Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A Well-Realized World in a Small Package

The Black God's Drums by P. Djeli Clark

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I’m starting to really love P. Djèlí Clark’s writing. This is the second book I’ve read by him, and I liked it even more than Ring Shout, which is surprising because it’s rare for me to give a novella more than 4 stars (4.25 for this one). Often I find that characters don’t end up getting fleshed out enough for me, and while I would have loved more of The Black God’s Drums, Clark did a remarkable job considering the limited space he was working with. […]

The Right Read at the Right Time, almost

The Black God's Drums by P. Djeli Clark

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Bingo Free Space Yes, I know Bingo technically was supposed to end two days ago, but since this is the extra free space I never ended up using, I’m still going to finish that off. I’ve been struggling to find a novella that I wanted to assign to an intro to lit class this coming spring (for reference, I’m at a regional state school) because I didn’t want to re-use anything too recent and I wanted to avoid something easily findable on the internet (either […]

A good read for Mardi Gras

The Black God’s Drums by P. Djéli Clark

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P. Djéli Clark won a 2019 Alex Award for The Black God’s Drums, which was also a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. The Alex Award is given to 10 books annually by the Young Adult Library Services Association to books written for adults that appeal to readers aged 12-18. This is a short but riveting, action-packed novel set in New Orleans, 1884. As with his previous two works set in 1912 Cairo (A Dead Djinn in Cairo, The Haunting of […]

So much goodness stuffed into one little novella.

The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark

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This was very entertaining, and very refreshing. I just wish it was longer! (That seems to be a common complaint.) This is an alternate history and steampunk fantasy novella set in New Orleans post-Civil War. In this version of history, the Civil War ended with two separate Americas, and New Orleans also seceded into a neutral city-state that is heavily diverse, and populated by many people from the free Caribbean region. Our main character is Creeper (given name Jacquelin, but don’t call her that, she […]



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