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carol.'s Reviews > Ring Shout
Ring Shout
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carol.'s review
bookshelves: horror, represent, my-library-hardcover, female-lead, urban-fantasy, awards-of-all-sorts, nebula, to-read-2024
Dec 28, 2020
bookshelves: horror, represent, my-library-hardcover, female-lead, urban-fantasy, awards-of-all-sorts, nebula, to-read-2024
“My heart catches. The Ku Kluxes are moving! The big one sitting up, feeling at his caved-in chest. The portly one’s stirring too, looking to his missing arm. But it’s the lanky one that jumps up first, face half gone so that you can see bone showing. His good eye rolls around til it lands on me and he opens his mouth to let out a screech that ain’t no ways human. That’s when I know, things about to get bad.”
Ring Shout is Clark’s entry in the revisionist Lovecraft genre, and I have to say, it ranks as one of my favorites by far. A novella set in Macon, Georgia, somewhen around 1922, it focuses on a band of Black Americans who are doing their best to prevent the Ku Kluxes from making inroads into society. The monster Ku Kluxes, that is.
I’ve been entirely engrossed in almost everything I’ve read by Clark as I’ve made my way through his back catalog, so the release of Ring Shout is a welcome addition. A solid novella, it moves quickly, springing into action, then giving a bit of a breather to catch up on the world and the plot. The characters feel fleshed out enough for a novella, although I’m always left wanting more details in his stories.
Two hesitations. One character speaks in a Gullah accent, which is serious work to parse out. I’ve noticed it tends to be confusing for my non-American born reader friends. Honestly, friends–it’s confusing for the American ones too, so you aren’t alone. Secondly, there’s a psychological angle that was kept as a late ‘reveal’ that was somewhat underwhelming for both Nataliya and I. I’m not saying I want more horror, but it seemed boilerplate, which I did not expect from Clark.
Clark has done something very, very clever here, and I’ll have to put much of it under spoilers, but suffice it to say that he’s also snuck in a ton of information about American history, particularly parts that pertain to Black Americans that have been largely ignored by history books. I’m particularly history impaired, and I had to rely on my fabulous co-reader Nataliya and Google because I wasn’t quite sure what was actual history and what was made up.
How twisted and horrific is that?
(view spoiler)
Read it if you are into eldritch horror, urban fantasy, time-period fantasy, Kindred, or a whole host of other books I’ll probably have to add later as memory permits. I’m calling it slightly less than 5 stars at the moment for technical reasons–my 5 stars tend to be re-reads, and I’m not entirely sure I want to re-read this one soon. Like Connolly, it’s challenging and powerful, but not a comfort read.
Thank you to Nataliya for the buddy read and the research!
Note: audio recommended
Ring Shout is Clark’s entry in the revisionist Lovecraft genre, and I have to say, it ranks as one of my favorites by far. A novella set in Macon, Georgia, somewhen around 1922, it focuses on a band of Black Americans who are doing their best to prevent the Ku Kluxes from making inroads into society. The monster Ku Kluxes, that is.
I’ve been entirely engrossed in almost everything I’ve read by Clark as I’ve made my way through his back catalog, so the release of Ring Shout is a welcome addition. A solid novella, it moves quickly, springing into action, then giving a bit of a breather to catch up on the world and the plot. The characters feel fleshed out enough for a novella, although I’m always left wanting more details in his stories.
Two hesitations. One character speaks in a Gullah accent, which is serious work to parse out. I’ve noticed it tends to be confusing for my non-American born reader friends. Honestly, friends–it’s confusing for the American ones too, so you aren’t alone. Secondly, there’s a psychological angle that was kept as a late ‘reveal’ that was somewhat underwhelming for both Nataliya and I. I’m not saying I want more horror, but it seemed boilerplate, which I did not expect from Clark.
Clark has done something very, very clever here, and I’ll have to put much of it under spoilers, but suffice it to say that he’s also snuck in a ton of information about American history, particularly parts that pertain to Black Americans that have been largely ignored by history books. I’m particularly history impaired, and I had to rely on my fabulous co-reader Nataliya and Google because I wasn’t quite sure what was actual history and what was made up.
How twisted and horrific is that?
(view spoiler)
Read it if you are into eldritch horror, urban fantasy, time-period fantasy, Kindred, or a whole host of other books I’ll probably have to add later as memory permits. I’m calling it slightly less than 5 stars at the moment for technical reasons–my 5 stars tend to be re-reads, and I’m not entirely sure I want to re-read this one soon. Like Connolly, it’s challenging and powerful, but not a comfort read.
Thank you to Nataliya for the buddy read and the research!
Note: audio recommended
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Reading Progress
December 22, 2019
– Shelved
December 26, 2020
–
Started Reading
December 26, 2020
–
12.43%
"Clark doesn't waste any time jumping into the action. Quite palpable tension."
page
23
December 27, 2020
–
Finished Reading
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Dylan
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rated it 3 stars
Dec 28, 2020 01:51PM
Great review as always carol, I enjoyed Nataliya’s review too. I had been wanting to read this already but I’m definitely bumping it up the priority list now
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Thanks, Dylan. It's a very quick read :)
I’m also loving Clark! This goes on the list!
Another excellent review, and I can't resist adding a side comment--Gullah is actually a distinct language of the Carolina sea islands, of the type called creole, and dialogue written in it is likely to be unintelligible to non-speakers like us. Most (all?) of the 100,000-plus Gullah speakers either grow up bilingual in Gullah and English or learn English as a second language (ESL); I'm guessing that imperfectly learned ESL is what Clark was trying to represent in writing.
“I’ve noticed it tends to be confusing for my non-American born reader friends.”*raises hand*
But I kinda cracked it by the end.
John wrote: "Another excellent review, and I can't resist adding a side comment--Gullah is actually a distinct language of the Carolina sea islands, of the type called creole, and dialogue written in it is like..."Interesting! So I guess maybe he was trying to represent Gullah accent as opposed to the actual language then.
Great review! Alas, I think I'm even more history impaired than you. I peeked at your spoilers, and WTF? I would be so much happier for that to have been fiction.
Nataliya wrote: "“I’ve noticed it tends to be confusing for my non-American born reader friends.”*raises hand*
But I kinda cracked it by the end."
*another hand goes up*
also thank you for proving the links to the things that was mentioned and referenced in this book! i have no idea about these info and i’m trying to read more into it.
Nataliya wrote: "“I’ve noticed it tends to be confusing for my non-American born reader friends.”*raises hand*
But I kinda cracked it by the end."
Dennis said the same thing in his review. You were not alone :D
wildemuses wrote: "also thank you for proving the links to the things that was mentioned and referenced in this book! i have no idea about these info and i’m trying to read more into it."You are welcome. It was both sad and horrorific that I couldn't tell the difference between "real life" and imagined horror.
Great job adding in the history, carol! I'm not a huge Lovecraft fan and it took me a while to get into this book, but by the end I loved it. Clark did something really amazing here.
Thank you, Geoff. I agree re: Lovecraft ... but I overcame that to read this. Glad you did as well.
Nice review carol. Just like you I know very little about Black Americans history and this book made me do my research because I was really invested in it and I wanted to understand the actual events reported. I would like to add that I read the book in french (and also read some excerpts in english)and the translation was awesome and really lived to the original book (yes, even the Gullah part). The translator, Mathilde Montier, won the Jacques Chambon Award for translation this year and it was really deserved!
