So Much Potential...

CW: Racism (Against Black people - shown as appropriately wrong, Slurs against Asian people included in dialogue and narration - not addressed), Slavery, Injury Detail, Sex Work

Alternative history steampunk New Orleans with a diverse crew of sky pirates and god powers.

There are so many elements to this novella that are great -- The alternative New Orleans and the general worldbuilding and set dressing, the gods and how they travelled with the people and connected to certain individuals, and some lovely turns of phrase and passages. But there are also a number of things working against it for me -- The length and depth of the story, which seemed like it would have been better served as a tighter short story or expanded on and allowed to breathe as a novel, the narrative itself that is great in theory, but didn't work as well for me and was overshadowed by other elements being so strong (both of which contribute to or are exacerbated by the pacing being a little unwieldy, and the repeated inclusion of a slur as a name for a character without any commentary. This last point is linked to how the protagonist sees and names people by a single seemingly obvious fact about them, whether this be their nationality/ heritage, religion, etc. There is a Mongolian character, who frankly only seems to be included for this weirdness, she mistakenly believes is Chinese who she names a slur. The character is corrected about their origin, but the pejorative is never addressed. I am unsure where this book was published, but the word used is absolutely a slur in the UK and I have seen North American comedians discuss the slur. It's especially weird in a book that includes the Confederates and slavery.

I really wanted to love this and adore the idea on paper and some of the passages, but the negative elements detracted too heavily from the wonderful concepts and some moments of brilliance. I would still like to check out more from this author for sure.

The narrator is phenomenal and truly imbues the words with drama and emotion.

Shout out to the people taking reviewing this book as an opportunity to be extremely racist, play down the evils of the Confederates, bemoan a book having an "unrealistic" diverse cast, and even calling the simple fact of having a Black femme on the cover "virtue signalling". And by shout out I mean WTF get out of here with that BS and get help. Also, please learn that racism requires a sociopolitical power imbalance, so you should be incorrectly whinging about perceived prejudice instead.

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great short story

voice acting was brilliant and added atmosphere. this short story can be read in one day but has so much going on.

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Creole fairytale

This is a great little story, full of great people and god's. Set in old Free Orleans around the American revolution. I liked the writing very much and will look for more by this author.

Good narrator. The story has some Creole speech but I'm English and I got the gist of most of it.

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Short and sweet

This is a novella so a bit of a quick read. Great characters and steam punkish setting

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loved the setting, story was ok but not thrilling

Worth it for the New Orleans setting + gods originating from West Africa but I think the story per se was alright but didn't blow me away

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Fun quick story

Fun to imagine the gods and sky pirates. Love hearing from other cultures and other takes on gods and magic

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Loved the story

I love all the author's books, novellas, and short stories that I have been reading lately. This one was a precious surprise. It took me a little bit to get used to the accents, but they only made the audiobook more rich.

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Great African fantasy!

I love the genre and this book is one of the best I’ve listen to.

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Good

It was good. Not as great as other short stories/novellas by this author but good enough.

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4 people found this helpful

interesting concept; not the best accent work.

I really liked the concept for this story. The pacing of the story was really good and if the author explores this universe more I will definitely check it out.

The narrator's accent work wasn't the best and if the run time of this was much longer I don't think I'd be able to finish it. I really enjoyed their natural voice and the atmosphere they brought to the storytelling.

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