Trouble the Saints is the latest novel from Nebula Award winner Alaya Dawn Johnson, and her first in a few years (as well as her first non YA novel in a lot of years). I loved her last two books, the Norton (Nebula Award for YA) nominated "The Summer Prince" and the Norton-winning "Love is the Drug." Both featured stories of love and family, but also dealt tremendously with themes of privilege, class and race - The Summer Prince through its post apocalyptic supposedly-utopian setting while Love is the Drug through its near future story of a well off Black teen in DC - and featured characters who you couldn't help grow in love with as they dealt with those problems. So yeah, when I noticed (late) that Johnson had a new novel coming out this year, I was so happy to get it early via Netgalley and read it less than a week later despite having a whole bunch of other books on my backlist.

And Trouble the Saints is a tremendous novel, diving even more openly into themes of race and oppression than the prior two Johnson works I've read, through an alternate history novel set around 1941 in mob-riddled New York. The book's a bit of a mess honestly, especially in the beginning, but its three main characters are tremendous, as they try and deal with being people of color in a racist New York, and the obligations that come upon them from having "the hands", a juju-esque magic found only in non-whites which seems to demand them act in some way. Make no mistake: this is not a fun book, it's a bloody one with a lot of pain and agony, as our protagonists - not good people themselves - struggle with a system that both then and now spits out people of color and chews them out in favor of those less deserving. But it's a damn powerful one, and if not a tour-de-force, it's close.

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In 1940/1941 New York, Phyllis "Pea" Green passes as white woman named Phyllis LeBlanc, and uses her gifted "Hands" to serve as the "Knife" or "Angel" of powerful White Russian mobster Victor, with her kills being reserved for those who truly deserve it. But after months without killing, she receives a second dream, her Hands begin to pull her towards a truth she should have known long before, and a bloody path that she has tried to deny.

Devajyoti "Dev" Patil has "Hands" gifted with the ability to sense threats - to him or to/from anyone they touch. Acting as a bartender for Victor, he finds himself drawn towards the bloody path of Pea, despite her warping his strong sense of right and wrong.

Tamara Anderson does not have the Hands - what she has is an Oracle's power to see futures in the cards, a power that calls to her and won't let her go. So while she may wish she could simply run Victor's nightclub with all the entertainment he will let a Black girl like her provide, the Cards won't let her be that easily.

And in a world where injustice and oppression drive those of color beneath the boot heel of their inferiors, just because of the color of their skin, where the White police will look the other way as it all happens, none of Pea, Dev, or Tamara will be able to find peace or to avoid the call of a saint - gifted or cursed with dreams and hands that will not let go......

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Trouble the Saints is essentially split into three acts, with each act separated switching the perspective to a different main character. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I've essentially just summarized character dynamics above, because the plot of each act shifts with the character shifts, so to describe any act in detail may spoil the rest. The above is not to say however that each act is told the same way or even consistently within the same act - the three acts on occasion - especially the first one - are interrupted by interludes in which card readings are revealed and then described obliquely by an omniscient narrator, for example. Other narrative shifts includes a random chapter in the first act told in second person - with the narrator literally being the protagonist's hands - and the second act featuring intermittent flashback chapters. It's honestly a bit of a mess, which sometimes left me confused - especially in the first act - of what is going on, but for the most part it works really well to carry the themes and the characters in this novel.

These themes are underlined in the setting and characters. The book is set in an alternate version of New York 1940/1941, right before the American entry into World War 2. In this world, people of color sometimes grow up to find they have "The Hands", which come together with a prophetic dream of something for them to do, along with the numbers - which aren't just about playing a Numbers Racket but about playing one's life. The Hands are essentially gifts, but these gifts, coming only to people of color, are ones that raise dangerous attention from white people, especially given they can be things as dangerous as "revealing secrets" or "being able to see threats." And as the story goes on, it's revealed that these dreams and Hands came originally en mass when people of color had moments of freedom, before white people tried to snatch those away....and that they might have minds of their own.

This leads into our three main characters. Phyllis aka Pea, has the "hands" - and her gift essentially makes her perfect at throwing objects - whether that be knives, rocks, or whatever, she has perfect aim. She has become the famed killer for a White mob boss, believing that he is using her only for "just" kills of wrongdoers - such as a serial killer who is trying to cut off POC's hands for their own use. But her own hands and dreams suggest she should be doing something other than enabling a white man's grab for power at the expense of anyone else, particularly at the expense of people of color's lives, a suggestion with teeth that conflicts with Pea's growing unwillingness to kill. Then we have Dev, whose ability to see threats obviously makes him an asset to people on all sides of the law, and who has nightmares over the blood he's seen his love (Pea) cause and of his own attraction to that blood, and what that says about his own morals of right and wrong. And then there's Tamara, who responded to an act of racism down south by attaching herself to the most powerful White man she could find, and tried to use that as cover to stay out of any dangerous business with questionable moral choices.....despite her oracular powers trying to repeatedly push her in directions with stronger stances. And a fourth major character, Walter Finch - a half Native man who all the white men call the "Red Man" instead of trying to learn his name, serves as a second in command to the White mob boss, only unable to take control because of his own skin despite being fully capable.

These characters and the setting are used to showcase the extent of oppression even in the part of the US that was supposedly better (the North) as we take turns in and out of the City. Sure you have oppressors like Victor, who are blatantly racist and murderous in their attitudes towards people of color having anything they don't have. But then you also have people like the Bobbies - a father and son in control of a small town who don't care about what anyone else feels as they look only to enrich themselves - and if a black boy is threatening to out horrible secrets, the problem is the boy, not the secrets. And you have people like Craver, who makes use of POC children with the hands to scare off Whites from affecting the causes important to him, without giving a damn for the actual people behind those hands - and the causes are literally as dead as bones in the ground. And then you have those nameless few who would deny care to a POC in need solely on the basis of their race - or even on the basis of whether they recognize whether or not a light skinned person is "White" or not, who are simply elements of the same thing.

All three of the major characters - and Walter as well - come against all of these oppressors and oppressive systems over the course of their stories. And they face choices on how to face off against them, because their Hands and Dreams won't let them simply stay silent - even if they want to pretend they could. Pea's hands literally want to force her to right a wrong, to avenge. Dev's prevent him from looking ignoring threats that make him literally tingle awake. And Tamara's draw her attention to wrongs coming in the future....even if her actions are limited in how they can prevent them from coming to pass, with a system so ingrained against them all, poised to steal everything on a moment's notice. And even as they all try to fight against this system, they also try to make the best of their own lives for themselves and their futures, and in their loves as well. As with Johnson's other book, love and its importance and irrationality is a key part of it all, as the characters try to find it and deal with it in spite of everything else (there are some pretty passionate scenes is all I'll say).

Johnson makes this all mostly work, even if again it's a bit confusing early on, and by the end I just had to keep reading to see how it would turn out, with me left breathless by the end. Again, this is not a fun ending, or even one hopeful on its face, as after all, the system is still largely in place today 80 years later. But Johnson shows that powerfully in the end, and damn is it something.

Honestly, I came into this book expecting a magical mystery story and it's not at all what I got. Instead, I was immersed in a world of mobsters, everyday magic, complex morality, and even more complex relationships. Johnson weaves a spell of darkness and love, set against the backdrop of WWII and the blatant pervasive racism of the time. The story starts out with Phyllis, a white-passing preternaturally gifted assassin (she has "saint's hands") working as an avenging angel for the mob. From her vantage point we're introduced to the seedy underbelly of Manhattan where shifting loyalties are built on lies and debts. As the book continues, we get drawn into something that resembles less of a mystery and more of a family saga, where the definition of family stretches far beyond blood ties. The perspectives shift and other characters come to the forefront, all as complicated and messy as Phyllis. Throughout the book, questions about the nature of the hands permeate, with Johnson eventually giving some answers. This is an evocative historical fantasy like nothing I'd read before.

Not what I was expecting, but definitely worth it. Gives the feel of a era driven night circus in a dark new York setting. So definitely right up my alley.

trigger warning
<spoiler>torture, rape, assault, racism, slavery, child death, lynching, trauma</spoiler>

Phyllis' name depends on who you ask - it may be LeBlanc or Green or something entirely different. It started as a way to protect her family as she became a mobster's angel of justice, and now things got out of hand with the simple question if this is really who she wants to be.

This book is parted three ways, and each chunk is told by another character, the first being narrated by Phyllos or Pea, as her friends call her, the second by her lover and the third by her best friend.
And it grew on me. It takes a while till everything falls in place, especially as chapters from the past are not labeled as such and some parts left me very confused. In some parts it is due to my concentration or lack thereof in this weird times, in some parts it's due to the writing.
Half-way through part three I realised that I started to like this novel.

We have characters connected through business ties and maybe friendship, all being able to trace back to the Pelican, a mobster's headquarter - and we have magic.
People of colour, oppressed people, might get visited by a dream that is different than the normal ones, and might find themselves left with saint's hands, appendages that bear a certain knack. Pea is able to hit anything she wants with nearly any throwable object she wants, which is how she ended up as a knife-bearing assassin. But to her, it's not merely a gift, more of a loan that comes with certain expectations that have to be figured out.

White people in this world are somewhere between disbelief, fear and greed regarding the hands. Of course, no sane person would believe in this nonsense, but don't dare to touch me, young man!

The characters are three dimensional and actions come with consequences. Always.
You can do whatever you like, but you also have to deal with what follows, if you want to or not.

I think I'll keep an eye out for future works by this author.

I recieved a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

Jazz age magic! This rapturous tale is full of romance, Magic, and adventure. I can’t wait to recommend it to everyone at my library

"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.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it's a unique premise and setting that I liked - early WWII-era NYC, complete with mob bosses and sketchy nightclubs, where certain nonwhite people have been blessed with magical "saint's hands" that give them each different abilities. And, our protagonists and POV narrators Phyllis, Dev, and Tamara, are all complex, interesting, and fully realized characters.

However. The magic of the saint's hands and what Phyllis has done with hers is so purposefully obscured in the beginning as to be frustrating and confusing rather than intriguing, and the narrative often shifts back and forth from present to past without warning, which took a lot of getting used to. I didn't feel "hooked" until well past 25% of the book, a point to which I'd never have persevered if this weren't an arc that I felt obligated to finish to review.

Putting this one down at 25% -- not because I didn't like it, per se, but because I wasn't really compelled to keep going. Johnson delivers a ton of great ~tone~ here, this feels like a slow-burn noir job of the highest order, but it's almost too slow to really pull me in. The magic system is obscured enough that it makes for some confusion and while that confusion is slowly clarifying at this point, it isn't fast enough to give me what I want right now.
I think at a different time, I might've adored this book, but right now I need a bit more pace and a bit more froth (even as I absolutely adored the diverse cast in 1941 New York and wish for more books like this in that way).

Hidden sharp knives, questionable morals, doomed love, and a drop of magic imbue an alternate version of Harlem, making for a deliciously dangerous, submersive tale. I might not have fully clicked with the writing and with the way it was structured, but oh this was fun and the first protagonist we get introduced to is splendidly kicking ass in her mid-thirties which is something we need more of in stories since in real life it happens all the time.

I absolutely loved the entire vibe of this book. Captivating and vividly written, this novel revolves around the themes of racism and forbidden love. Trouble the saints has definitely lived up to the hype and deserves to be one of the most anticipated reads of the year.

Finally, some gritty, complex urban fantasy worthy of the moniker.

Our primary protagonist and antagonist is Phyllis (Pea to her loved ones), a black woman who works as an enforcer and assassin to a white mobster. Phyllis can pass as white and does so in the criminal world, a demarcation between her work and private life that has far-reaching effects. Phyllis has a magical gift: unerring accuracy, especially with a blade. As Phyllis works to extricate herself from her employer, her complex relationships with the mobster's other employees— especially her former lover and a dancing girl, who each act as POV characters— drive a lot of the story. Divisions of black and white become gray as the plot and alliances grow more complex.

I adored the first few chapters of Trouble the Saints— they were full of references like rent parties and the numbers racket, which made this alternate fantasy world have real heft, unlike most urban fantasies with world-building so flimsy it would disappear if you blew on it. In this world, very close to our own but set during WWII-era NYC, a number of people of color possess saint's hands: real magic. These gifts are somewhat of a monkey's paw and always come with an edge. For example, Phyllis's hands sometimes have a mind of her own. Another: a boy, feared by his community, can touch a person and tell if others want them dead.

From a hedonistic reader perspective, I felt like the plot really slowed down after the characters depart NYC and the mob boss, turning from a somewhat straightforward bad-character-tries-to-be-good and-must-escape-evil-boss to explorations-of-complex-personal-and-societal-relationships. Events happen and there are some really interesting encounters between characters, but it's a rather disorienting shift further exacerbated by the two shifts in POV. I think the book would have felt more whole to me if Phyllis acted as the primary protagonist for the entire book, if the conflict with the mob boss carried through the entire book, or perhaps if the characters stayed in NYC. This felt like two or three books in one, and it deserves another read or two so I can untangle it and truly appreciate it.

That said, books should be recognized for doing interesting things, and this book delivers interesting things in spades.

Was not for me, but if you like alternate 1920s NYC with mobsters and magic, this could be very good for you. The protagonists are a light-skinned black woman who passes as an enforcer for a white mobster, and a man of Asian Indian/white descent—her (ex)lover who can’t stand the violence she inflicts and has secrets of his own. They both have “saint’s hands”—magical gifts that only nonwhite people have and that most white people purport to disbelieve in, which has turned into another vector of discrimination. Lots of angst of all kinds.

2.5 stars, rounded up to 3. Unfortunately, I lost interest about 1/3 of the way into the book, but persevered in hopes my interest would rekindle. It did not. For me, at least, this just didn't live up to the interest generated by the description. I am, nonetheless, grateful to NetGalley and Tor for the opportunity to read a new work by an author with whom I was unfamiliar.

I requested Trouble the Saints after seeing it all over my timeline and it was certainly an interesting read. Alternate history, magical realism, and light fantasy combine to make a richly imagined world. Unfortunately, we flip between past and present constantly, and without any clear marking of "when" we are it becomes an annoying exercise detracting from the story.
This book is an fascinating exploration of racism through the lens of the super-powers that only people of colour possess. I would certainly recommend the book to anyone looking for a fantasy story outside the typical European middle ages based stories that choke our fantasy shelves at work.

This book was exciting with compelling characters and an interesting method of telling the story that seemed to be complete, shifting to an alternate character's view a third (and then again, two thirds) of the way through the book, rather unexpectedly. This meant that characters who might have seemed secondary to the story (they were important to the central character, but not clearly a central figure themselves) suddenly had the stage.

2.5/5 stars

Trouble the Saints is a mash up of historical fiction, magical realism, and a dash of fantasy blended together and spread out over a backdrop of 1940s New York City. The novel starts by following one of the protagonists, Phyllis LeBlanc, as she navigates her position Manhattan’s underworld with the help of her magic, referred to in the novel as having ‘the hands.’

What I was expecting out of this novel and what I got were two entirely different things. This reads more to me like a general fiction novel than a fantasy novel; while supernatural elements play a part throughout the story, the human elements supersede them. The prose is beautiful and rich, like a quilt stitched together of minute details and sumptuous metaphor. Issues around race and inequality are addressed with unflinching and razor sharp clarity; it was incredibly refreshing to have so many nuanced BIPOC protagonists to live those stories.

However… I had such a difficult time finishing this novel. I don’t know if it’s because my expectations of what this story would be weren’t met—very little magical assassinating, much discussing the moral implications of a history as an assassin—or because I found a coherent plot thread incredibly hard to untangle as I went along the text. Flashbacks between past and present aren’t clearly demarcated and contribute to the confusion. A large cast of relatively minor characters was challenging to keep straight when combined with the confusing time shifts. The ending also felt unsatisfying and unresolved to me.

While Trouble the Saints is not without flaws, it still delivers complex history-adjacent world filled with three-dimensional characters who possess a rich inner life and strong voices. Though I personally didn’t love this novel, I would happily recommend it to those who enjoy more emphasis on historical fiction and magical realism in their fantasy.

Thank you to Tor/Forge and NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Having just finished The Diviners Series by Libba Bray, I was exactly in the right head space to appreciate another historical fantasy novel set in early 20th C New York. In this book, Alaya Dawn Johnson has explored the dark glamour and seedy underside of early WWII American. Her MC, Phyllis LeBlanc, decends into the underworld of gang culture, armed with knives and a desire to protect those she loves most. Haunted by her own past and history, she becomes an assassin with a mission to save the world thrust upon her. This was a great book. It’s fast paced and beautifully written with the sort of magical realism and lush prose which made The Night Circus so popular. My unwitting comparison with The Diviners is perhaps unfortunate since this is a different animal. (and Diviners is an absolute tour de force). However it does tick some of the same boxes and will appeal to fans of alternate history-fantasy. Highly recommend.

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson, a very hard book for me to even start, I struggled with this book and it simply failed for me, though I think others will like it. Thank you for giving me a chance with this book.