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The Ballad of Black Tom

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The Ballad of Black Tom

Written by: Victor LaValle
Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
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About this listen

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?

©2016 Victor LaValle (P)2016 Macmillan Audio Dark Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Scary Magic Paranormal Social justice

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A mystical story of racism and Magic. Cosmic horror and strange occurrences. well worth reading.

Strange

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A wonderful audiobook. The reader (Kevin R. Free) made the great writing even more compelling, with his different voices and accents. As for the plot, it's apparently a revisit of the H.P. Lovecraft story "The Horror at Red Hook" but told from the perspective of a black man. You get a bit of 1920s Harlem, some racist violence and a lot of cosmic horror. It's chilling in a very good way.

Haunting cosmic horror

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thoroughly enjoyed the story, made me think of the Jordan peele series Lovecraft country.

great lovecraftian story !

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I didn't really enjoy it all that much. It barely had proper build up and the characters are random tbh.
The twist was weak and didn't really use it's setting or time period well. Though it feels like it would have been great had it been much longer to develop its story and characters.

Very lackluster

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