Author: P. Djeli Clark
Publisher: Tor.com
Released: October 13^th, 2020
Received: NetGalley

I received a copy of Ring Shout in exchange for a fair and honest review.

P. Djeli Clark has done it again. Ring Shout is once again a highly anticipated and talked about novella, and for all of the right reasons.

There are monsters hidden in the hearts of men. Sometimes, that is a figurative statement. Other times, it’s literal. This is a story about the latter. The Ku Klux Klan are full of monsters – again, literally and figuratively.

That’s where Maryse Boudreaux and her allies come into play. They hunt and fight these monsters, with the help of their experience, and Maryse’s magical and singing sword.

“But I hunt monsters. And I know them when I see them.”

P. Djeli Clark has such a way with words. It’s powerful, and empowering at the same time. He blends fantastical elements with history, and turns them into something new, and yet something that we can all connect to.

It’s a talent that makes Ring Shout stand out so strongly. The description alone might have made that fact obvious, but there is so much more going on in this novella. Honestly, it almost defies description. It’s wonderfully done, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Frankly, for a moment there I had forgotten that this was a novella, and not a full-length novel. That is how much P. Djeli Clark managed to fit into these pages. It’s practically bursting at the seems, just begging to pull readers in and captivate them.

The timing of this release was not lost on me. I’m sure it’s something that P. Djeli Clark had been working on for a while now, but the timing could not have been better. It hits the nail on the head that is our current political climate, making points and doing so with grace.