A fun and fascinating book

If you are expecting a purely Lovecraftian story then this isn't for you. This feels like a blend of pulp action, historical fiction and magical fantasy all filtered through the lens of black people suffering from both the defacto and dejura racism in 1950s America.

The story is told in vignettes which was a first for me. Each chapter and features a different main character, often introduced earlier in the book and they each have their adventures with the same antagonist and each other. Some chapters are more horror themed, others more sci-fi and other still are mystery. The connective tissue between the characters allows for this to feel like a lived in world.

The prose is well written for the most part and while racism is ever present the injustices inflicted on the characters feel realistic. Matt Ruff, not being black himself, clearly did lots and lots of research before putting pen to paper and avoided being exploitative.

I had two bones to pick however. First the mysteries found in this book were less mysterious and more untold. Things would happen to and for the characters that the readers weren't privy to. This convention happened too frequently and I felt a little annoyed. The second and bigger bone was the fact that while this world dealt with magic, none of the characters ever seem to be surprised by/confused by/scared of the fantastic things that happened to and around them them. With the exception of my second favorite chapter, I felt everyone was just a little to comfortable with the likes of what they experienced.