March was okay in terms of reading, though I found that I was very distracted and jumped around a lot from book to book. I was kind of driving myself crazy with my indecisiveness. But I've learned that life is full of ebbs and flows, and my reading habits are no different. I'm a mood reader - led by how I'm feeling in the moment.

In the end, I read four books, three by the same author (!) and almost all were novellas. This is pretty good, considering how much I bounced around! Here were my favorites...


Man oh man, P. Djeli Clark!!!!!! If you like incredible world building (in an almost mystically short amount of time), strong female characters, threads of fascinating mythologies and crackling, fast-paced plots, you absolutely NEED to read Clark! He's a new to me writer, and I'll be reading everything he writes from this point forward.

Black God's Drums takes place in an alternate history New Orleans, where we follow a girl named Creeper, who's trying to survive on the streets. Oh, did I mention that the Orisha god Oya is living inside her? Yeah, it complicates things. There's so much packed into this novella, it's kind of mind-boggling, and it proves that Clark is a master of the form.


Another Clark novella! All of the great things I wrote about Black God's Drums? Yeah, they're in this one too. This time, Clark uses his skills to write a novella set in an alternate history Cairo. Set around 1910, this Egypt has never been colonized, and so their culture flourishes. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 interweaves modernity with the magic of ancient and powerful Djinn. There's such richness to Clark's depictions that I felt like I was actually there. This book was a thrill to read!


Other books read this month: A Dead Djinn in Cairo (another Clark book set in the same universe as The Haunting of Tram Car 015 which was also very good, but was edged out slightly); Black No More - Schuyler.