Ring Shout

This taut novella starts strong and blazes to a climactic finish pulling from a rich vein of Black History. Makes sense considering P. Djeli Clark is in fact Dexter Gabriel who holds a doctorate in History and teaches at the University of Connecticut. Like TV's Lovecraft Country or Watchmen, this tells a fantastical story grounded in recent history.

Our troupe of fighters features sharpshooter Sadie and her trusted Winchester, explosives expert Chef who served in WWI with the Harlem Hellfighters, and Maryse Boudreaux holder of a mystic sword that sings to the long dead and enslaved, to the chiefs and kings that sold these men to slavery, and ancient African gods.

They find themselves pitted against the clan, newly empowered by pale, pointy headed and powerful beasts with fearsome claws that appear to most as human. Known as Ku Kluxes they are a terrifying force to be reckoned with. And yet there are bigger dangers in store in the form of Butcher Clyde, a climactic showing of The Birth of a Nation and a faustian bargain.

It's a tight piece of work that builds a world, inhabits it with memorable characters, and gets the job done in under 200 pages. Not too shabby.