"Inventive and thought-provoking, this page-turning short story collection packs notable punch on the speculative fiction front."
By turns philosophical and speculative, cautionary and mysterious, Cheryl S. Ntumy’s Black Friday is a boundary-flexing, imagination-stretching short story anthology that shifts between posing existential questions, and addressing themes of power and agency, to a more playful magic realism mode.
The mighty titular story thrusts readers into a throng of rioters who reside in a dystopian Protectorate “fighting for Justice and Equitable Distribution and the Rights of the People and the Sanctity of the Land.” As for the context, “Black Friday is a big day across the Protectorate… a rioter can’t stay in on Black Friday while the Wretched Righteous celebrate the rape of the land. Black Friday is the day rioters push back with everything they’ve got, to remind the Wretched that they still exist”. While the “Wretched Righteous kids are laughing and pointing and taking photos”, a slam dunk of a revelation comes, setting the tone for the rest of this impactful collection.
Special mention must also be made of The Way of Baa’gh: A Sauúiverse Story. “Red is a sign of decay”, it opens in characteristically bold style, and then follows a tautly-written, visceral story of old tales and new imbalances of power among non-humanoids.
Diverse in style and subject, Black Friday is an immersive winner for fans of speculative fiction, in particular, and also comes recommended for short story aficionados who fancy broadening their field of reading.
| Primary Genre | Fantasy |
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