My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Harriet Tubman is back and she wants to speak to a new generation of Americans. She decides the best way to do this is to enlist the help of Darnell Williams, a gay music producer, and create a bestselling hip hop album.

This book isn’t just funny, it’s First Page Funny. Do you know how hard that is? To set up something and have it land successfully on the very first page of a new book? It’s a tall order. And it’s one this book delivers on from the very beginning and then consistently lives up to throughout. I had high hopes for this novel (with the premise and the author how could I not?) and those hopes were more than fulfilled.

In addition to the razor sharp, intelligent, humor we’ve come to expect from Bob The Drag Queen, this book is also a poignant, nuanced exploration of race in our nation's history and present. The novel delves into the unique and often uniquely difficult experience of being Black and Queer in America today. Like onions and ogres, this book has some serious layers going on. There’s humor of course, but also drama, vibrant and messy characters and a surprisingly effective didactic through line. I learned so much about music, history, and queer culture from this book. I’d never even heard of William Dorsey Swann or Ellen Craft before reading this.

Including original songs in any book is a risky prospect, a literary double edged sword. Their inclusion can be a wonderful addition and add to the immersion of the reading experience. But when it doesn’t work it REALLY doesn’t work and can break that immersion entirely. I’m looking at you Anne Rice. I liked Queen of the Damned as much as the next guy but I do not believe audiences in that or any universe went wild for lyrics like “In my dreams, I hold her still / Angel, lover, Mother. / And in my dreams, I kiss her lips / Mistress, Muse, Daughter”. All that being said, Harriet Tubman Live in Concert pretty much sets the gold standard for original song lyrics in fiction. This book wouldn’t be as good or make much sense without the songs being present in some way, they add to and in some ways are the story. And they slap severely. I can hear them in my mind. They flow and cohere. They’re clever and catchy and powerful. I can imagine them playing them on an app, adding them to a playlist. And I desperately WANT them to be fully produced, real songs I could listen to, they’re just that good!

If I had to critique a few things, I’d mention the pacing and a few world building details. The first and second parts of the book were excellently paced and progressed in a way that felt natural. The last third felt a little rushed perhaps and I would have liked more resolution on Darnell’s backstory. In terms of world building, in this universe people from the past have suddenly appeared in modern day and are called The Returned. Initially the author doesn’t get bogged down in the minutiae of how or why this happened and I think it was the right call. Instead we just the relevant details, Cleopatra is an Insta model and Harriet Tubman is here and wants to make a hip hop album, great stuff. I was hoping for a little more exploration of this phenomenon later in the story but it never came. These small critiques are only missed opportunities though and don’t drag the book down in any way. They may possibly have made the novel better but their absence did not make it worse, a crucial distinction.

Overall this was a wonderful debut and a great book to start the new year on. I’ve seldom seen such a promising, exceptional foray into fiction from someone who isn’t famous (yet) for their writing. I’m not saying Bob the Drag Queen should hang up the lace front wigs for a while and give us another novel like this. But I am saying I would wait in lines and fight off crowds to get my hands on a copy if she did.

I’ve been a fan of Bob the Drag Queen for years was excited to read his new book. I enjoyed it quite a lot. With a unique set up, Bob was able to draw the reader in. Thank you to Gallery Books for the ARC through NetGallery.

I requested and received an eARC of Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen via NetGalley. I love everything Bob does. Although he once famously called for the eradication of libraries, he has such a distinct point of view when discussing literally anything that I knew his first foray into fiction would be a special experience that I couldn’t miss out on. In a time when historical heroes have inexplicably come back to life, Harriet Tubman has plenty to say. Just like Hamilton, Tubman is ready to put on a show about her own life. She enlists Darnell Williams, a former hip-hop producer who enjoyed an illustrious career before being outed live on BET. Together Harriet and Darnell must confront the horrors of their past in order to build a better future.

I was a little taken aback as I started reading, because it felt that I was being dropped in the middle of something that was already happening, like I was missing some sort of key event. This worry quickly dissipated as I made my way through Bob the Drag Queen’s story. I really grew to appreciate the cast of characters in Harriet’s band. Their backstories were all interesting and they all had unique positions on certain issues and historical figures that I found to be fascinating and made me want to do my own research. The heart of this novel, however, is definitely the relationship between Darnell and Harriet. The journey their pasts and the mutual understanding they achieve as Darnell works on the music for Harriet is very special. This is a novel about healing and liberation — and the lyrics are pretty great too!

This book may not be for every Bobblehead, but I suspect many will enjoy it. No, this isn’t a story about drag, or a tell-all, but Bob comes across very clearly in the text. Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert is crammed full of his humor which is expertly blended with both the personal and the political. This is a story told with compassion, it blends history with speculative fiction and the result is very rewarding. There’s a lot of hidden depth within the whimsical premise of this novel. It interrogates the historical and continued experiences of Black Americans in a way that is both informative, sympathetic, and celebratory. The more somber moments in the text are handled with sensitivity and given proper gravity. Overall the novel is joyous and was a pleasure to read