The blurb:
In a fantastical version of New Orleans where music is magic, a battle for the city’s soul brews between two young mages, a vengeful wraith, and one powerful song in this vibrant and imaginative debut.
Nola is a city full of wonders. A place of sky trolleys and dead cabs, where haints dance the night away and Wise Women keep the order, and where songs walk, talk and keep the spirit of the city alive. To those from Far Away, Nola might seem strange. To failed magician, Perilous Graves, it’s simply home. Then the rhythm stutters.
Nine songs of power have escaped from the magical piano that maintains the city’s beat and without them, Nola will fail. Unexpectedly, Perry and his sister, Brendy, are tasked with saving the city. But a storm is brewing and the Haint of All Haints is awake. Even if they capture the songs, Nola’s time might be coming to an end.
The review:
It may make me seem shallow and superficial, but the first thing that caught my eye about the Ballad of Perilous Graves was the cover. I suppose it’s fairly simplistic so far as Fantasy covers go (especially with the fashion of highly detailed illustrations these days), but even so, it just had this… captivating sort of personality to it.
The skull, the beaded necklace, the piano. I don’t know how to describe it without sounding all kinds of pretentious, but it looked like a book that seemed sure of itself. Different from a lot of its contemporaries but rightfully confident in its own skin.
Based on the blurb and the cover, I went in expecting a colourful, musical world stuffed to the brim with ghosts, spirits, and a fair bit of magic-slinging.
And I got all of that! In spades! The Ballad of Perilous Graves constructs a magical version of New Orleans — known as Nola — that dances off the page. Where the living and the undead live side by side, clouds of graffiti float down the zombie-patrolled streets, and musical spirits can appear out of thin air to drag the whole street into a party. You can almost hear the music, just at the edge of your perception. And in Nola, music is magic – they’re one and the same.
So, what’s the book all about?
Well… That was a question I found myself asking a lot. This is one of those stories that tries to unfold in an organic way, which ties in thematically, but also means that a lot of the time you’re left wondering what the hell is going on.
The chapters flick between two main perspectives. The first is that of Perilous “Perry” Graves, a young, seemingly un-magical kid in Nola who has recently had to switch schools due to some undisclosed traumatic event. Along with his little sister (Brendy) and his mysteriously-orphaned super-strong childhood crush (Peaches), Perry is tasked with re-capturing nine songs of power that have escaped from the piano of the local spirit, Dr. Professor. These songs are part of what holds the magic of Nola together, and without them, the city is in danger of unravelling.
The second perspective is that of Casey, a trans dude who has recently returned home to New Orleans, and has a complicated past with the city after the events of Hurricane Katrina. Casey’s chapters span several different time frames (not always in order), and we slowly see how his story becomes entwined with the childrens’ following a bunch of events including graffiti tagging, explosions, and a cousin that needs saving.
If it sounds like I’m throwing a lot of names and a lot of info at you… yeah. That’s the kind of book this is. At least at first.
Perilous Graves assumes a lot of faith on the part of the reader — that things will eventually make sense, that disparate plot-lines will eventually come together. And they do, but you’re left in the dark for a lot of the book, which I know some readers won’t appreciate. For my part, I found myself very frustrated initially (to the point of considering a DNF), but once I decided to just switch that “questioning” part of my brain off and see where things went… I honestly had a great time.
Much of the dialogue is written in the New Orleans dialect. It took me a while to sink myself into the unfamiliar (to me) way of speaking, but once I did, it lent a great deal of personality to a book that was hardly suffering from a lack of it. Following Perry, Brendy, and Peaches (especially Peaches) as they bickered their way into a balls-to-the-wall magic coming of age tale? Well, it was a hell of a lot of fun.
And honestly, that word “fun” is the important one. It’s just a riot. A confusing mess of colour and magic and music, at times, but a fun one.
I’m having a horrendous time trying to get across just what “kind” of book this is. Is it character-driven? I wouldn’t say so, though I enjoyed them. Is it plot-driven? Hard to say, given how opaque it can feel. Does it touch on any important themes? Sure, a lot of the book revolves around the importance of community, family, and of finding yourself.
But I’d struggle to recommend this book based solely on the strength of any one of those things. This isn’t really the kind of story that you pick up when looking for something with deep and intimate character exploration, or an intricate or action-heavy plot. Which isn’t to say that it fails at any of that stuff, they’re just… not the selling point.
The world that Alex Jennings has created in The Ballad of Perilous Graves is, hand-on-my-heart, very different from anything I’ve read before. As a reader who tries to hyper-analyse everything, the fact that I couldn’t here meant that the actual reading experience was pretty unique as well. And I kind of… loved that? I was frustrated at first, sure. But once I found my footing with the style, I loved being able to just sit back and let the music take me wherever it was going.
If that sounds like the kind of book you’ve been looking for, I can’t recommend it enough. I’ll be definitely be reading more from Alex Jennings in the future.
We received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Orbit UK for the review copy!
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I can’t wait to read this book!