Book Review: The Destroyer of Worlds by Matt Ruff

The Destroyer of Worlds by Matt Ruff

305 pages, hardcover

Harper publishing, February, 2023 

 Sorry, this review will be a little shorter than I normally do. I just finished the final stages of my first non-fiction book and my brain was a little fried when I read this.  The good news is this was an excellent escape from the craziness of that experience. Destroyer of Worlds is a sequel to the novel Lovecraft Country that if my memory serves me was set in the late forties. This novel despite having a 40s event on the cover is set in the 1950s. Summer of 1957 to be exact.

I was a fan of The Mirage Ruff’s underrated alternate 9/11 novel, and I read the first novel during the period that the HBO TV show was announced and before it aired. They are both a little different from each other and TDOW is different still. Ruff doesn’t try to outdo the first book in creepiness or Lovecraft easter eggs.

Thankfully Howie is not really haunting this book like the first one. That is a reason why the book is not called Lovecraft Country 2: Lovecraftier. It is a sequel set in the same world and characters like Montrose, Atticus, and Hippolyta are the main characters.

Much like the first book The Safe Negro Travel Guide and the road trips of the main characters drive the narrative. Pun was intended, forgive me. Threads from the first book are woven into the events throughout. It opens with Atticus and Montrose tracing their ancestor's escape from Slavery which we see in flashbacks.
 
Hippolyta’s story is the one I found myself most interested in.  First off she travels west something the first book didn’t do, then she gets the device that helps her and her son travel to another world.  I love the scene when Horace and Hippolyta first go to this other world and see different stars for the first time.

“Yeah, it makes perfect sense when you see it set. It looks real close, doesn’t it? Like you could reach up and touch it.  But’s not. It only seems that way because it’s so big.”
“How big?”
“To measure it would take a lot of time on Ida’s telescope. But on our milky way is about a thousand light-years across, and Andromeda, which is the biggest spiral galaxy we know of spans almost twice that.”

The cosmic horror of this moment is a mother trying to explain the wonders of the universe only highlights how small we are. The scene is several pages before Horace before…

“We’ve got to bring Ida and Mary back to Earth,” he said “They need to go home.”
“They do, and we will Hippolyta promised.” But first, we’re going to get ourselves out of this fix we’re in. And we’re going to take back what’s  mine.”

My favorite moment of this whole book. The book also returns to Rudy and her days passing as a white women, the resurrection of the dead and plenty of supernatural events that highlight the casual and not not so casual racism of the day.

More than the first book which felt like a collection of stories that eventually wove together, this book feels a bit more whole.  More tone, and vibe than moments of outright horror.  I really enjoyed this book and Ruff is 3/3 for me so far. There was nothing that blew my socks off, in that sense I think The Mirage is Ruff's most incredible work.  Still, I like I enjoyed the skin-crawly goodness of The Destroyer of Worlds.