be a bit hit or miss - sometimes it can be very jarring if the voice is too overpowering. I thought P. Djèlí Clark did a good job, striking a balance between Creeper's thoughts and more concrete description. In tone, The Black God's Drums resembles Elizabeth Bear's Karen Memory a lot; both are steampunk alternate history kind of stories featuring 'unlikely' protagonists. In the case of Karen Memory, that's a young sex worker, and in Drums, the orphaned child of a sex worker. Narratively the stories are very different, but because I read the two so close to each other, I experienced a strange overlapping where it felt like I was reading two books in the same series or universe (while they're obviously not - even though they both contain an unlikely rescue with an airship).

It's a common issue with novellas that they leave readers wanting more, and I felt similarly in this case. The gods inhabiting humans intrigued me, and by the end of the story, I felt like I still wanted to have more details on how this actually works. Ultimately, I think my enjoyment was slightly impeded by the fact that I know very little of the history of the southern United States, and the subtleties of the alternate history presented here were lost on me.

Content Warnings: slavery, weapon of mass destruction, death, death of parent.