This is how you hustle the arcane. Skirt the rules but don’t break them. - Tommy Tester, before "The Happening"

This was my morning quick read with a cup of coffee before heading out for the day and in a few short paragraphs I went from my kitchen on the other side of the world to the atmospheric olde New York - just like that.

This is my intro to LaValle's work. I loved it in a "pit-in-my-stomach" way. Thank you for the haunting.

Plot/Storyline: color me well and sufficiently creeped out. The horror layered within the horror within another layer of horror was this. How easy and normal it was for everyone to accost a person just walking down the street or taking the train. Strangers could come up to you and DEMAND to know where you're going. Teenagers, aged 15 felt it was within their rights to stalk a man walking lone in the night - all for skin color.

And then I google and fall into a rabbit whole and see not much has changed State side and that this particular construct or racial otherness is pervasive all over the globe. Reading it was a horror all on it's own predicated on the fact that such attitudes exist today and are just as deadly. How Lovecraftian.

Characters: I found myself cheering for his survival long before anything deadly took place.

Favorite scene: The threat of something awful to come but not quite there yet. Robert Suydam and Tommy Tetter, in the library just close to midnight:

" “I saw that you understood illusion. And that you, in your way, were casting a powerful spell.
I admired it. I felt a kinship with you, I suppose. Because I, too, understand illusion.”

Favorite Quote/Concept: way too many

I love the mysticism of Conjure music.

◇ Nobody ever thinks of himself as a villain, does he? Even monsters hold high opinions of themselves.
◇A good hustler isn’t curious. A good hustler only wants his pay.
◇Give people what they expect and you can take from them all that you need.

StoryGraph Challenge: 1800 Books by 2025
Challenge Prompt: 150 Horror Books by 2025