Different than your typical sci-fi, this is more literary and less action but in the best way. The celebration of culture and music and love is beautiful and the author does a phenomenal job of putting emotion into words. Not for everyone but definitely for me!

Not your typical sci-fi apocalypse novel. This story moves at a slow pace and lacks the action scenes quintessential of most apocalypse novels. That being said, it has excellent world-building and beautiful prose.

I loved Redwood and Wildfire when I found it in the New Books section of the library a few years ago, so I was excited to have the opportunity to read a new book set in that world, Archangels of Funk, which was published on May 7. This is a fantastic near-future book that combines magic and hopepunk with vibrant, joyful optimism, where a diverse community works together to survive and thrive as an independent cooperative amid an increasingly corpocratic world.
Redwood and Wildfire was set in the American South of the 1890s, with magic, and told how Black teen Redwood Phipps and her eventual love, Aidan Wildfire Cooper, moved through time and became part of the early days of the film industry. Somehow I had missed the middle book in the series, Will Do Magic for Small Change, about their granddaughter, Cinnamon Jones, but I’m happy to say that I didn’t have any problem moving from the first book to the third; I’m sure to have missed some nuances and callbacks, but I didn’t experience any puzzlement or feel that there were any missing pieces. In fact, I’d say that a new reader could probably start with this book (although Redwood and Wildfire, at least, is great and worth finding); there are certainly references to the characters and events of Redwood and Wildfire, but they are explained well enough that there isn’t any significant missing context.
Archangels of Funk is told (in third person past tense) following several points of view, including a Border Collie, another dog who’s a cyberghost, some Circus-Bots, and a friend, but the main protagonist is Cinnamon Jones. She’s a tech wizard who’s a leader in her community of farmers and Water Wars refugees but who tries to avoid being noticed by the wider world. An older woman, she’s had her share of past glories and heartbreaks. Her focus now is on helping others while honoring her ancestors and the spirits of her heritage; she doesn’t think she can change the world, but she fights to keep her corner of it viable and unique.
There is a LOT going on in this book. It starts two days before the community’s annual Next World Festival, which Cinnamon runs, as she searches for one of her missing Circus-Bots. These are theatrical junk-sculptures that she had built and animated with computer code and hidden hoodoo. She finds a Circus-Bot sheltering a little girl who’d fled from child-snatchers. The Festival is an ongoing tight-time focus throughout most of the book, but there are also echoes from Cinnamon’s past that come to confront her, including former lovers and betrayers, and people who try to lure her to sell her secrets and sell out. Other subplots include various theft/con attempts, a couple of security guards who are basically just trying to get by at the start, but whom Cinnamon and the community try to influence to actually do good and be good people, an ancestral spirit who helps Cinnamon and the community but who is fading, and several budding or recurring romances.
Redwood and Wildfire is bright and dark and jangly and eventually soothing. It’s a hard world, but when has it not been? It can be overwhelming, but Hairston passionately demonstrates in her writing that community ties of love and hope, and occasionally offering second chances to people, can make hearts soar. There are oppressive systems and a lot of exploitative individuals, but it is very much worth continuing to fight for a better world in small ways that add up to big things. I adore this book and the people in it. This is one of my favorite books so far this year. Please give it a try.
Content Warnings: Deaths, threats, betrayals
Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this ebook from the publisher via NetGalley.

DNF @ 15%

I tried several times to get into this book but struggled with it. I didn't know that the book was based on a short story by the same author, which I also struggled to get into. The book is well written and the narrator is excellent, but the plot meanders a little bit too much for my taste. If you like afrofuturism books, I'd definitely check it out and see if it's the book for you.

Well, I'm a dummy because I didn't realize this was the second book. 😅😂 While it stands alone fairly well, knowing the broader context from the first book would have likely enhanced my understanding.

This is a richly imagined dystopian future, shaped by the catastrophic Water Wars. Hairston's writing is undeniably powerful and evocative, painting a vivid picture of a world grappling with profound inequality and resource scarcity. This has an imaginative setting and a lyrical, almost poetic prose. Each sentence is meticulously crafted, demanding thoughtful engagement from the reader. This style, while beautiful, does contribute to a slower pacing that might not suit everyone, especially those seeking a more straightforward dystopian adventure. But honestly, it's beautiful to read and I found it charming.

The blending of sci-fi elements with a community-focused story adds a unique flavor to the dystopian genre. The diverse cast of characters, dogs, refuges, and robots enrich the story, though the sheer number of characters can sometimes make it challenging to keep track of who’s who and what’s happening.

Cinnamon’s internal struggles and her interactions with the various characters around her form the crux of the story. Her journey is less about action and more about introspection. This character-driven approach provides deep emotional and psychological insights but can feel slow-moving. I also struggled a bit to maintain interest.

Despite these strengths, the book may not resonate with everyone. The concentration of quirky and unconventional elements, while intriguing, might have been more effective in a shorter format. The pacing felt stretched, making it harder to maintain attention, and the poetic nature of the writing, while beautiful, further decelerated the story’s momentum.

In conclusion, this is a beautifully written, character-driven dystopian novel that demands patience and thoughtful reading. Andrea Hairston’s lyrical prose and imaginative world-building offer a unique experience, but the slow pacing and dense character roster might not be for everyone. If you appreciate poetic narratives and deep character explorations set against a backdrop of societal upheaval, this book will captivate you. However, if you prefer fast-paced, action-oriented dystopian tales, you might find it a bit of a challenge to get through.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. This review is based on a complimentary pre-released copy and it is voluntary.

If you've ever read an Andrea Hairston novel, then you know and understand her style. Her prose won't be fluid or poetic or dense. It will be quick, have a syncopated rhythm to it almost as if at a play. I like that she plays outside the realm of structured prose writing. Her characters are always interesting and their situations equally so.

Here, she is tackling a future where we have been impacted by climate change in a major way. There are co-ops and insulated luxury living for the rich. Corporations have become even more greedy and evil, parsing says to use the vulnerable. Cinnamon has formed herself a community where she fosters imagination and a strong support mantra. There is coding, hoodoo conjuring, and social dynamics all while honoring her ancestors and their rituals and memories.

I loved seeing a mature Cinnamon and what she has carved out for herself in this future.

A dystopian sci-fi novel without the high-stakes adventure many have. It’s like a cozy dystopia providing commentary on how a utopia or at least a peaceful coexistence can exist when people work together even under the worst circumstances (water shortage, desperate people) and how people can move on and not be labeled from a single or past mistakes.

I definitely want to reread this, perhaps in audio format since I feel like I missed some things. Sci-fi is not a usual genre for me, but dystopian future books. I liked the real (diverse and from all walks) casting used, too.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor for providing this eARC.

This is a dystopian fantasy that follows a girl on the run and is threatened by the Darknet Lords. This book was easy to get into but very confusing to understand. The storyline wasn’t bad but it was a bit too chaotic. If the world-building was more introduced in the beginning, it would be a bit easier to understand but I felt things were being thrown into the story throughout the book. I did enjoy the main character, Cinnamon, and how she was badass. I liked her development in the story and seeing her grow throughout the book. The side characters were interesting and made the story enjoyable. Overall not a bad book but it would have been more enjoyable if I understood the world a bit more.

*this arc was sent to me by the publisher to give an honest review in return*

This is a tricky book to review! I liked it, let's start there. It took me a while to get into a groove with it, but we got there together, this book and I, and then at the end I got weepy which is always a plus. But I somehow read the entire thing not knowing that it's a sequel, or at the very least a followup, to two of Hairston's other books—which did clear up for me why I felt a bit lost most of the time while reading it, but which I'm actually glad I didn't know, because I probably wouldn't have requested the galley otherwise.

happily, i did request the galley, and read it in a few big chunks separated by several weeks. I read best and most immersively when i can just let the prose carry me along. so after stalling out halfway through because I was rushing the experience too much, I came back to it with a much more relaxed and open mind, and I had a great time. This is very much a book to read when nothing's pressing on you and you just want to float on feeling.

Hairston presents an imaginable future not too far from our present, after Water Wars have widened class (and, because they are inevitably linked, racial) divides into high tech walled communities and the folks who build their communities outside the reach of marketing and surveillance. We experience this world through shifting POVs, including Cinnamon Jones, a pushing-sixty coder, farmer, performer, hoodoo practitioner, and community leader; her two dogs, each of whom is a bit more than a regular dog in their own unique ways; Indigo, a young goth who gives us a sense of this world outside of Cinnamon's farm and her immediate circle; and the Circus Bots, three performing robots possessed of powerful AI and modeled after Cinnamon's grandparents and great aunt, elders who continue to pleasantly haunt the narrative. And tying all this together is the mysterious Taiwo, who is perhaps a human war vet or a magician or a loa spirit or an alien, a top-hatted presence bringing unreality and real safety to the ensemble cast simultaneously.

It feels rare to me to read a story where AIs are pushing love and learning and creating community; where ghosts (in this case, haints) are a reassuring and life-affirming presence. Those elements together, and mixed with straight up magic, feel very right and even more rare to me, and really encapsulate the ways in which this story is about both past and future, about celebration and revelation, about stage magic and real magic and technology and love, and what those things create together.

This one took me a while to finish. I think there were too many characters and too much going on for me to really lock in and enjoy this one.
The world building was wonderful, and Hairston has a way of making things jump from the pages. I can see so many others loving this book. I even recommended it to friends and to have it purchased for our campus library.


Thank you NetGalley and publisher for the eARC of this work in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for this amazing opportunity! This book is available TODAY!

Firstly this was a gritty and hard hitting scifi novel. It is complex and engaging. Cinnamon is one heck of a main character. I enjoyed this book very much

Absolutely gorgeous prose in this one. I had a good time following Cinnamon in the vividly-rendered post-apocalyptic world.

A stunning Afro-future allegory packed with hoodoo and tech that reads like Mad Max in Wonderland.

Chock full of African mythology and a word garden of techno slang and culture-speak, this dense piece of neo folklore takes speculative fiction on an even wilder ride. After a slightly muddled beginning, braving a whole new world and vocabulary, the pace picks up, hurtling you toward a heist-like conclusion. With heart and humor, the novel throws you into the deep end of a life fully lived and lessons yet to be learned.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom for my copy. These opinions are my own.

Different and I don’t think it’s going to be for everyone but it’ll work very well for the right readers. It’s very slow paced and takes its time tell the story of just a few days. It describes the life of those living in a slow apocalypse well and the tone of the writing suits the characters and setting. But a lot of science fiction tends to be Adventure! Action! So for readers that want that, this probably isn’t the book. But for a reader who is looking for something slower paced and more towards the literary end of the genre this is a solid choice and the four star rating is for that reader.

I see everything good in it but I do not have the energy for it right now, I thought as much as soon as I reread the description before opening it up. I think I'd probably enjoy it more as an audiobook, because I want to hear the beautiful words wash over me. But I do not have the brainpower for that much world-building right now.

I really wish I didn't have to rate books that are a little much for me right now (looking at you, too, Each of Us a Desert), so hey, it can have five stars. I just can't tell you what happened in it.

In most cases, I prefer to provide a brief synopsis of the book from my perspective without spoilers. Unfortunately, I don’t have a solid understanding of what is going on in the book to provide said synopsis. I will attempt to provide as much as I can. The story follows Cinnamon, the FMC who inherited a large piece of farmland after her elders passed. She hosts a festival on the property every year to celebrate art, music, and culture. Unfortunately, the prior year didn’t go as planned and this year Cinnamon is dreading the idea of hosting the festival again. Meanwhile, she also is attempting to help the near by city as much as she can in the dystopic future.

After 50 pages, this book doesn’t make any sense to me. The sentence structure feels off and the attempt to be unique causes so much confusion. Naming characters things like “game-boy” and creating location without much of any context isn’t helpful. I felt like I was dropped into the middle of a story. Maybe this book just isn’t for me but the synopsis was structured in such a way that is completely different than the book. I wish it wasn’t the case but, this was a dnf.

Andrea Hairston's new novel, Archangels of Funk (2024), is a science-fictional sequel to her two previous magical realism / alternative history novels, Redwood and Wildfire (2011) and Will Do Magic for Small Change (2016). The new novel's heroine, Cinnamon Jones, is now a sixty-year-old woman; those previous novels were about, respectively, Cinnamon's grandparents (a Black grandmother and a Seminole/Irish grandfather) who leave the deep South and come north to Chicago during the Great Migration of Black people in the first half of the twentieth century, and Cinnamon herself as a teenager in Pittsburgh in the 1980s.
This places Archangels of Funk as occurring in 2030 or so. This is only a few years beyond the actual present in which the book was published, and in which I am writing this note. But things have changed radically during those several years. We have gone through the Water Wars, which are not described in detail in the novel, but which evidently shook things up quite a bit. Large corporations and rich white people still own the world; but not everything is under their control. Cinnamon Jones is part of a thriving multiracial alternative community, including farming cooperatives and centered on the Ghost Mall, a former shopping center now refurbished as a collective gathering place and free kitchen, with lots of space for experimental collaborative projects. This community is hooked in to the global Internet, but it is largely a loose, local aggregation, autonomous from major centers of power and production, more or less self-sufficient in terms of food, and largely reliant on bicycles for transportation, instead of cars. This community is also relaxed and dispersed, resistant to the sort of centralization and totalization that one often finds in both utopian and dystopian visions.
Archangels of Funk is narrated in close third person through the varying perspectives of Cinnamon herself, her close friend Indigo, her dogs Bruja and Spook (both of whom seem to be able to grasp spoken human desires and suggestions, and the latter of whom is cyber-enhanced), and even her three "circus-bots". These sentient machines are camouflaged, when they are quiescent, as piles of junk; but when they awaken they take on robotic animal forms, and project vivid multimedia spectacles. They are also imprinted with the personalities of Cinnamon's grandparents and great-aunt. The circus-bots preserve and transmit the wisdom of the ancestors, but they also plunge forward in time in order to generate exuberant new configurations of spectacle.
Hairston is less concerned with narrative than with exploring the textures of everyday life in the changed circumstances of the world that the book presents. The novel is set in just one locality, western Massachusetts, where Hairston herself actually lives; and it takes place over the span of just a few days. Cinnamon is mostly concerned with staging her yearly extravaganza, the Next World Festival. This is a "community carnival-jam": a gigantic theatrical spectacle, highly participatory, played in an outdoor ampitheater, and filled with song and dance, as well as with seeemigly magical masks and costumes, together with splendiferous props and sets. Everything in the Festival both calls back to African American history and leap forward to envision social and personal transformations. A Mothership lands, recalling George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic. Careful planning serves for the proliferation of play, rather than for any more instrumental purpose.
Cinnamon is by no means anti-technology. But she is careful with her gadgets and inventions, because she is all too aware of how computational devices in the 21st century serve purposes of dissuasion and surveillance. Her house is configured as a Faraday cage, and she never carries or uses a cellphone. Her bots are always gather data, and anxious to give advice; but they are also booby-trapped to prevent corporate spies from seizing and reverse-engineering them. There is also considerable attention paid to physical safety. The surrounding woods are rife with robbers looking for a quick score, as well as with "nostalgia mlitias," dudes roaming about in combat gear trying to bring back the old days of MAGA values. But their efforts are somewhat hampered, fortunately; though they seem to have lots of guns, they are mostly empty because bullets, bombs, and other munitions seem to be quite scarce.
Cinnamon and her friends are not just happy-go-lucky creators, however. They suffer from depression, relationship problems, bouts of fake nostalgia, and other all too real psychological symptoms. The ill effects of global warming are everpresent: "deny climate change all you want, but when that brushfire rolls up on your ass, you run or burn". There are also kids whose parents are missing, visitors with murky and perhaps dangerous agendas, and so on. The novel is, at least in part, about how to negotiate such difficulties. It is psychologically incisive, even as it values lateral connections with others over the narcissism of deep interiority. Cinnamon is adamant that she is "too busy" to be "waiting for love," but she remains open to chance encounters and unexpected opportunities. People always seem to be engaging in
Archangels of Funk has no deep, mythical narrative, no grand, overarching Story: this is precisely because everything in the book is composed of little stories, told and experienced, involving exchanges and transformations on multiple levels. There is no firm line between actuality and dream, or between technology and magic. Hairston's prose style strikes me as unique, and it is ultimately what draws everything together. The writing is liquid and mercurial, stopping to capture unexpected details, passing between interior monologue and physical description, then turning and flowing away from what you thought was important, and drawing your attention somewhere else. When I finished reading Archangels of Funk the other night, I felt a bit confused because I was hoping for more. The final dialogue, between Cinammon, her bots, and some long-ago friends who have shown up long after she expected never to see them again, suggests a never-ending adventure. You may become tired of adventure and seek to rest for a while, but the energy will return, at least until you have passed (as all people and all things ultimately must). "You're a dream the ancestors had" -- which is true enough, except vice versa is true as well. "We're in a sacred loop"; there is no goal except continuing to play and to circulate. "Nobody makes up their own mind," because our minds like are bodies are continually in motion, continually intertwined with others. (Earlier, we had been told that "mind was always a community affair"). And: "here we are at the end of the world," Cinnamon finally says, "thinking up what the next world will be." And: "I am who we are together."

Alright, I read a few other reviews but I am DNF-inf this at 5%> My biggest piece of wisdom is read the first chapter. This writing style is simply not for everyone.

That said, the writing style is very unique and lyrical while being about a pretty complex science fiction environment. I simply could not compute all the details and poetry into understanding. My brain fought through every word. I think many people would find this exciting and beautiful. I really hope the people that it sings for, find it and love it. The themes and subject matter are compelling and I'm sorry I couldn't get my brain to the right frequency.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

DNF 13%.

It almost doesn't seem fair to write a review for this one - I think it just wasn't for me. I had a hard time paying attention, a hard time figuring out who and what was happening. The imagery and inner monologue were beautiful, but after two-ish weeks of forcing myself to read one more page, I admit defeat for the moment.

Perhaps I will pick it up again. Perhaps it will make sense after reading earlier books by this author.

2.5/5 rounded up to 3

This book is the sequel to Will Do Magic for Small Change. (Which would explain why I fell into it's grasp feeling as if I were in the middle of the story. I did not check for other books because sometimes authors just dump you in the middle of the story like that.) Since I haven't read the previous book or the prequel, which features Cinnamon's grandparents, most of this review is going to sound like this book is a stand alone. It is not.

Archangels of Funk is a combination of cyber and solar punk, with a huge wedge of voodoo mixed in. Our Protagonist is a woman named Cinnamon who lives out on a farm in the back of beyond during a slow-motion apocalypse and the ensuing collapse of society. Despite "nostalgia militias" and "desperados," and a nearby gated community with an electric fence and armed guards,Cinnamon's community is doing well for itself thanks in part to a combination of technology and hoodoo centered around Cinnamon's farm, and an annual festival that takes place near the farm.

This year though, Cinnamon's inspiration is lacking, the slow motion apocalypse is speeding up, and
desperados have kidnapped one of the robots Cinnamon uses in her performances. On top of that, people from Cinnamon's past are showing up, making problems and demands. It turns out that before she was a farmer and community organizer, Cinnamon was a hot shot cyber punk programmer who was fired from her job after her girlfriend stole her work. (Which Cinnamon promptly stole right back--along with their new puppy--before blasting off to the family farm.)

This is a fast paced book with the feel of a prose poem. Despite the fast pace, it is not a book I would advise reading quickly. The rhythm is quick, but the poetic aspects of the prose mean you might miss something if you read too fast. (This book took me a long while to finish, it was one of those books where you have go do something else in between pages or chapters while everything stews in the background.)

I was strongly reminded of Pat Murphy's The City, Not Long After and to a lesser extent, Emma Bull's Bone Dance. (The former due to the way Cinnamon's community is centered around the arts and education. The latter due to the use of African Diaspora spirituality, and the idea of preservation of the past and the arts.) I am at some point going to have to check out the other two books, Will Do Magic for Small Change and Redwood and Wildfire.

This review is based on a galley copy received from NetGalley.