Do You Know What it Means to Be Dead in New Orleans? It's Jazzy! A Review of The Ballard of Perilous Graves.

 Know what's really magical in this book? That every character easily finds a parking space in New Orleans! Have you ever tried parking in the Big Easy? It ain't easy.

I found Mr. Jennings book, The Ballad of Perilous Graves, to have some highly imaginative characters and situations. A ghost piano that shows up unexpectedly followed by the ghost piano player. The P-people who get high by breathing in 3-D graffiti. Nightclubs that are visible only to artists seeking answers. Two versions of New Orleans existing in two different planes, unknown to each other.

Therein lies the only problem I had. There are so many characters, and so many situations, sometimes I had trouble figuring out in which dimension each was located at any given time. Some of the characters were alive, some dead, some were songs that looked like humans, and I'd lose track of who was what and where. That could have been me, the reader, though. Goodnight Moon has been known to baffle me with only two characters. in one room.

I was attracted to The Ballad of Perilous Graves because I love New Orleans. The fact that two of them existed initially confused me. (See Goodnight Moon.)  I really thought the city constructed Sky Trolleys after the last time I was there (some kind of monorail, I figured) until I realized this was in the NOLA, the sorta not real dimension. If any city planners in the Cresent City are reading this, Sky Trolleys are a good idea.

Like many fantasies, there's a lot of world building, a lot of characters, a lot of figuring out who belongs where, and it's fairly long. If you like the weird and the imaginative, this is a fine book but can be tricky reading. Thanks to Netgalley and Hachette for allowing me to read and review The Ballad of Perilous Graves.

Nice Cover!