Alaya Dawn Johnson

“Juju assassins, alternate history, a gritty New York crime story...in a word: Awesome.” —N.K. Jemisin, New York Times bestselling author of The Fifth Season The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in Alaya Dawn Johnson's timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City, where an assassin falls in love and tries to fight her fate at the dawn of World War II. Amid the whir of city life, a young woman from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear among its most dangerous denizens. Ten years later, Phyllis LeBlanc has given up everything—not just her own past, and Dev, the man she loved, but even her own dreams. Still, the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she keeps in her heart. And so Phyllis will have to make a harrowing choice, before it’s too late—is there ever enough blood in the world to wash clean generations of injustice? Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel—a magical love story, a compelling exposure of racial fault lines—and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

A Novel

Trouble the Saints

Sarah Sammis

Beyond the magical aspect, Trouble the Saints is an examination of institutionalized racism. Phyllis can pass as white, something she uses to her advantage when she's working as an assassin. Dev, can too, to some degree. But together they can't. Their child probably won't be able to. While there are gun and knife fights, it's the difficult decisions the three characters have to make on the personal level is where the most compelling conflict lies.

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elif sinem

The setting is great, the themes are fantastic, the characters are really cool and if you're willing to be patient then the world is very rewarding and the magic system makes sense. Dev's part was the best but unfortunately Tamara's after his just spiralled to... I'm not calling it prose wank but it was a lot of woe-is-me. And the action was very hard to read. With that said it's still the best fantasy noir around and I recommend it.

I think this book is a solid 3.5. I found it exceedingly difficult to get through the first few chapters of the book, until Pea describes a meeting she sat in with Victor, the prominent “ghost” antagonist of the story. The overt violence drew me in, and reading these gruesome pages that made me cringe like Johnson hoped definitely caught my attention. But it was lost again afterward. For me, Dev and Tamara had the most interesting POV, their writing style similar to how the thought process works for a character. Pea didn’t really give me that same feeling. Regardless, Johnson has an insaneee way of making the societal differences of back then relate to now, and if makes me more than content to get my hands on such a journal of masterful phrasing. This book isn’t for everyone, but everyone should at least give it a read. ALSO WALT AND TAMMY SHOULD’VE BEEN TOGETHER ILL DIE ON THAT HILL

Sahi K

TW: Racism, description of a lynching that happened in the past, violence and murders, many scenes with descriptions of blood

It’s probably more of 3.5 but to be honest, I’m still unsure. 

This historical fantasy noir with supernatural elements is so far away from my comfort zone or anything that I ever read, that even I’m surprised to see it on my tbr. But I was very intrigued when I first saw the cover because it’s super pretty and I guess I just wanted to try something different. But now I don’t know what to say. 

The prose was beautiful at places, but also harder to understand at others, overall taking a little more effort from my side to understand the meaning behind it all. We are also pretty much thrown in the middle of things and have to figure out what’s happening in this world on the cusp of WWII where certain people of color seem to have magical powers. We also follow three POVs, but consecutively which is something I’ve never read before, and I actually enjoyed how they could feel like three different stories but also so very connected. The characters are compelling, though not always likable, but I was quite interested to know what was gonna happen to them. And what a pleasant surprise it was to find that one of them is a biracial Hindu character, whose beliefs influence how he perceives his magical gift.

While the story and writing are one thing, it’s the thematic elements of the book that stood out. As an America during late 30s/early 40s, racism is very much alive and we see it in small microaggressions to bigger scarier moments. We also see biracial characters - both white passing and not - as well as Black characters try and navigate this world where they may have some magic of their own, but ultimately they are powerless in the face of white supremacy. We also witness the effects of generational trauma caused by slavery and everything after that, and how this trauma influences the actions of different people in myriad unexpected ways. There is also the underlying theme that it’s not enough to carve out a safe place for ourselves in a world that makes us powerless, but it’s also important that we fight to make the world better and maybe take some of that power back with whatever resources we have. We owe this to the ancestors who suffered unspeakable horrors which many didn’t survive. 

In the end, I honestly don’t know how to articulate what I felt about this book. If you are a fan of noir, enjoy reading historical stories through the lens of people of color living a tough life in those times, don’t mind some purple prose and like your fantasy to have strong themes - then you might enjoy this book. But it also has mob bosses, dirty cops and politicians, and undercover operations; so be prepared for a good amount of gore and violence.

Paige Morgan

"Trouble the Saints" caught me by surprise -- I'm still conditioned to imagine any book that mentions WW2 as a book that will be driven by plot and intrigues. And it's not that this doesn't have intrigues -- betrayal and revenge and a desire to escape and be free are all key parts of it: if you like film noir, this will be a great summer read for you. But Trouble the Saints is more than that, too -- it's intensely character-driven, so the story develops because of the way that Phyllis and Dev see each other: see each other as they are, caught by structures that they can't escape, and see each other as they might be. Johnson's prose is lush and poignant -- she captures the sensuality of a man making breakfast for his lover, and the sweet summer morning pleasure of it -- shadowed at the edges by the knowledge of how fragile that pleasure is.

The concept of the book's world is in some ways similar to that of Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, in that many people of color have magical gifts, unique to each individual, and that perplex and provoke white folks, and non-magical others, into wanting to control them. Johnson locates those gifts in characters' hands, literally, and I found her choice to be a fruitful way to portray the complexities of agency (or lack thereof) involved for individuals who are bound or controlled, partially or wholly, by others. It felt like a resonant and rightly uncomfortable way of gesturing towards the fear of black bodies that exists in the world of this novel -- but of course also exists in our world, where the novel is being published. We need this book, and more like it -- all the more because there are so many tendencies to stereotype Black bodies, and Black people in reductive ways -- and rich emotional narratives like Trouble the Saints are phenomenal rebukes to those stereotypes.

Trouble the Saints A Novel

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