The Black God’s Drums is a sprint. It’s a sprint full of flavor, a window into another world that feels overflowing and wild and vibrant—a fantastical reimagining of our own world’s history, bringing us to a “might have been” that feels true and honest and exciting, with plenty of our own world’s horror worked in. It’s quick, here and gone again, and a greater pleasure for it.

Thinking about a recent conversation with a fellow book-nerd friend, I have to warn you:

This book might not scratch your itch. My friend loves characters, and will embrace any book that gives sufficiently deep characters—I need to ask them more, but I suspect they also love character development and character growth over the course of their stories. This book has growth and change, yes, but it feels more fundamentally focused on the world and the physical plot, with less time spent dwelling in the internal stew of emotion and perspective that some readers love most.

What it has, though, is the same fascinating and enticing whole-cloth worldbuilding that I’ve loved from P. Djèli Clark’s other work. When I call it overflowing, I mean that it is full up and spilling out its details. Anywhere I turn, I feel I can turn over a rock and find more and more world going down into the depths without ever reaching a place that feels threadbare.

I know this is a feeling, and that such high fidelity isn’t possible. But that feeling is conjured up here.

When I call this book wild and vibrant, I mean that—much like with A Dead Djinn in Cairo—this book starts with something familiar, something I thought I might know, and leads it off in exciting new directions with a feeling of freedom. This book is unafraid to break trail and make new paths with its worldbuilding, without feeling stuck inside an old cage. And its world leaps out at you: there are subtleties, yes, but so much shows itself so quickly and flawlessly. The world feels alive. What’s more, all the exposition I could ask for is delivered with ease, woven into the story’s deeper context without feeling forced, stuck, or artificial.

What I’m saying is, it’s good.

The only place where it might fall by the wayside is in the characters’ internal shifts. Those exist, they’re present, but…

Actually, I don’t think I’d make note of them as “not-as-good” if anything else about this book weren’t so absolutely to my taste. When every other review is a full five stars, the single four is suddenly jarring.

Anyway.

If you are a character’s journey-focused reader, or don’t delight in truly skillful worldbuilding, this book might not be as good for you as it was for me. I’d recommend trying it anyway. It’s good.