Title The Ballad of Black Tom Series --- Author Victor LaValle Cover Art --- Publisher Tor.com - 2016 First Printing Tor.com - 2016 Category Lovecraftian Warnings Violence Main Characters Charles Thomas Tester, Suydam, Malone Main Elements Elder Gods

People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there.

Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.

A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?

This is a retelling of one of Lovecrafts most explicitly racist tales, The Horror at Red Hook, told from the point of view of Charles Thomas Tester, a young black man trying to surive in 1920's New York. It is also one of Lovecraft's tales that make the least sense, it starts off mysterious with a rich white man getting a bunch of immigrants and other shady characters to gather stuff for him (possibly even infant children), then he dies, then he comes back to life, gets chased around by a strange demon like thing called Lilith, he knock over a golden pedastle and he dies again. And there is virtually no connection at all to the overall Cthulhu Mythos.

LaValle I think is trying to do two things with this tale, first, to give one of those black characters a voice, to show they weren't all inherently devil worshippers or what not, and if one or another becomes enamoured of the idea of bringing back the Elder Gods and to wake the Sleeping King, then maybe they are kind of justified in wanting to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth (doubt Cthulhu's people would much care for us running about as vermin when they return). He also tried to make the tale make a bit more sense (no golden pedastles here), and finally to tie it clearly into the main Mythos.

I actually re-read the entire Lovecraft collection before picking up this novella, which was briefly free from Tor.com, and I'll admit, I had to go back and read a summary of The Horror at Red Hook as it was so very not memorable. But I will be remembering The Ballad of Black Tom, a tale of racism, injustice, and dark things slumbering beneath the sea...