"Ring Shout, or, Hunting Ku Kluxes in the End Times" by P. Djèlí Clark (novella; 2020)

**1920s-era sword and sorcery, in which a trio of Black American heroines fight against white, pointy-headed "Ku Klux" demons.  Yeah, exactly, it's great**

On a dark night 1915, a top Stone Mountain in the heart of Georgia, the dark sorcerers Thomas Dixon Jr. and D. W. Griffith used their film "The Birth of a Nation" to cast a terrible ritual, drawing forth demons from the pit.  These eldritch horrors, with pale white skin and pointed heads, fed off the hatred in the hearts of these proud survivors of the Confederacy.  By pledging themselves to these "Ku Klux" demons (and naming their society after them), they gained the power to punish their enemies

Fast-forward ten years, and a trio of Black American heroines fight against the Ku Klux Klan in Macon, Georgia.  Our main character, Maryse Boudreaux, wields a sword empowered by ancient African gods, and leads her compatriots in battle against this foe

. . .

Tell me you don't already want to read this book.  Of course you do, it's great.  And it's only like 180 pages!  I don't know why you're not reading it right now

This book is full of flash and style, steeped in Black American culture from New Orleans mysticism to Gullah-Geechee spiritualism to simple and proud Black American tradition.  The characters are fun and rowdy and as adventurous as any you'd find in a more classic Medieval-Europe-setting fantasy adventure (at one point, a character tries to turn down another round of drink:  "'Lester Henry,' she says in a tone hot enough to lay down your baby hairs. 'You betta move that hand from on top your glass ’fore I move it for you. This a juke joint, not no temperance revival!'")

Clark knew from the very beginning that that was the story he wanted to tell.  Heroes wielding a magic sword, fighting against demons.  Why can't that be a story for Black Americans?  Why can't history reach back in time and bring their voices to the present?  So many stories that have been lost, but we can try our best to find them and tell them and have some damn fun doing it:

In This Field We Must Die? Well, that Shout got many meanings. The field where the slaves was forced to toil away they whole lives. Or it’s this world everybody got to leave one day. What else there was to do in that drudgery, working from can’t see morning to can’t see night, but to get to thinking on life, death, and God’s purpose? All them grand thinkers lost to the whip. Gone and took they secrets with ’em to the grave.

I loved this book for this incredibly unique setting.  Come on, you don't want to read a Prohibition-era novel about badass heroines fighting against Ku Klux demons?  Of course you do.  But even more than that, I love the thought and care that Clark puts into it

The thing I worried about, reading the synopsis of this book, was how it would balance the fantasy with the very real horrors that were perpetrated in history.  Saying that the evil things these men did was somehow inspired by demons or other supernatural figures . . . runs the risk of trivializing history

Make no mistake.  Men like Griffith and Dixon Jr. were not dark sorcerers (erm, probably not.  I mean, I guess I shouldn't say for sure), the movement they created was not driven by demonic inspiration.  They were humans, and the evil things they did were borne from nothing deeper than the human soul

I won't spoil anything, but suffice it to say that this author is worthy of our trust (P. Djèlí Clark's secret identity is mild-mannered Dexter Gabriel, professor and academic historian specializing in comparative slavery across the Atlantic World).  This books walks the line between the eldritch horrors of his dark pantheon and the very human horrors we know to exist.  Or, to put it simply, damn this is a good book

This is a story about hate, and about pain, and about how even though the Civil War was won and the enslaved of America were freed, that animosity didn't disappear overnight.  And it hasn't disappeared yet

This is a battle fought across the generations--the brave soldiers who fought in the Civil War, and the heroines in this novel (and the very real people who lived in that era surrounded by the Klan and the Daughters of the Confederacy), and the titanic figures of the Civil Rights era, and us in our present day inheriting all of their legacy

Sometimes having a magic sword powered by the ancient gods of Africa helps, though

I think I'll finish it where Clark finishes it, from his author's afterword where he talked about what went into this book:

This story emerged out of a diverse visual, literary, and aural synthesis. The 1930s ex-slave narratives of the WPA. Gullah-Geechee culture. Folktales of haints and root magic. A few Beyoncé videos. Some Toni Morrison. Juke (Jook) joints. Childhood memories of reading Madeline L’Engle under the shade of a cypress. Juneteenth picnics. New Orleans Bounce. A little DJ Screw. H-town that raised me. And whispered stories of Jim Crow, the Klan, and other Southern horrors. Who says all the fantasies with sword-wielding heroes and heroines have to be in Middle Earth, Westeros, or even our dreams of Africa past—“copper sun or scarlet sea?” 

Maybe they can happen right here, too.

If that doesn't make you want to read this book, I don't know what will

I loved this book

“There were two brothers, Truth and Lie. One day they get to playing, throwing cutlasses up into the air. Them cutlasses come down and fast as can be—swish!—chop each of their faces clean off! Truth bend down, searching for his face. But with no eyes, he can’t see. Lie, he sneaky. He snatch up Truth’s face and run off! Zip! Now Lie go around wearing Truth’s face, fooling everybody he meet.”