Smoke Kings

A Novel

By: Jahmal Mayfield

Narrated by: Terrence Kidd

Nate Evers, a young black political activist, struggles with rage as his people are still being killed in the streets sixty-two years after Emmett Till. When his little cousin is murdered, Nate shuns the graffiti murals, candlelight vigils, and Twitter hashtags that are commonplace after these senseless deaths. Instead, he leads three grief-stricken friends on a mission of retribution, kidnapping the descendants of long-ago perpetrators of hate crimes, confronting the targets with their racist lineages, and forcing them to pay reparations to a community fund. For three of the group members, the results mean justice; for Nate-pure revenge.

Not all targets go quietly into the night, though, and Nate and his friends' world spirals out of control when they confront the wrong man. Now the leader of a white supremacist group is hot on their tail as is a jaded lawman with some disturbingly racist views of his own. As the four vigilantes fight to thwart their ruthless pursuers, they're forced to accept an age-old truth: "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."

Smoke Kings is a powerful and propulsive novel with a diverse and unforgettable cast of characters. Like Steph Cha's Your House Will Pay it explores decades of racial tensions through a fictional landscape where the line between justice and revenge is blurred.

©2023 Jahmal Mayfield (P)2024 Tantor

The reader sounds like bad AI

The story itself is fine. But in countless hours of audiobooks I’ve listened to, this is hands down the worst reader I’ve ever heard. I always dislike AI audio narration, but this one is even worse than usual. It made it hard to get through the book. There are pauses that don’t make sense and emphasis on weird words and syllables. I hope that this is not a new trend