The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings

I found the payoff well worth the effort, though.

It is a journey and demands some patience getting to where it is going– there will be people who will not finish it. With all the POV changes and strange events you find yourself taking a leap of faith that the tide is flowing forward. Wait… am I following all this… I am not lost here am I? She could really be the focus of another book all herself. Then there is Peaches… a mysterious and astonishing girl who seems to live alone and is really the leader the other kids look up to. Perry, just out of fifth grade, and his younger sister Brendy are thrust into their roles as warriors by a fate reinforced by family. Casey is a trans male coming to grips with the death of his cousin and the magic they both created which now runs rampant in the city. Now things are getting grave and even the air pulses with the oncoming storm– a destruction promised.Ī good deal of the book is spent preparing our unlikely heroes for their battle against the dark forces. Parades of P-bodies pass by, dazzled souls who spent a little too much time under the effect of the paint of the graffiti tags. Zombies are commonplace walking the streets and when you look up you see the sky trolleys. Musical spirits and ghosts are not unusual in Nola, but we bridge other oddities not found on your travel agent’s brochure. These episodes have been coined “Color Rushes.”

Graffiti can float on the air now and people passing through the graffiti become disoriented, one person vomiting flower petals after going through a tag. The fourth defender is Casey, an ex-tagger who abandoned his art when he saw his creations coming to life on their own. Three are children who will face off against the likes of legendary song villain Stagger Lee and a gruesome ghoul he reports to. Take away the songs, songs manifesting themselves as spirits, and the city collapses against a collection of all the storms ever visited on the area.Ī chosen few are tasked with using magic to fend off the attack. Evil is out to kill nine essential songs holding this world together. Music always felt like the heartbeat here, we just never realized it is the heartbeat. There is no place like it, except in “The Ballad of Perilous Graves.” Alex Jennings fires up the torches to show the real Nola. In the spirit here, I ask that if you are currently deceased, it is imperative that you resume living at once and begin reading – (very loosely taken from part of the digital galley).

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings