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Bacchanal by Veronica Henry
A lot of books promise circuses or carnivals with their cover/title/premise and then disappoint, but you definitely cannot say this book fails to deliver carnivals. This book is all carnival all the time.
I got it through Amazon Prime's first-reader program so it's still only for preorder (comes out on June 1). On the whole I really enjoyed it, aside from an abrupt and somewhat disappointing ending.
This is a historical fantasy set in a traveling carnival in the Southern US during the Great Depression. The performers are nearly all black; most have magic powers of one sort or another, and the carnival is a refuge from the hostile white world around them. But at the carnival's core is its terrible secret, which is that it's run by Ahiku, a demoness who feeds on children. In exchange for a few children's lives, the carnival remains a refuge for those who need it. But of course it can't stay that way forever, especially not when a Chosen One type shows up who is the fated enemy Ahiku has been using the carnival as a front to search for.
(On a side note, I suspect this is one of those books that wouldn't work if not being written by an #ownvoices author. There is a lot about the book that I could see going off the rails very easily or just being extremely troubling on its own in a white author's hands, but part of what makes the world feel so rich and deep is that the place of refuge is almost as flawed as the world the characters come from. Nothing is pure or perfect, but the characters are compellingly human in the middle of it, just trying to find safety and family and love.)
As far as leaning into the premise goes, this book does everything it promises. Nearly the entire book takes place in the carnival, with an interesting and compelling cast of carnival performers, following them from town to town as they practice their acts and fleece the locals and leave a trail of suspicious disappearances behind them. The victims are not all innocent; there is also an element of retribution to Ahiku's mischief, with the carnival being used to punish the wicked as well as to collect innocent souls to fuel the demon.
The characters are very shades-of-gray and I liked that. Even the best among them are shysters by trade. Some of the performers suspect what's going on and suppress that knowledge because they need what the carnival offers. Some are actively evil; some are innocent. But most of them are compelling, interesting, flawed and likable, even the ones who really deserve everything they have coming, like the former KKK member who serves as Ahiku's white frontman for dealing with the outside world and secures children for her to eat.
Essentially this book has the same quality that keeps drawing me back to Stephen King's books, which is that there is a lot of ugliness in the world and a lot of evil, none of the characters are without flaws and a lot of people die, but there's an underlying kindness and humanity that shows through everywhere.
Also, there are some excellent scenes with historical Harlem gangster Stephanie St. Clair, who I also wrote into Echo City as a supporting character and therefore have a soft spot for.
I would love to see a movie or Netflix miniseries version of this; it's visually rich and full of imagery that would be fun to see onscreen, as well as a nearly all-POC cast and a lot of African-derived magic and mythology.
The ending was the only part of the book that disappointed me, not to a "throw the book across the room" extent, but mostly because of lack of resolution.
I didn't hate what actually happened; it's just that there was no aftermath to speak of. The book carries you along with a colorful and compelling group of characters, and then there's a sudden climax, a bunch of people die, and then an immediate timeskip 50+ years into the future in which you find out that most of the survivors never saw each other again and get no resolution on most of them. Which was not what I was hoping for AT ALL. On the other hand, the ones that the timeskip did check in on had pretty good lives, so there's that.
The heroine also ended up with neither of her potential love interests, which was not exactly what I was expecting but also had a realistic feeling that fit with the overall tone of the book - they were her first loves, and then she moved on and had other loves.
Just as a content note, if you have any issues with animal harm, there's quite a bit of it in the book. The protagonist does an animal act using her innate ability to psychically connect to her animal charges; the problem is that she can't control it very well and more often than not causes them to drop dead when she tries to psychically communicate with them. (We first meet her killing an opossum while trying to learn to use her powers, so it's not like it comes out of nowhere, but if that bothers you, there's a lot more where that came from.)
Bacchanal on Amazon.
I got it through Amazon Prime's first-reader program so it's still only for preorder (comes out on June 1). On the whole I really enjoyed it, aside from an abrupt and somewhat disappointing ending.
This is a historical fantasy set in a traveling carnival in the Southern US during the Great Depression. The performers are nearly all black; most have magic powers of one sort or another, and the carnival is a refuge from the hostile white world around them. But at the carnival's core is its terrible secret, which is that it's run by Ahiku, a demoness who feeds on children. In exchange for a few children's lives, the carnival remains a refuge for those who need it. But of course it can't stay that way forever, especially not when a Chosen One type shows up who is the fated enemy Ahiku has been using the carnival as a front to search for.
(On a side note, I suspect this is one of those books that wouldn't work if not being written by an #ownvoices author. There is a lot about the book that I could see going off the rails very easily or just being extremely troubling on its own in a white author's hands, but part of what makes the world feel so rich and deep is that the place of refuge is almost as flawed as the world the characters come from. Nothing is pure or perfect, but the characters are compellingly human in the middle of it, just trying to find safety and family and love.)
As far as leaning into the premise goes, this book does everything it promises. Nearly the entire book takes place in the carnival, with an interesting and compelling cast of carnival performers, following them from town to town as they practice their acts and fleece the locals and leave a trail of suspicious disappearances behind them. The victims are not all innocent; there is also an element of retribution to Ahiku's mischief, with the carnival being used to punish the wicked as well as to collect innocent souls to fuel the demon.
The characters are very shades-of-gray and I liked that. Even the best among them are shysters by trade. Some of the performers suspect what's going on and suppress that knowledge because they need what the carnival offers. Some are actively evil; some are innocent. But most of them are compelling, interesting, flawed and likable, even the ones who really deserve everything they have coming, like the former KKK member who serves as Ahiku's white frontman for dealing with the outside world and secures children for her to eat.
Essentially this book has the same quality that keeps drawing me back to Stephen King's books, which is that there is a lot of ugliness in the world and a lot of evil, none of the characters are without flaws and a lot of people die, but there's an underlying kindness and humanity that shows through everywhere.
Also, there are some excellent scenes with historical Harlem gangster Stephanie St. Clair, who I also wrote into Echo City as a supporting character and therefore have a soft spot for.
I would love to see a movie or Netflix miniseries version of this; it's visually rich and full of imagery that would be fun to see onscreen, as well as a nearly all-POC cast and a lot of African-derived magic and mythology.
The ending was the only part of the book that disappointed me, not to a "throw the book across the room" extent, but mostly because of lack of resolution.
I didn't hate what actually happened; it's just that there was no aftermath to speak of. The book carries you along with a colorful and compelling group of characters, and then there's a sudden climax, a bunch of people die, and then an immediate timeskip 50+ years into the future in which you find out that most of the survivors never saw each other again and get no resolution on most of them. Which was not what I was hoping for AT ALL. On the other hand, the ones that the timeskip did check in on had pretty good lives, so there's that.
The heroine also ended up with neither of her potential love interests, which was not exactly what I was expecting but also had a realistic feeling that fit with the overall tone of the book - they were her first loves, and then she moved on and had other loves.
Just as a content note, if you have any issues with animal harm, there's quite a bit of it in the book. The protagonist does an animal act using her innate ability to psychically connect to her animal charges; the problem is that she can't control it very well and more often than not causes them to drop dead when she tries to psychically communicate with them. (We first meet her killing an opossum while trying to learn to use her powers, so it's not like it comes out of nowhere, but if that bothers you, there's a lot more where that came from.)
Bacchanal on Amazon.