The Black God's Drums (P. Djeli Clark)

The Black God's Drums
P. Djeli Clark
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Thirteen-year-old Creeper was born in the middle of a New Orleans storm; perhaps that was why the Afrikan goddess of the winds, Oya, took such a shine to her. For all the girl's life, Oya has been with her, though only a fool would consider such a powerful force a true friend. She has her own mind, Oya, and sometimes the visions she sends are too powerful for Creeper to handle - but goddesses will not be ignored.
While prowling the airship landings for pockets to pick and purses to snatch, Creeper comes across a group of Confederate soldiers looking to buy a devastating weapon from a Haitian scientist: the Black God's Drums, the force that destroyed Napoleon's forces and won Haiti's freedom, at the cost of hundred of Haitian lives when the unnaturally powerful storm it unleashed turned back on the land. Even today, echoes of it haunt the Gulf regions, black storms that threaten even as far away as New Orleans. With a weapon like this, the South could end its long stalemate with the North, and would likely reclaim the neutral city of New Orleans while it's at it. Creeper planned to bargain with this information for passage aboard an airship out of the city - but fate has other plans for her, as do the old Afrikan deities.

REVIEW: The Black God's Drums has roots running deep into the multicultural history of New Orleans, through local magic and religions, clear back to Africa. Clark creates a colorful setting in an alternate Earth where the Civil War ended in a stalemate (the South now drugging its slaves to prevent escape), the Caribbean Islands won freedom via weaponry tinged with old magic, and New Orleans broke bonds with the rest of the nation, not to mention where airships rule the skies and old gods walk the land in unusual guises. Creeper's a clever and gutsy main character, narrating the tale in colloquial dialect that only occasionally tripped me up. Her reluctant companion and protector, the Free Isles airship captain Anne-Marie, has her own goddess (Oshun of the waters, sister goddess to Oya), though she's spent her life pushing the force away instead of accepting it as Creeper has. As for Oya, she's never quite human, nor does she speak in words, but she is nevertheless a very present character and shaper of events, as much a force of nature as anything else. It's a nicely original milieu, featuring a diverse and unique cast, though it seems a little short in some ways; I'm not necessarily sure it needs a sequel, for all that I'd read more in this world, but something feels like it wants to lead into a longer work. In any event, I enjoyed this visit to a New Orleans that never was.

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