strange and random happenstance

The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
Published by: Tor.com
Publication Date: August 21st, 2018
Format: Kindle, 112 Pages
Rating: ★★★★1/2★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

It's 1884 and the Civil War has been in detente for years, nothing more than a temporary armistice. Skirmishes still break out and old General Tubman is still waging her guerilla war against the Confederate States of America where slavery has reached new levels of horror with the use of drapeto gas. In the free city of New Orleans street urchin Creeper is about to stumble across valuable information that could reignite the war. She lives atop Les Grand Murs, large walls constructed as airship ports that also saves the city from the tempêtes noires that strike New Orleans once a year. Thirteen years ago Creeper was born during one of these storms, making her one of Oya's children. Oya is an Orisha, the goddess of storms, life, death, and rebirth. One night Creeper is hiding in her alcove and hears soldiers for the Confederate States planning a meeting with a Haitian scientist to acquire The Black God's Drums. Creeper isn't naive and she puts two and two together and realizes her information could get her the life she wants aboard an airship as well as save some lives. She approaches an airship captain at Madame Diouf's establishment. The captain, Ann-Marie St. Augustine, was a client of Creeper's mother and is known to smuggle guns for General Tubman. What Creeper didn't realize is that Ann-Marie is the child of Oshun, Oya's sister-wife. It can't be a coincidence, especially once Creeper learns the history of The Black God's Drums. The Black God's Drums are known by another name, Shango's Thunder. Shango is Oya's husband. The weapon has only been deployed once, when Dessalines unleashed it against the French to free Haiti. They won, but at what cost? The storm didn't just decimate the French, it killed so so many Haitians. And the tempêtes noires are the aftermath of Shango's Thunder almost a hundred years later. If the Confederate States were to get this weapon they would unleash it against the Union. But these soldiers aren't the only ones who know of Shango's Thunder making its way to New Orleans. The Jeannots, comprised of disaffected Confederate States soldiers who are patriots to the Old New Orleans and want to take back the city for themselves or destroy it want it as well. It is up to Creeper and Ann-Marie to ban together as sister-wives and save a city they both love.

Before I reread this book to review it, and yes, sometimes I do have to reread books to review them, I read a rather bloated critical darling that just wasn't for me. Transitioning from that epic tome to this spare tale was an awakening as to how magnificent this story is. Coming in at a quarter the word count this book's worldbuilding leaves that aforementioned critical darling in the dust. The perfection of language, the specificity of events, the richness of the storytelling left me begging for more, not begging for it to be over. P. Djèlí Clark is an author whose words sing like the masked Jeannots. But it's really the worldbuilding that is breaktaking. It will literally take your breath away. Here we have an alternative outcome to the Civil War, as in, there isn't yet an outcome. Haiti and the Caribbean are the Free Isles. What Dessalines started in 1791 had a chain reaction for the whole Caribbean. But that had a negative impact on the American Civil War. The Confederate States were going to hold onto slavery at all costs. And a war that ended in our world in 1865 is still happening twenty years later. And while many people will point to the Steampunk elements of this story, that's just the cherry on top of the cake. That's a nice decorative glace touch. But stripe this story down and it's the alternative history that just works so well and is terrifyingly believable and the characters that drive the narrative. Though what I want to point to as working so effectively is the Orisha. For myself whenever you have Gods brought across the seas I can't but help think of American Gods and Anansi, who while West African, doesn't belong to the Orisha. And the reason I always think of American Gods is because it's a concept that Neil Gaiman got right. But I feel the time has come to pass the torch, to get authentic voices to continue the stories, to write new tales. And I can't help but see how the Orisha have been embraced in literature in recent years. Just look to Tomi Adeyemi's Legacy of Orïsha trilogy that really didn't work for me. It's hard to balance the human with the divine, and P. Djèlí Clark did just that. This book should be looked to as a classic in the vein of American Gods if only so we can somehow convince P. Djèlí Clark to write more stories within this universe. He got the Orisha right folks! And that, right there, should be shouted from the tops of Les Grand Murs!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alternate History, American Gods, Civil War, Confederacy, For the Love of Book Clubs, Haiti, Neil Gaiman, New Orleans, Orisha, Oshun, Oya, P. Djèlí Clark, Shango's Thunder, The Black God's Drums, Tomi Adeyemi

Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century Book 1) by Cherie Priest
Published by: Tor
Publication Date: September 29th, 2009
Format: Paperback,  416 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Briar Wilkes lives in the shadow of a great wall and all that happened before it was erected. Within that wall she was married to a great inventor, Leviticus Blue. There he created The Boneshaker, a device to aid in the mining of Alaska, which instead devastated Seattle and released a blight gas that would turn people into the walking undead. Behind the wall Briar's father was sheriff and what he did brought further ridicule to Briar's name. The wall was built to keep the gas and the rotters in. On the day the last brick was laid, Briar gave birth to Levi's son, Zeke. Sixteen years later, life just keeps getting harder.

Zeke has questions, yet his mother would just like to leave the past behind. Learning of an entire population of people in the quarantined area, Zeke decides to go beyond the wall. There's two ways in, under or over, he uses the cities drainage system for a quick excursion to relieve his curiosity about his father and the life his parents lived in a quaint Victorian house, before his father destroyed the city. Upon finding Zeke missing, Briar decides that she must go and rescue her boy from his own stupidity. An earthquake stops her from going under, so she must go over the wall. Zeke searches for answers while Briar aligns herself with a rag tag group of folks who hold her father sacred as she looks for her son.

Going into the unknown, their lives are both constantly in danger, from rotters, blight and from a mysterious underworld boss, Minnericht, who it is rumored, might in fact be Leviticus Blue. Briar needs to find her son and face the past that she has been trying to hide from. If her and Zeke can survive this, maybe Zeke can handle the truth.

Being, in it's most basic form, a Zombie story, it does have the Zombie tropes. Small group of people, striving to survive, some will die, but hopefully some will survive. But Boneshaker overcomes this with the infusion of plucky characters and alt history and a purpose other than survival, with the underlying Minnericht mystery. Also, the trope of endangered child is thankfully not harped on, seeing as Zeke is quite capable in his own way. You could, in essence, say that the story is very much the movie Labyrinth, one of Cherie's favorite Steampunk movies. This weird land beyond a wall has taken Briar's child and she is in constant danger, but due to the friends she makes along the way she is able to have her final showdown and escape the Labyrinth. Though the blight is far scarier than the bog of eternal stench.

A story with a very condensed plot and limited characters, like most survival stories, are at the mercy of those characters. If they are not unique, interesting and believable, the whole house of cards would come falling in on you. Taking just the living characters, Cherie has given us unique people with flaws and foibles that makes you root for them. Briar Wilkes is one of those rare instances where I don't waffle about who she is and what she looks like, I just saw her there instantly in my minds eye. The rough life she's led, after being the bell of the ball, the way the blighted rain has streaked her hair and her clothes, and the introspective life she has become accustomed to living in a world where the only person she can rely on is her son, and he might not even do that if she opened up. Kick ass Western heroine alert here!

Zeke is also an interesting character, in that he's a teenager who puts himself in danger who I didn't spend the entire book hoping he'd die. Yeah, I don't really like those too stupid to live, but at least his decisions once beyond the wall, thankfully take him out of the I want him to die camp. But really, my heart belongs to Lucy O'Gunning, the barkeep who has lost both her arms but thankfully has one robotic one left, who is always upbeat and cheerful, I kind of picture her as Clara from The Guild, where she would love all "the clocky windy stuff" down in the blighted city.

Now the alt history really drew me in as well. Being the time of the civil war, but with obvious mechanical advances that didn't exist, I was interested in how things had changed but stayed the same. I have a feeling Cherie will cover it more in later books, this being a series, but I like how she incorporated elements of really history and how those elements would react to this blight. For example, the Chinese immigrant population was very high in the Pacific Northwest during this time period. From railways to mining, these men where imported to the US, leaving their families behind, to do the jobs no American would do, thank you weird literature class I took in college! Obviously, these people would be so used to adapting to changing situations, that the blight arriving and the wall's erection would actually be, in some respects, good for them. They are able to use their skill sets in order to create an empire under the blighted Seattle that rivals that of Minnericht. Just fascinating, I can't wait to see how else history has been altered!

The mystery of Minnericht to me is actually the driving force of the plot. While, yes, Briar is trying to reunite with her son, that's all well and good, and obviously they have to survive as well, mysteries is what makes books tick for me. Minnericht is an enigma. A man who may or may not be whom everyone thinks he is, though he couldn't possibly comment. Briar is a threat to him. She could confirm or deny the fact. Either way, she is a threat to his way of life. Also, the fact that he has so obviously built up, not just a power base, but an opulent little world, he's like the Lex Luthor or Seattle, because real estate underground is where it's at... yeah, so I just watched Superman again recently... maybe I should just read the next book instead of watching that movie yet again, because once that theme song gets in your head, it's their forever.

Moste Importante Steampunkery:
The technology itself is so amazing in this book. The way the characters have to wear masks to keep the blight out gives the book a claustrophobic air. The Boneshaker itself might be considered the moste Steampunk item, because, it is created and then destroys all the city... but personally, I'm going with Minnericht's invention used by Jeremiah Swakhammer, The Doctor Minnericht Doozy Dazer, called Daisy for short. Capable of emitting an extremely powerful auditory blast that renders the rotters immobile for about three minutes. Sadly, it can take up to fifteen minutes to be ready. But anything that can give a short respite from the rotters is good in my book! Go Daisy go!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Boneshaker, Briar Wilkes, Cherie Priest, Civil War, Clockwork Century, Daisy, Doozy Dazer, Labyrinth, Lex Luthor, Minnericht, Pacific Northwest, Seattle, Superman, The Guild, Zombies

Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles Book 1) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Published by: Little Brown
Publication Date: December 1st, 2009
Format: Hardcover, 563 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Ethan Lawson Wate dreams of the day he can finally leave Gatlin. The small town is suffocating him and his home life isn't the greatest either with his father being a recluse since his mother's death. But that's not Ethan's only dream. He dreams of a girl. He dreams of falling through trees with this girl. This nameless faceless girl whom he clearly loves. On the first day of school he meets Lena Duchannes, quite literally the girl of his dreams. Lena isn't like the other girls, and this draws Ethan to her. In fact she's not like any girls, she's magical, being a Caster. She feels like her entire life is living on borrowed time because come February and her 16th birthday she will either go to the good or the bad. Therefore it's very inconvenient that Ethan and Lena start to fall in love. But perhaps Ethan is what she needs to survive.

Back in December 2009 I had been blogging for about seven months. With my blogging I started to become more savvy about books in general. I became a connoisseur about my book purchases, not buying everything that looked good, instead seeing what other people said and relying more on my fellow blogger community. This of course was a two edged sword, sure I wasn't indiscriminately buying every book out there, but I was getting so many recommendations that, well, my book buying increased more then decreased. One book that everyone was excited for was Beautiful Creatures, and their excitement was contagious. Ironically not only did I buy the book but I won a copy from Little Brown! So I was all set to dive right into this series, and as is usually the case, I didn't get around to it for a few years. It was in fact the release of the movie that finally spurred me into action. Obviously I couldn't NOT watch a movie staring Emma Thompson, I suffered through that second Nanny McPhee movie after all. But the book had to come first!

What really struck me about Beautiful Creatures is it's exotic local. Yes, Gatlin, South Carolina is exotic, at least for popular YA. Usually YA likes to be set among the same popular cities as urban fantasy, laying in the shadows of New York or Chicago. Or it's dystopian and some future unknown ruin of a city. Or it's both, ahem Veronica Roth. But here we have a very recognizable southern US that brings with it all the baggage of the War of Northern Aggression (I should note that all my family fought for the North). There is a charming southerness to the book filled with Civil War reenactments and swampy cemeteries. This brings with it a certain Gothic romanticism to it that makes you think that magic isn't the most unlikely thing that could happen in this setting. Garcia and Stohl capture the town and the environment so well that it almost becomes a character in it's own right.

But despite it's southern hospitality there is still a small town mentality against anything "other." Even if Lena Duchannes wasn't a Caster with supernatural powers, her being an outsider, as well as a relative of the town's local recluse, would make her the subject of gossip. Add to that her "bewitching" Ethan, and there doesn't need a window shattering to make her an outcast. The window shattering just ups the whole situation to Carrie levels and there's more then just one or two hints to the Stephen King classic. Of course this being Gatlin they opt for liquid soap instead of pig's blood. Also Gatlin is a little more organized then King's small town and Lena is far more in control and aware of her powers to let the situation escalate. But there are several leaflets against Lena as well as a petition to have her thrown out of school, but sadly for them, the mean girls don't succeed.

Yet the Carrie undertone isn't the only undertone. To me there is a lot more of the Bewitched and Sabrina the Teenage Witch vibe then any other touchstone out there. I'd say in fact it leans very heavily on Sabrina, what with how Lena can't be raised by her mother, and that a Caster can go good or evil on their sixteenth birthday. It reminded me strongly of Sabrina and her evil twin. Yes, I love Sabrina and I'm not afraid to admit it. But despite all these great undertones and references and the atmosphere, there was just something missing. Beautiful Creatures lacks it's own identity. It becomes muddled between past and present mythology and it made the overall book quickly forgettable. Yes, despite reading this book fairly recently, I had to go and read a synopsis on Wikipedia to refresh myself as to what happened before writing this review. Because in all seriousness, if someone was to say what this book was about I'd say people running around in the south and there's some SCA fun. That isn't the book though, that's just my take away, and it's a lame one at that.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:01 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Beautiful Creatures, Bewitched, Bloggers, Carrie, Caster Chronicles, Civil War, Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, SCA, South Carolina, Stephen King, Veronica Roth