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    The Ballad of Black Tom
    The Ballad of Black Tom
    The Ballad of Black Tom
    Audiobook3 hours

    The Ballad of Black Tom

    Written by Victor LaValle

    Narrated by Kevin R. Free

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there.

    Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his black skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their trained cops. But when he delivers an occult page to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.

    A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?

    “LaValle cleverly subverts Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos by imbuing a black man with the power to summon the Old Ones, and creates genuine chills with his evocation of the monstrous Sleeping King, an echo of Lovecraft’s Dagon… [The Ballad of Black Tom] has a satisfying slingshot ending.” – Elizabeth Hand for Fantasy & ScienceFiction

    "[LaValle] reinvents outmoded literary conventions, particularly the ghettos of genre and ethnicity that long divided serious literature from popular fiction."
    --Praise for The Devil in Silver from Elizabeth Hand, author of Radiant Days

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateFeb 16, 2016
    ISBN9781427273802
    The Ballad of Black Tom
    Author

    Victor LaValle

    Victor LaValle is the author of more than ten works of fiction and graphic novels, including the multi-award-winning novel, The Changeling. His books have won the World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award, Bram Stoker Award, Dragon Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award, among many others. He has been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Whiting Writers Award, and the Key to Southeast Queens. He teaches writing at Columbia University and lives with his wife and kids in the Bronx.

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    Reviews for The Ballad of Black Tom

    4/5

    472 ratings21 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This novella beautifully weaves HP Lovecraft mythos with racial discourse and creates a stunning world where one of our biggest global issues today is explained with the actions of one individual who is tired of being the monster and decides to show New York what real monsters look like.

      4 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Victor did it again. Incredible writing. Simple, sad & haunting. Black Tom has more heart, soul, and truth in it than anything Lovecraft ever wrote.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      An origin story you didn't see coming. Subtle twists that sneak to on you for a great listen.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Great novella! The sound quality of this audiobook was really bad though..

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      YES! This author should rewrite every Lovecraft story - utterly astounding

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Too short! Just when it’s getting good, it’s over! Where’s the rest of the book?!?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      A quick listen, I burned through it almost in one go. I really love the author’s writing style, and the audiobook narration was fantastic.

      Fiery, rage inducing, and ultimately immensely satisfying.
    • 4/5
      Lovecraft fans should like this very short story. Maybe it’s a little too short of a story????
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the story, the end came so suddenly!
      This is a Cliffhanger, I can't wait until the next book in the tale of Black Tom.
    • 3/5
      I’m just not into cosmic horror. If this was occult based instead of portals to other dimensions then I could have got into it more.
    • 5/5
      Honestly? Eldritch horror at its finest. I look forward to reading it again.
    • 5/5
      Stirring, lush descriptions of Harlem in the Jazz age, important racial analyses and overall beautiful myth-crafting and world building. Loved it.
    • 5/5
      Top notch. I loved it. I want more Black Tom!
    • 5/5
      A fantastic tale, well told. I highly recommend it! The imagery!
    • 5/5
      This was good. An easy to follow stoy about a world that exeist right next to ours. Realistic, and honest about the culture, without dwelling.
    • 2/5
      It's alright, but not as good as it was hyped up to be.

      It is true to the spirit of the original as it too racial animus clothed in literary tropes and caricature. It lacks the building dread and brevity of the source material, instead flipping things and focusing on more mundane monstrosity; where the eldritch comes it is a relief. The result is a story less about building menace and pure invective (the original was a racist tantrum by Lovecraft fashioned into a weird story riddled with vile bigotry but punctuated by a nightmarishly captivating climax) but more of a dark fantasy story and rebuke of the original, its author, and society then and now (a critique that is not entirely unwarranted and entirely perfect for this time).
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the book. It was a great short listen.
    • 5/5
      LaValle was able to blend the horrors of blackness in America with the Lovecraftian horror similar in style to Lovecraft Country. Black Tom is a masterpiece.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this short story. I was intrigued by the characters and the mystery of the story. I want to know what happened to Black Tom?
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book. It was different and had the supernatural element to it.
    • 3/5
      This was fine. At first I liked it a lot but then I really didn't enjoy Malone's part - I found it weirdly disjointed and confusing. The ending brought it back though.