The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings

I would like to thank Nazia from orbit for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Orbit

Published – Out Now

Price – £8:99 paperback £4.99 Kindle eBook

Put on your dancing shoes and step into New Orleans as you've never seen it before in this vibrant and imaginative debut.

Nola is a city of wonders. An alternate New Orleans made of music and magic, where spirits dance the night away and Wise Women help keep the order. To those from Away, Nola might seem strange. To failed magician Perilous Graves, it's simply home.

Then the rhythm of the city stutters.

Nine songs of power have escaped from the magical piano that maintains the city's beat, and without them, Nola will fail. Unwilling to watch his home be destroyed, Perry will sacrifice everything to save it. But a storm is brewing and even if they capture the songs, Nola's time might be coming to an end.

Cities are where lots of people live and have to learn to live together and deal with their problems. Cities are our cultures, our histories and our songs all wrapped together. These statements are true. The legend of a place and its currentreality and they interact with each other are fascinating. I can see the issues of Liverpool’s lack of investment for decades and know it’s various problems and yet I know it’s a city where in certain places you can hear the faint music of the Beatles, meet old ghosts and find a small strange disturbing pool in a cemetery (I really can). Cities have a soul and their own shape just as much as they have urban planning strategies - which is why I love them. The way this works for many places is taken to New Orleans a city always full of magic and mystery at the best of times but here gets even more stranger in Alex Jennings’ debut novel The Ballad of Perilous Things which is a ambitious, joyful and strange trip into the different aspects of an amazing place. Constantly surprising and well worth your attention.

Perilous ‘Perry’ Graves is a teenager with a super-powered friend called Peaches and his annoying yet lovely sister Brendy. Their city of Nola is a strange magical and musical place. A mysterious magician can create impromptu musical numbers, zombies are standard and, in some parts, its always Night. But a long-standing enemy of Nola has a new plan and Nine Songs that hold Nola together have been released and now a dangerous killer aims to destroy them for their mysterious employer. Perry and his friends may be about to go on a dangerous mission to save the world.

In New Orleans Casey Ravel a forty year old trans man has returned to a city he left in the shadow of Hurricane Katrina and to escape strange things that occasionally happened around him. While working at a new school he finds his old life as an artist and expert in graffiti tagging calling to him and an old friend suggests that magic they once witnessed is now back. Casey may be about to go on a dangerous mission to save the worlds.

I really liked how this story refuses to go down normal paths. It is NOT a children’s book – it has three very genuine and amiable key young characters but as we follow their story in Nola we see this is a world full of non-childish things – violent monsters, gangsters and endless parties. They are a useful entry point as the children see Nola as totally normal and know little of the place’s histories and secrets. Our trips in their chapters are often dangerous, surreal and confusing but starting to suggest Nola is connected to our world and its inhabitants do seem aware sometimes of things from our culture from music all the way to comic books. The book is not your standard urban fantasy introducing a normal person to magical world early on and hijinks begin. Casey and Perry’s paths don’t cross until late in the novel. Instead, we have two leads one innocent, one jaded and lost both on a quest to find out the secrets of New Orleans and Nola but importantly also themselves. Both Perry is reluctant to learn magic and Casey feels scared to investigate what their art is really capable of. They go on a discovery of who they are and we alongside them find out the truth of Nola. We also get Peaches a mix of Orphan Annie, Minnie the Minx and your local super-hero comfortable with magic, hates living lives like anyone else and amazing feats of strength are normal for her. She is a great one to watch develop as a character.

Its Nola that stands out – messy, strange, ever-changing, and occasionally making very little sense this is a swirling and in the best way messy story that you as the reader need to untangle and Jennings doesn’t give us any neat explanations joining it all together. Instead, we have a tale that melds childhood tales, jazz musical history, bible stories, ancient myths, the wider history of New Orleans and american culture with references from The Phantom Tollbooth to Spider-man thrown in for good measure. Its an incredibly dense tale you have to digest in chunks and put the pieces together as to how these two worlds seem linked. This is a novel of the fantastical and it was a ride that I didn’t really know where I was going for much of it and neither did I care because I was enjoying the spectacle and trying to absorb all this information.

What helps a lot is Jennings writing style and it subtly feels different. In new Orleans we get Casey’s quite emotional but restrained prose matching their inner battle to face the truth of their world. But In Nola its got gusto and energy and often gorgeously lyrical – reading this was FUN in a brain teasing and heart-pulling way capturing everything to the pangs of first love to the realisation that adults are just kids but older as well as the love of a parent and the power of friendship to pull you through dark places. That emotional power to the story for me stands out the most even if sometimes the plot feels to have gone quite slow for a few sections. I loved finding out who these people were and what exactly was going on.

The Ballad of Perilous Graves is not a neat tidy and predictable tale and that may not be what you want. I however loved it as It is ambitious, risk-taking, energetic and trying to do multiple things at once and most of the time being very good at it too. The ending does feel a little rushed but also signals more tales in this world to be told even if this particular adventure is over. Even if not, I think Jennings has made a memorable debut contemporary fantasy. Run and get it, enjoy, feel a city’s soul and history (I’m definitely going to see who is based on a real person) via the power of a great author’s words and be prepared to be thinking about his book for a while after finishing it.