This novel is built upon alternate-history and fantasy idea. What makes it so special is its main character Jacqueline, a thirteen-year-old who goes by the name Creeper. The year is 1884 and the place New Orleans. As this is an alternate-history tale, the civil war is continuing in a way with the North and South raging a cold war that is causing significant trouble for everyone. The United States has been broken into several countries, but New Orleans is a neutral territory that has outlawed slavery, and Haiti is a major world power.

In this environment, Creeper is a street kid living on her own in Les Grand Murs, a daughter of a prostitute and a crippled captain, a pickpocket, and has occult powers as Oya (a storm goddess) lives inside her, sending her visions, and ordering or messing with her life. When Creeper overhears Confederates scheming to kidnap a scientist to use “Black God’s Drum” (a weapon that is like a cannon, also named Shango’s Thunder, which is made to destroy New Orleans), she informs a pirate captain of an airship called Midnight Robber, Ann Marie St. Augustine, a strong adult woman, who is also guided by the god Oshun as this is her family legacy. The two fight against the Confederates and another violent and dangerous group called Jeannots and try to save the kidnapped scientist and his daughter.

Creeper’s and Ann Marie’s characters are flawlessly developed. They are two strong women who have found each other in an outlandish adventure as they help each other internally and externally. The two nuns (Sisters of the Holy Family) as supporting characters, also, help the two women adding to the novel’s excitement, action, and sometimes, a sense of humor.

What gives this novel its impeccably powerful flavor is Creeper’s voice as she is the viewpoint character who tells the story. Inside her narration is magic, a fictional history of New Orleans, Haitian and black gods and goddesses, and mythology. The action and twists in the novel take on gunfights, magic fights, sea battles, storms, airship fights, swamp scenes, and daring acts. A few allusions to the real historical events exist, but the story depends on its own alternate history and steampunk.

I really enjoyed reading this book, but only because of Creeper’s voice, which is magical in itself as far as anything literary goes and the fairy-tale quality of the novel.

enjoyment as a steampunk, alternate-history novel.

the characterizations.

is P. Djèlí Clark, a 2019 Nebula Award Nominee and Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novella for The Black God’s Drums, who has also won the 2019 Alex Award for this novella.

even if you don't care for alternate history, magic, steampunk, etc., you'll find this book worth your time because of the quality of writing and characterization.

It is a short book, only 108 pages. I read it in one afternoon, possibly in less than two hours.

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Created May 16, 2019 at 6:59pm • Submit your own review...