I came to this book as an outsider. Unversed in steampunk, a stranger to New Orleans, and only a frail understanding of the African Diaspora and the gods they brought with them. The Black God’s Drums made me want to delve deeper into all of them. P. Djèlí Clark beats a hammer of imagination against the anvil of history and forges a dense alternate history where the Civil War never really ended, only reached an uneasy stalemate. It’s 1884 and New Orleans is neutral territory thanks to a slave uprising and international intervention.
Iron walls rim the Mississippi. Airships float above the factory smoke and gaslights. Thirteen-year-old Jacqueline, though she would have you call her Creeper, watches it all. Creeper is an orphan, as adolescent heroes tend to be, living on streets by her wits and deft fingers. She knows all of New Orleans seediest crevices, but she isn’t too chummy with them. To survive she can only be so friendly with streets this rough. She isn’t completely alone, though. Her mother left some friends behind for her. And Creeper has a bit of Oya living in her, “the goddess of storms, life, death, and rebirth.”
Don’t know much about Oya? You’ll know more of her by the end of this novella. And of her sister, Oshun, and of Shango, and more. Clark brings this pantheon alive and gives them sway over this world. There are Catholics in the city, too, but their god doesn’t seem to hold much influence here. It is the African gods which control the water on the earth and in the sky. It is only African magic, and African science, which can harness or deter their activity.
"Marine Hospital at New Orleans". Engraving showing old Marine Hospital building on the West Bank of the Mississippi River.Likely shows action during the American Civil War, either being occupied by Confederate forces in 1861 or Union forces the following year. Note boats appear to be filled with troops; flag of Louisiana flying over tower.
Creeper is about to score herself a nice pocket watch when Oya sends her a vision. A skull the size of an airship or the moon rises over the city and snuffs out all light. She recovers from the vision just in time to hide from approaching boots. Hunkered down in the shadows, the boots stop beside her. What she feared were constables are in fact confederates. They review their plans to trade with a Haitian scientist who is smuggling an ultimate weapon they hope to use against the North. They call it the Black God’s Drums. The Haitians only used it once, 80 years before against a French fleet, and then never again. It was too powerful, and did more damage than was expected or desired. Now it was coming to New Orleans in the days before Mardi Gras. Creeper believes this information must be good for trade with somebody. What she gets for it, of course, is adventure. More than she cares for.
The Black God’s Drums is an achievement in world building. It begins frightfully thick but quickly evens out its pace once a couple of heavy posts are established. The pages hum with city activity. Wheels and six-legged contraptions bounce off the cobble stones as Clockwork Orange-inspired gangs roam looking for a fight. It’s a world which could support many more exploits than the novella form allows. When a novella is this good, my only issue is wanting more. More complications, more exploration of the villains, more of a second act. Where it does go deep is just so damn satisfying. Creeper and the captain she teams up with are riveting characters I would gladly spend a few hundred pages with.
The Black God’s Drums is available Tuesday, August 21, 2018.
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