Emotive and eschews realism for the supernatural. It combines current concerns about race and justice for young Black men with an intensely readable, immersive story with decisive paranormal features. In fact, the novel’s extended, layered denouement is so heart-smashingly good, it made me late for work. I couldn’t stop reading. I needed to find out what was going to happen next, and next, and next ... A supernatural historical novel and a straight-up page-turner. This is a difficult combination to sustain for nearly 600 pages, but Due accomplishes it, and in so doing invites us to consider what it means to be enthralled, even entertained, by a young man’s ethical dilemmas, and to find ourselves unexpectedly rooting for revenge, for the living and the dead.
Stunning ... Captivating and alive ... I barely stirred while reading the novel’s final hundred, deeply satisfying pages, transported into Due’s beautiful and terrible world, where 'death was as real as breathing.'
The novel often feels more like dystopian fiction than a gothic ghost story ... Moving, and convincing because it knows that no one needs to possess America to force it to do evil. And it also knows that real evil is a lot worse than the classics would have us believe.
Centers on family dynamics and systemic racism and ends up fitting firmly within the neo-slave narrative genre ... Tananarive Due provides readers with a compelling story based on historical fact. Combining reality with gothic hauntings, Due’s latest effort will appeal not only to die-hard Due fans but also to conscientious readers determined to bring American enslavement and racism to the forefront of US history.
he writing here is spectacular; the pacing, engrossing; the setting, heartbreaking but honest; and the characters are given a nuance and depth rarely seen ... A masterpiece.
Due’s book is a horror story, but not of the dead. It’s about the evils of man, control or lack thereof, despair and atrocities that are not just anecdotes, but ripped-from-the-pages-of-history real ... The novel doesn't flinch from the terrors of the time, forcing you to see fully the injustices so many have faced then and even now. But it’s not a hopeless tale ... a gripping story of survival, of family, of learning how to be brave in the most dangerous of circumstances. And it will haunt you in the best way long after you turn the last page.
Due takes an unflinching look at American racism in this masterful work of historical horror ... This harrowing, supernaturally inflected depiction of racism’s unbridled cruelty and the generational trauma it can inflict is sure to stick in readers’ minds.
