If you enjoyed the first book, I think you’ll enjoy this book as well. It wasn’t as able to focus on new areas of the Black experience in Chicago at the time but the focus on Hippolyta and George’s son’s anger does demonstrate the generational change in the civil rights movement at the time. So it’s more like a traditional novel and we spend some more time with characters that didn’t get the spotlight in the first book. The story was more cohesive and linear in this volume than the approach in the first book.
But I really enjoyed this and it felt like Ruff was seriously following up on threads of his original story. I didn’t want to read something that felt like a money grab after the first book’s success. I was warily looking forward to this follow up. I really loved the first book and thought it was an interesting response to Lovecraftian horror and addressing some of the lesser known (Ruff’s description of the Tulsa riot preceded HBO’s Watchmen, which thrust it into the public eye) aspects of US racial history. Stripped of his magic and banished from Chicago at the end of Lovecraft Country, he's found a way back into power and is ready to pick up where he left off. Yet these troubles are soon eclipsed by the return of Caleb Braithwhite. Now, the supply of magic potion she needs to transform herself is nearly gone, and a surprise visitor throws her already tenuous situation into complete chaos. Letitia's sister, Ruby, has been leading a double life as her white alter ego, Hillary Hyde.
Hippolyta isn't the only one keeping secrets. But Hippolyta has a secret - and far more dangerous - agenda that will take her and Horace to the far end of the universe and bring a new threat home to Letitia's doorstep. Meanwhile, fifteen-year-old Horace Berry, reeling from the killing of a close friend, joins his mother, Hippolyta, and her friend Letitia Dandridge on a research trip to Nevada for The Safe Negro Travel Guide. Diagnosed with cancer, he strikes a devil's bargain with the ghost of Hiram Winthrop, who promises a miracle cure-but to receive it, George will first have to bring Winthrop back from the dead. But an encounter with an old nemesis turns their historical reenactment into a real life-and-death pursuit.īack in Chicago, George Berry fights for his own life. In this thrilling adventure, a blend of enthralling historical fiction and fantastical horror, Matt Ruff returns to the world of Lovecraft Country and explores the meaning of death, the hold of the past on the present, and the power of hope in the face of uncertainty.Ītticus Turner and his father, Montrose, travel to North Carolina, where they plan to mark the centennial of their ancestor's escape from slavery by retracing the route he took into the Great Dismal Swamp. "Ruff renders a very high-concept, imaginary world with such vividness that you can't help but feel it's disturbingly real."–Christopher Moore
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