COMMENTARY: Ring Shout (2020)
The following are thoughts and reactions I had while reading Ring Shout (2020) by P. Djèlí Clark. They do not reflect my overall post-reading opinion of the work.
⚠️ SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD ⚠️
- pg. 22 - what the fuck is going on? The Ku Klux are actual demons? What!?
- pg. 29 - Sadie in the middle complaining is chef’s kiss
- pg. 90 - no extra thoughts so far. Spellbound by the world, the language, the premise. I can see this, if not already, picked up to be adapted to a film. Letitia Wright as Sadie. Leah Harvey for Chef? Don’t know about Maryse. Don’t have a good sense for her. She’s a good protagonist… but also your typical one. Has a magic sword, gets magical mentors, gets interesting visions. I’m assuming the girl in the dream where Butcher Clyde snuck in is her younger self? I dunno. The mythic South is always a cool genre. Just so much history and also so much theme to attach.
- pg. 106-108 - yeah… that was cool. All the little mouths singing and throwing Maryse’s fighting rhythm off. And then Butcher Clyde almost force feeding a piece of himself into her. That’s memorable imagery.
- Ch. 6 - there are just so many different varied elements that work here. The magic sword with the betrayed voices of old African kings. The three aunts in the pocket universe. The Gullah woman speaking almost incomprehensibly. Chef with bombs, Sadie with Winnie. The shouters (played McIntosh County Shouters for a bit while reading the book). The Ku Kluxes as demons. There’s just so many cool, unique elements. This is the kind of world building that impresses me. It’s new, it’s fresh, it walks that fine line between familiar and strange.
- Oh cool. Found a Gullah Dictionary
- pg. 125 Antoine Bisset. At first, with the white suit, white shoes and bowler hat… I was like Morgan Freeman. But then by the next page, I think Michael K. Williams would be much better. Unfortunately, he’s no longer with us. Maybe Denzel’s son? Or if you want to go super interesting… Snoop. Yeah. I think Snoop Dog would be an interesting casting choice.
- pg. 135 / 75% mark. Wound Reveal before the climax, right on schedule!
- pg. 148 - yeah…. Maryse is your stereotypical sword-wielding protagonist with a tragic past who’s all action, no thought, and least interesting of the characters here. She thought she knew Butcher Clyde’s offer but he laughs in her face. Because Maryse is pure and innocent and stupid. I vaguely suspect Clark did this on purpose, because his acknowledgments talk about how he wanted to bring the sword and sorcery genre to the American south. To that end, it works. But I am so very very bored with the tropes of epic fantasy and the fidelity to the genre ends up not working for me. Love the analogous shift on everything else… but the hero itself is boring.
- pg. 150 - now that’s a twist reveal. God DAMN! So good.
- Final battle scene with Gullah woman calling in reinforcements and the final goodbye worked for me. That trick (where prot gets to say goodbye again to dead ally)… it always nearly always works on me.