Reading: Ring Shout (188/365)
Jul. 7th, 2021 06:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartP. Djèlí Clark's novella Ring Shout is set in 1922 and is narrated by Maryse Boudreaux, one of a band of black activists opposing the power of the Ku Klux Clan. However, in this reality, the Klan has been infiltrated by extradimensional horrors which feed on hatred, turning humans into literal monsters, and Maryse fights them with a magic sword.
Ring Shout is a seamless blend of real history and reclaimed Lovecraftian horror. I was a little concerned that depicting the Klan as literal monsters might belittle the very real horrors they perpetrated, but Clark is too skilled a writer to allow that to happen. I remember the prose of the last of his novellas I read as being rather flat (though I very much enjoyed the plot and characters), but that's not an issue here; written in what I think is African-American vernacular English, or a style heavily influenced by it, the prose here is glorious and compelling. I really enjoyed this, and am definitely bumping Clark's other work up my TBR pile.
Ring Shout is a seamless blend of real history and reclaimed Lovecraftian horror. I was a little concerned that depicting the Klan as literal monsters might belittle the very real horrors they perpetrated, but Clark is too skilled a writer to allow that to happen. I remember the prose of the last of his novellas I read as being rather flat (though I very much enjoyed the plot and characters), but that's not an issue here; written in what I think is African-American vernacular English, or a style heavily influenced by it, the prose here is glorious and compelling. I really enjoyed this, and am definitely bumping Clark's other work up my TBR pile.
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Date: 2021-07-07 07:19 pm (UTC)