RING SHOUT by P. Djèlí Clark

Ring Shout is the definitive answer to the question none of us have ever aksed: what would happen if Guillermo Del Toro, Jordan Peele and Quentin Tarantino got completely wasted one night and came up with the most batshit bonkers Lovecraftian story they could?

It is 1922 in the deep South. The KKK are enjoying an unprecedented resurgence thanks to the release of the notoriously racist film, The Birth of a Nation. That and the presence of Ku Kluxes, a breed of demons that feast on hate. Enter Maryse Boudreaux, a kick-ass black woman with a monster slaying super sword. Sent in to investigate, she meets the Klan’s Butcher Clyde, made up of tiny razor-toothed mouths. He has a plan to conjure the Grand Cyclops and rule the world and Maryse is part of it.

Ring Shout is packed full of great monsters, great action and, perhaps most importantly, great social commentary. Clark has a lot to say about the state of America, and how it came to be, without it ever feeling heavy-handed. It’s an Inglorious Basterds-style revenge fantasy par bloody excellence. I just wish that, in the lead up to November, it didn’t feel so darn urgent.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
Tordotcom, 2020
185 pages