Walking through Harlem first thing in the morning was like being a single drop of blood inside an enormous body that was waking up. Brick and mortar, elevated train tracks, and miles of underground pipe, this city lived; day and night it thrived.
At first, it’s a story about a black man in the boroughs of New York in the 1920s. A gritty world, but somehow alive, dripping with some wonderfully written descriptions of the people and places of the time.
And then…
The Sleeping King is dead but dreaming.
Things take a somewhat supernatural turn.
This is another of those cases where I put a book on my ’to read’ list because it looked interesting and, before getting around to it, completely forgot it was going to be about.
By the end… that took a much darker track than I was expecting1… and that’s starting from the point of view of racial disparity and violence in the 1920s.
And then… things get even darker. But I’ll leave that for you to read.
Nobody ever thinks of himself as a villain, does he? Even monsters hold high opinions of themselves.
Overall, it’s short. ~150 pages or a few hours audio. But I think it does a good job of hitting hard without overstaying it’s welcome. If you’re a fan of cosmic horror / weird fiction, I think you’ll like it. I certainly did.
Onward!
I probably could have looked up my review of The Changeling, also by LaValle. I said much the same thing there. 😄 ↩︎