Hello hello again! I’m back with another review, this time of a book that had just been sitting on my shelf for quite a long time and I didn’t quite feel the urge to read it till I did. That’s just how I treat books on my shelves in general though. I buy and collect to have books when I want to read them. I want to be surrounded by books on all sides! But, let’s get to the review.
The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings
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I had bought this book in 2022 I believe…and the reason I bought it was because the cover caught my attention! It’s such a beautiful cover! The brilliant red, the black for the piano, and the turquoise skeletal hands playing, just lovely. And when I read the blurb for the book, a New Orleans where music is magic and to keep Nola alive, the songs must be captured again, it’s just an intriguing story! Granted, I know I didn’t read this till recently, but that’s how reading goes. And the story was worth the wait.
For our main character, Perilous Graves, a young magician that can’t quite believe the strength of his magic and so gives up and trying to figure it out more, Nola is just his home. Things make sense and he loves his family and Peaches, the strongest girl around who lives in a run down house that was never really repaired after Katrina came through. But when songs start to live outside of their spaces and no longer hold up Nola, and support it, Perilous, Peaches, and Peri’s little sister Brendy, all set out to fix what has been broken. Which may include Nola itself.
I think what I enjoyed most about this story was the fact that Nola/New Orleans was a character in this book. And if you’ve ever been to New Orleans, you know that that city is a character even without being in a book. But the way Alex Jennings integrated New Orleans and all that has happened to her to create Nola is amazing, and one of my favourite parts of the book. And music as magic isn’t that far from the truth either. My husband plays trombone, and when I hear him play, I swear the music comes to life in a way that just listening to music on the radio doesn’t.
Perilous Graves is a beautiful story and I loved nearly everything about it. I just wish that all the stories included maybe wove together a little bit better, or even the timelines of the stories were better indicated. That may have helped with some of my not being able to keep track of things as they were happening. Other than that though, an excellent story! How do you think of music or cities with their own personalities?
Tiny Navajo Reads 