Off-Time Jive - A.Z. Louise
- Publisher – Neon Hemlock
- Published – Out Now
- Price – $13.99 paperback | £4.99 Kobo
If this hadn't been on the Ignyte shortlist I doubt I would ever have heard of it, so chalk this up as a victory for fiction prizes. I also hadn't heard of Neon Hemlock Press before, and now I'm very interested to see what else they publish. Here's the blurb:
Bessie Knox is an investigator of magical mysteries. In an alternate Harlem Renaissance where new forms of magic created by Black joy strain against the white establishment, Knox's old colleagues at the Bronx Academy of Magic have started turning up dead, pushing her weakened abilities to their limits.
And now if she can't solve the case, she might be next.
A noir take on urban fantasy for enjoyers of alternate histories.
Urban fantasy is a hard sell for me. It's a genre I've tried and failed to get into, and the examples that I like are few and far between. Similarly, time travel stories often don't land for me. That meant that this one was facing an uphill battle.
That said, I really enjoyed it. The noir detective story at its heart is solid and I really loved the tone of the writing. The magic is cool and interesting and feels real in the world, and I liked the idea of this society of magic-users living alongside "normal" people (Sparrows, as they're referred to here) in spaces accessible only by turning reality on its side. It's not a new trope, but it's used well here.
Because it's a novella it rattles along at a blinding pace, and there were a couple of moments where I stumbled over who characters were meant to be and what their significance was, especially towards the end. But that's only a minor quibble, and the writing is strong enough that it didn't matter at all.
I'd really like to read more in this world. At its best it reminded me of Cassandra Khaw's Persons Non Grata series, which are some of my favourite weird urban fantasy novellas, and that's very high praise indeed. This is the third of the five novellas shortlisted for the Ignyte Awards that I've read, and right now I'd struggle to choose a winner between this and Green Fuse Burning.
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