The Black God's Drums by P Djèlí Clark

The Black God's Drums by P Djèlí Clark is a novella set in a steampunk alternate history New Orleans in 1884. The alternate history aspect involves a quicker end to the American Civil War after Britain and France sent reinforcements by airship, starkly altering the sociological landscape of the world.

Creeper, a scrappy young teen, is done living on the streets of New Orleans. Instead, she wants to soar, and her sights are set on securing passage aboard the smuggler airship Midnight Robber. Her ticket: earning Captain Ann-Marie’s trust using a secret about a kidnapped Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums.

But Creeper keeps another secret close to heart--Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, who speaks inside her head and grants her divine powers. And Oya has her own priorities concerning Creeper and Ann-Marie…

The most interesting thing about this novella was the setting and the worldbuilding. Clearly a lot of thought has gone into it and I would be interested in seeing the setting explored further. Since this is a novella and hence relatively short, I felt like it only scratched the surface of some aspects and that there are more stories that could be told in this setting.

I liked Creeper, the thirteen year old street girl who was quite capable of looking after herself and who also lived with the presence of a god. The other main character was also fun to read about, though we didn't see quite as much of her and mostly saw her from the perspective of Creeper. The story is written as first person narration by Creeper, which strongly overlays her interpretation of the world over the story. The dialogue is written in the accent or dialect matching the character speaking, which sometimes took me an extra second to parse, but did a lot to distinguish different characters and, to some degree, their origins.

My main disappointment with this story was that, even though it's a novella it felt very short. More like a long short story than a novella. It's not that nothing happened, but the plot was fairly limited and contained and when I neared the end it felt like it was over too quickly. I think I would have preferred a slightly meatier story that was a bit less linear. Not that the plot was bad, I have just gotten used to longer novellas, I suppose.

Overall, I recommend The Black God's Drums to readers who are intrigued by the premise of a steam punk New Orleans. It's a short read and an enjoyable one, especially if you go in with accurate expectations.

4 / 5 stars

First published: August 2018, Tor.com
Series: Not as far as I know
Format read: ePub
Source: ARC from publisher via NetGalley