Envisaging an America similar to the real one in every way, apart from Ku Klux Klan members being literal bloodthirsty demons, Ring Shout feels very much like what Lovecraft Country (the book) wishes it could have been.

Ring Shout doesn't lead you gradually into its demon-filled world so much as shove you in at the deep end and yell at you to start swimming. You barely have time to catch your breath before bone white demons are gathering, and the blood and bullets start to fly, with our hero Maryse, cutting down monsters with a magic blade. And magic permeates the rest of the story, with visits from a trio of crones from another dimension, many-mouthed butchers, and a set of doctors who you won't want to make an appointment with.

The whole story is marvellously steeped in history as well as its own paranormal set of rules and lore, with every page dense with detail. You're pulled up close to the characters, huddled alongside them as they hunt and hide (the first more than the last), celebrating when they regroup and shivering when they're split apart. You're right there with Maryse as she struggles with her past while fighting for her future. Her and all her friends are immediately likeable and relatable, and because their fight is so visceral and personal, it's heart-hammering stuff.

Even though there are some familiar beats in here, the way they're handled and the way the threat grows to impossibly cosmic levels is mind-blowing. There are some parts which echo Clive Barker's stories, most notably Hellbound Heart and a touch of In the Hills, the Cities, but mostly this strikes its own, bloody, weird path through history, and if you;re not cheering through the final chapter then check your pulse. Most vitally, this feels like a lived-in history. It's got life, and vitality, and it made me want to read it again immediately after I put it down,

I've enjoyed Clark's novellas before, but this one BLEW. ME. AWAY! The concept of Black girls fighting literal KKK monsters hooked me, and then the vivid world building and distinct voice won me over. Such a nice blend of historical fiction and supernatural horror.

"They say God is good all the time. Seem he also likes irony.”

I liked a lot about this book. There’s not much to dislike about a black main character on a quest to hunt down Klansmen. Naturally, it had a lot of racial commentary that has been and will be relevant for a long time. Adding a horror theme to all of that just made it that much better.
My only problem was that at times I felt that because we were thrown into the story immediately, I had a hard time getting my footing, but that very well could just be a me-problem and something other people won’t have.

RING SHOUT by P. Djèlí Clark is a great, fun, original monster-fighting historical fantasy novella. It’s 1922, and Maryse, the novel’s protagonist, is preparing herself to battle a small group of “Ku Kluxes”—strange, demonic monsters that take over the form of pliant members of the Ku Klux Klan and its supporters. Alongside her brilliant, wild sharpshooter friend Sadie, and “Chef,” a ww1 vet, Maryse must fight this growing horde of Ku Kluxes before they infiltrate her entire home of Macon, Georgia and driving off or killing the remaining black community. But first, Maryse has to decide if it’s safe to partner with the terrifying “Night Doctors,” and find a way to fix the magical, now broken monster-killing sword gifted to her years ago by a trio of haints.

This novel is beautifully written: Maryse’s narration is conversational and witty, and the characterizations are crystal clear despite the book’s short length. In fact, it’s kind of amazing how economical this novella is—to be fair, I don’t read novellas very often (I’ll be changing this)—but I’m amazed at how much Clark is able to fit into 176 pages without feeling in want of anything. There’s nothing else needed for this story: everything necessary to craft an engaging, propulsive historical fantasy is here already.

I’ll be reading more Clark in the near future, especially if RING SHOUT gets a sequel (it open ended enough that I can see the story continuing). It’s a wonderful take on the monster story, showing how hatred corrupts us, transforming us into monsters with its ugliness. The story makes it clear that this hatred is not innate and it isn’t equal opportunity; it is a form of power, wielded by those with power over those without it, and rarely the other way around.

Comes out October 16, so preorder now! Especially if you’re a horror, fantasy, or historical fiction reader.

P. Djeli Clark has done it again with this surreal, action-packed novella. This novella follows a trio of monster hunters: Maryse (the voice of reason and sword wielder), Sadie (the hot head and sniper), and Chef (the demolitions expert and flirt). Their friendship and banter was enjoyable. They've joined forces to fight monsters they call Ku Kluxes. The descriptions of the monsters were imaginative and disturbing, and Clark cleverly uses signature sounds to show how the monster and the hunters are each others' antithesis. It was a pleasant surprise that his novella also incorporates various African American dialects and folklore, from the well-known Bruh Fox to the more obscure. Clark also included same gender loving couples throughout history, which I appreciated since many like to pretend that queerness didn't exist before the 1980s. Clark saliently uses supernatural elements to discuss themes of bigotry, willful ignorance, and the power of media. I had some quibbles about the climax, but all in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this supernatural musing on misery, vengeance, and how to make a life for yourself outside of that.

Rating: 10/10

Thanks to the publisher and author for an advance reading copy of Ring Shout for review consideration. This did not influence my thoughts or opinions.

Ring Shout is the best thing I’ve read from Tor.com since The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle. This is, hands down, my favorite novella of 2020 and nothing is going to knock it off that pedestal. Clark is at the top of his game and needs to be on every bookshelf in the world.

Dark fantasy meets historical fiction meets supernatural horror. While that sentence alone does not sum up all that Clark has fed into this 192 page novella, it gives you a small glimpse into what you can expect to find within. If you don’t find a story with a female, African-American bootlegger with a magic sword that hunts racist monsters appealing, you’ve come to the wrong review. This novella was an absolute gut-punch from start to finish, and I honestly cannot find a single fault in it.

While the backdrop is a grand part of history I believe we should all be ashamed of and should be far more removed from than we are at this point in time, it provides Clark quite a sandbox to play in with this characters. It isn’t like racism was only apart of Georgia’s history, and based on the end (no spoilers), the author isn’t stopping here with Maryse’s story.

Though her counterparts add a ton to the story with their witty, foul-mouthed banter and monster hunting capabilities, Maryse shines so bright in a story so grim and dark. She has to be one of the most bad-ass heroines I’ve ever come across, and the depth to which Clark writes her story has no bottom. From the tales spinning around in her mind to the story behind her having this sword bestowed upon her, I was memorized throughout the entire book.

On top of all that, Clark can write some damn fine creature and body horror. The Ku Kluxes themselves, on top of some of the other “baddies” that shall remain nameless, are downright terrifying and I’m glad there is someone decapitating them at every turn.

All in all, I really could talk about this novella until the cows come home, but you really just need to pre-order it and read it for yourself. I cannot… I repeat CANNOT recommend Ring Shout enough, so just do the thing. Also, stay tuned because on October 5th, Clark will be joining me on my YouTube channel to chat.

I have read all of P Djeli Clarks novellas and this book adds another star to his crown. Set in 1920s in the American Deep South we are introduced to Maryse and her crew - all have been fighting monsters in isolation until they hear Nana Jeans call drawing them to Macon.
Here the Ku Klux hold sway and not all Klan members are human... it seems that when white folks are consumed by hate it allows a foothold for something other to slip in, something monstrous, something for the women to kill.
I love the rich use of language of the Deep South, the interweaving of folk legends such as Bruh Rabbit, haints and of course the Shout.
I would love to witness an actual Ring Shout but Clarks writing is the next best thing - The ring shout is the oldest African American performance tradition surviving on the North American continent. Clark uses this fusion of call-and-response singing, shuffling movement and drumming as key to battling the monsters. The Ring Shout calls to spirits and creates its own magic which aids the fight that Maryse and her crew are fighting.
In October this is the book to read, relish and devour.
All views are my own and thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

i don't think that i can even come close to doing a proper review discussing HOW AMAZING THIS NOVELLA IS!

....

truly, i have tried typing out several different reviews over the course of 20 minutes and i still can't properly express why i loved this novella so much. the author seamlessly blends historical fiction, horror, and fantasy into a wonderfully atmospheric & hypnotic world. A world so fantastical yet tangible. A world filled with trauma and with hope. A world filled with hate and with love.

i have only read 2 total works by P. Djèlí Clark, but after reading this author i can confidently say that he is now my favorite male fantasy author. i will devour anything and everything that he writes.

This was a damned powerful novella to read. If there are any history teachers out there reading this review: seriously consider using this book to teach kids about the Jim Crow South. The research behind it is meticulous - the author is a professor of history specializing in the trans-Atlantic slave trade - and, as any serious reader can tell you, just because something is fiction doesn't mean it's not *true*.

The spec fic premise of this is that lots of the higher-ups in the Confederacy - Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson - were sorcerers. After the South’s defeat, they cast spells to summon monsters - known as Ku Kluxes - and used them, along with their white allies, to terrorize the freedmen. The Klan was suppressed, but came back much stronger in the early 20th Century. Using the new technology of motion pictures, D.W. Griffith was able to cast the spell over the whole country using his new movie *The Birth of a Nation*, and the Klan reappeared in both the North and the South.

The protagonist of this book is a Black woman named Maryse in rural Georgia in 1922, who (along with some friends and allies) hunts Ku Kluxes and protects Black people from the Klan.

Having the Ku Klux Klan be composed of literal monsters instead of metaphorical monsters was a depressingly easy leap to make. Just how closely this book hewed to actual American history made it distinctly uncomfortable to read. It’s a period of history that people should know more about, especially in light of this summer’s protests.

I’d call this horror rather than fantasy, and there’s a lot that I’m concerned would go over the head of non-American readers (and more Americans than there should be, as well). I tried to keep that in mind while reading, and how it might seem to someone unfamiliar with Nathan Bedford Forrest, or Stone Mountain, or the vague, ominous references to something that happened recently in Tulsa. Clark doesn’t go into a huge amount of detail, but I think this would still work very well. Curious to see if there’s any non-Americans who have read this and might weigh in.

In the end, this is, as I said, a damned powerful story. It’s kind of in the same category as *American History X*, in that it’s something I feel everyone should read. Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it can’t contain powerful truths.

Comes out on September 15.

This is a phenomenal read. Vivid, imaginative, and extraordinarily powerful. P. Djèlí Clark is one of my favourite authors of all time, and he did not disappoint with this one. This story invokes so many things: the use of music and rhythm as a theme, the recognition of the hate that fuels white supremacy and the ways in which the enemy feeds on it, the celebration of Blackness and Black strength and resilience, the badass female characters that are dominant throughout the story. Such masterful writing within so few pages.

Ring Shout is a powerful novella blending together dark fantasy, horror, and historical fiction. In this story, we are thrown into a world where the Klan and Ku Kluxes are literal monsters. They are beastly and have lots of eyes, mouths, fingers and some even have tentacles. Body horror galore in this story! We have a group of Black hunters with magical weapons on a mission to end their reign and the spread of hate in the white supremacist south. I think it is definitely intentional that Ku Kluxes took on such Lovecraftian guises (given all we know going on there) and P. Djèlí Clark did not hold back one bit. Our female heroines were a total blast to hang out with and I really could read even more stories featuring them. This is literal Black girl magic! This book explores deep rooted racism, all-consuming hate, fear, power, resilience, love, and so much more. There are so many "in your face" and unapologetic scenes and descriptions, but there are also endless lessons under the surface. Clark created a whole new world with this novella, but at the same time, did he really? I had to stop and think about the world quite a few times while reading this magnificent story. Ring Shout is just totally mind blowing in how it's told and how it makes the reader think and feel. You are meant to squirm when reading this. You are meant to read this. Period. 5 stars!

This book was a spectacular use of supernatural alternative history to explore incredibly important topics. Djeli Clark is such a good writer and I think this my favourite of his so far.

This was such a relevant book. I think it would have always been relevant, but considering Americans and the rest of the colonial world re-learning and unlearning their own history with the lens of abuse of power, hatred, and white supremacy, this is the most relevant fiction book I've read in the last few years. This was expertly written, but definitely way too short. My only critique is I'd have loved to read more.

If I read a sharper, more impactful horror novel this year I’ll be surprised.
An intelligent and emotional narrative bound tight by the ties of slavery. Exquisitely rendered scenes of violence and action set pieces dance effortlessly around a painful and difficult narrative.
The characters all have big personalities that give them so much more life than the pages can even contain.
I absolutely loved this book and will shout it to anyone within range.

Please excuse my love of puns as I use this opportunity to shout: THIS BOOK IS AMAZING. PLEASE BUY THIS BOOK IMMEDIATELY. IN FACT, BUY TWO.

Thank you.

It’s not just a pun that makes me want to yell about this book, though. Ring Shout is a magnificent, no-holds-barred triumph of a novel. P. Djèlí Clark hasn’t just knocked it out of the park, he’s knocked down the park and held a dance where the walls used to be.

And of course, a Ring Shout isn’t just a yell. It’s a sacred tradition passed down from slave time, when brief hours not spent in forced labor meant singing and moving in a circle, the songs ranging from celebration to warning to mourning. Ring Shout makes magic both literal and figurative from this ritual of resistance, infusing the novel with deep potency.

Because of its slender page count and its overall importance, I will be discussing the entire book, including parts of the ending. Some spoilers follow.

Ring Shout begins with a survey of the land and the players from a rooftop in Georgia. There’s the KKK marching below in their stupid white robes, only some of them actually are wizards. And up above (morally and physically) is Maryse, resistance fighter and soon-to-be Chosen One in a terrible and fateful battle for the soul of the world.

It’s really great to see a sword-wielding Chosen One be a Black woman in the American South, magic sword and all. Maryse wields a mystical blade forged with the anger of the enslaved, binding the souls of the African leaders who sold their own people, forcing them to repay their sins with blood and magic.

But lest this seem like Maryse and her crew are only bringing a sword to a gun fight, there’s also Chef and Sadie. Sadie is a crack shot, the sniper of the group who gets in a lot of verbal snipes when she’s not shooting Ku Kluxes. Chef handles guns well enough, but she’s the group’s explosives expert, trained in the trenches in WWI, where she fought disguised as a man. She’s also quite the ladykiller (is Clark also a fan of puns? It seems like he might be). And backing them up is Nana Jean, a Gullah elder and master of the Shout, and Maryse’s three mysterious Aunties, who appear to her in visions and charge her with making a choice that will save the world. But what will she save it from?

At first, Maryse thinks she’s going to save it from the KKK, which in this world is both the Klan and the Ku Kluxes. SFF has been rightly criticized for othering BIPOC, repeatedly publishing stories that cast non-white characters as non-human and then reaching the trite conclusion that "others, they're just like us!" Ring Shout turns the trope on its head by othering a mentality and a race: white Klan members can transform into Ku Kluxes, non-human monsters in literal fact as well as in philosophy. Huge pasty beasts with six eyes and conical skulls, the Kluxes are as repulsive as they are frightening. They're tough but stupid; all their power is in brute strength.

Yeah, that checks out.

But evil is ultimately a human trait, and Clark doesn't let us forget that. The Kluxes might be hideous, but they arise from humans and were created by humans. Hate fuels their transformation and spreads it, like an infection. Bad enough, but their hate also draws down extradimensional horrors, beings that feed on hate and wants to raise up a god of hate and hunger on earth.

The herald of this dreadful god calls himself Butcher Clyde and he’s an absolutely terrifying villain, the best I’ve read in recent memory. He's nothing but mouths, there to speak lies and devour everything. His gleaming cleavers are bad enough, but then he goes and uses them not just to fight, but to cut up an abomination and serve it, still living and quivering, to human beings...ugh. It's disgusting, unsettling, and genius. What is hate but devouring the living? What is racism but sustaining yourself on something vile? I shuddered while reading it but take pure delight in telling others about it (a mark of good horror).

There are also the Night Doctors, which prey on my particular fears of a surgical theater of horrors but might not be quite so upsetting to everyone else. But more eerie still is their agent, Dr. Antoine Bisset, who sought them out to see if they could answer his most burning question: what is the source of hate?

Antoine thinks that hate might live in the body, in the humors, like bile or blood. Certainly there is a meta/physical aspect to it in the world of Ring Shout, since hate fuels the transformation of Klans into Ku Kluxes. But as Maryse learns over the course of her journey, hate also lives in the mind, and its fuel is memory.

Like her enemies, Maryse is full of hate. Unlike them, she has plenty of good reasons for it. She’s haunted by an experience so terrible that she keeps it secret even from herself, the sorrow and rage of it still unhealed. How could she have time to heal, when she’s barely had time to breathe? She’s spent her life running and fighting, fighting and hiding. When she’s not taking down Ku Kluxes she’s running moonshine (Prohibition is still in full swing), both endeavors full of dangers that compound her trauma.

Hate is a kind of power. It gets you through; it doesn’t let you despair. But hate eats away the justified just like anyone else. And the big choice the Chosen One has to make is where—or whether—that hate has to stop. Does it stop at justice? Does it stop at vengeance? Does it get to devour Maryse, and the whole world?

The dénouement is a magnificent one-two whammy on the KKK and white sympathizers. Not only are they easily taken in by a monstrous horror, they're not even the main villains. They're too feeble-minded to be Butcher Clyde's real target. Their hate arises from ignorance and cowardice, making it too weak to be worth much on a magical level.

Even their hate isn't worth a damn.

It doesn't make them less dangerous, though. Maryse still has quite the challenge to deal with the Ku Kluxes on top of all the extradimensional horrors, but fortunately, she has help. She has uneasy allies in the Night Doctors, and more importantly, she has her friends and community. Forces from other worlds and monsters from other worlds are no match for a Shout.

Since Lovecraft Country is currently streaming, I think there will be people calling Ring Shout Lovecraftian, too. It's not. Sure, it has the "cosmic" bit of Cosmic Horror down, and yes, there are tentacles, but Ring Shout has reason where Lovecraft only ever has madness. We know why Butcher Clyde has come. His motives are comprehensible, and fighting him in mind and body is a winnable battle. And it matters to him what happens on earth—sure, only insofar as he controls it, but it matters nonetheless.

And it matters what humans do, too. Maryse's choice has meaningful consequences, as do the choices of her friends and enemies. Lovecraft wrote that humans were cosmically meaningless, and indeed that the universe had no greater meaning. Here, real change is possible. Victories mean something.

What exactly is won, though? Lives, yes, and maybe a little bit more insight into their enemies and themselves. But as Maryse is told by her guides, she only really wins the chance for the struggle to continue. The victory, though satisfying, does not put an end to the KKK. It barely even changes hearts and minds: only one white woman gasps out “they’re monsters!” and it’s not even clear that her sudden insight will lead to meaningful change in her attitude or actions.

So yes: the struggle continues.

But Maryse and her community live on. They find joy, power, and healing. The story is about them, from beginning to end. Maryse isn’t choosing not to hate out of an abstract sense of hope or love for her fellow man. She’s doing it for Chef and Sadie, her companions in arms who always have her back. She’s doing it for Michael George, her lover who wants to take her sailing around the world to show her all the things she’s never seen. She’s doing it for Nana Jean and Molly and Emma, who live around her and feed her, teach her, guide her, and need her.

And she’s doing it for herself.

Heroes of SFF and heroes of Civil Rights and Antiracism often end up dead, if they don’t start out that way from the beginning, their lives condensed into hashtags. There is a martyr in this book, but I’ll tell you plainly it’s not Maryse. The main character’s purpose is not to die; it’s to live, in all her complicated, contradictory, stubborn, brave glory. Even if this is the last we hear of Maryse (I hope it’s not), we’ll know she’s out there, mint julep in one hand and sword in the other.

I am never not in awe at how P. Djèlí Clark can create such amazing, complex stories within so few pages. Seriously, there's more story in the first few pages in Ring Shout than I've seen in some 1,000+ pg sagas. How is this possible??? And yet he manages it with literally every story of his that I've read. Ring Shout is, obviously, no exception. It's brilliant, full stop - a seamless blend of history and horror highlighting the ways that hate makes monsters of us all. Sometimes quite literally. Seriously, how does Clark manage to fit so much imagery, symbolism and history into less than 200 pages? HOW?!

Definitely among one of the best books I've read this year. Add it to your TBR right now.

This was short and bloody. Easily could be seen as the start of a series I would gladly read the rest of, mixing history and myth together in a creepy tale more timely than ever.

"Ring Shout " goes into the truly monstrous nature of the Ku Klux Klan to the point of literally making them monsters in the skin of men. But it amplifies that sort of veil by making it so only fee have "the sight" to see the grotesque monsters for they truly are. And so you have this whole world of beings who have a fascination with Black trauma and yanking it out. But then you have Black heroes, monster hunters, armed and charmed and full of the energy of their ancestors. This story brought Black folktales to the forefront, Black Spirituality as a key component, love and this validation of anger that is steeped in Black trauma and love and song and so much more. Not only are they fighting beasts but it doesn't diminish racism as monsters and only monsters can be bad--racism and hate and bias opens you up to the thing that twists and distorts. It's a choice being made--to let that gunk build and chew through you until you beast? Or think of the alternative possibilities beyond that writhing gunk trail? Ultimately systemic white supremacy feeds up the gunk especially to white folks. It's hard to capture all that went down, it's all so big and complicated--but really not when you got the sight for it. Being Black all this sort of settled in my belly, tuggled around at my soul--the woven shouts, the people involved, the elder, the songs the songs the songs, the interconnection of people . Such a good story honestly. My only issue which isnt really an issue was that I had a hard time believing one person was a chosen person in such a racially steeped time...but it was implied there are more champions at the end and maybe more examination on the liminal worlds and who can interact deep in them for advice. Also one person as chosen champion is a common archetype, I know. I'm just glad it's a Black woman this time. And I think one more thing I keep coming back to despite my delight and awe for this book is that because the racialized context is so overt in that the Ku Klux are very literal monsters, a white reader might be fed this subtext that absolves their whiteness of that monstrosity--what I mean is the narrative can run into the trouble of echoing this thought pattern to some white consumers that differentiates their whiteness as "innocent" as oppose to grotesque and monstrous. Further break down of what I mean is it unconsciously can resonate the dichotomy that white people latch onto in conversations of racism and the nuances therein that so long as .they are not blatantly racism they are not the problem, they can disengage from the monstrous. But I can and did see where that nuance was definitely echoed just that the overt monster can drown out the nuance. And that's just a detail that I keep coming back to because I really love this novella and loved the curt cadence of it all and just want audiences that are not Black to notate in their understanding of reading Black Horror which processes out the gruesome embodied trauma and not see this wonderful narrative and not see themselves as a threat as well. Because Clark demonstrates too how systemic and large the structure is and how whiteness is susceptable due to the paradigms shaped in white supremacy. All this to say--I hope there is more to this world to explore.

I don't have all the knowledge or language to describe just how amazing this story is but I can say that I've never read a horror fantasy like this before! It's funny, vibrant and as a horror fan features all the creepy delights you could possibly imagine. This story demonstrates the power of folktales and the magic they contain as well as beautifully expressing the centuries long toll of being hunted by monsters and chasing after them in return. I will miss reading abt Maryse, Sadie and Chef's adventures. This story offers so much wisdom ,and although fantasy, allows for a version of a history that's still bloody and tragic but empowering, honest and hopeful.

Ring Shout is an experience. It reads like a surreal fever dream in some parts and alternative history all at once. With elements of horror, dark fantasy, and history, Clark insures that readers of all kinds will enjoy this read.

I loved the characters and myths created within these pages. From DW Griffith as as an important part of the monstrous Ku Kluxes to the manner in which they can be killed, takes monster hunting to an all new level. There were parts that were uncomfortable to read in regards to race and racism and I believe this was absolutely intentional and necessary. Clark shies always from nothing.

This is a quick, important read and I enjoyed the time I spent with this book