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 expecting
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. 😄 ↩︎