Subtlety is not the language of Maryse or her friends they are in-your-face angry, foul-mouthed, and unapologetic about their rage, passions, and needs.Ĭhapters are often preceded by ‘notations’ referring to the Shouts that give the book its title. I like my menace to be a bit more subtle.” And I think his description is accurate, but it worked for me. My editor & buddy Dave didn’t love this book, reporting, “It felt like much more of the action-packed, wise-cracking, zombie-slaying kind of horror story than I’d hoped for. (This novel attacks racism head-on, while its feminism is inarguable but resides in the background. It is a motley and formidable crew, backed up by a few male allies who mostly serve as helpers and sexual partners but lack the sight. Maryse, Sadie and Chef are backed up by other talented and badass women at a cabin in the woods outside Macon: Nana Jean is an old Gullah woman with powers of prophecy and root magic Molly is a Choctaw scientist experimenting on the body parts of Ku Kluxes that the hunters bring her the German widow Emma Krauss is a folklorist and ardent socialist. Maryse Boudreaux is from just outside Memphis, where she experienced a trauma as a young girl that has set her on the path she walks now: she hunts monsters. Sadie is an ace with her Winnie (Winchester 1895), and Chef carries a German trench knife, taken off the enemy when she fought in World War I but she’s earned her nickname through her expertise with bombs. We begin mid-scene and then slowly get to know our heroines. Ring Shout is set in 1922 and begins on the Fourth of July in Macon, Georgia, where Maryse, Sadie and Chef have set up a trap for the demonstrating Klan: a stinking dog carcass laced with explosives. Here, those monsters are literal: ‘regular’ (human) Klan members are called simply Klans by our narrator Maryse, while those who have ‘turned’ are Ku Kluxes, horrifying beasts who love dog meat and wear human skins but are visible to those – like Maryse and her friends – with ‘the sight.’ What we learn alongside Maryse in the course of this story is that Ku Kluxes are not the only, nor even the worst, monsters in this world. Ring Shout is a most interesting, slim, swashbuckling adventure story about hunting and fighting the monsters of the Ku Klux Klan.
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