Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
Published 2020 · 46,200 words · about 3 hours at an average pace
How hard is Ring Shout to read?
Ring Shout scores 49 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 48 out of 100
- Gullah dialect alongside standard narration.
- Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
- Clear, propulsive sentences.
- Abstraction: 48 out of 100
- Concrete horror carrying a racial allegory.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Moderate; a novella with a full world.
- Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
- A reliable first person.
- Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
- The Klan-as-monster conceit is sustained allegory.
- Ironic distance: 48 out of 100
- Some irony about American history.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- The plot resolves.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- Linear.
How Ring Shout is regarded
Ring Shout holds a literary regard score of 42 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.