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The Ballad of Black Tom

Victor LaValle
Buy on Amazon Kindle
horror cosmic horror past tense third limited POV ~111 pp high worldbuilding
features extracted 2026-04-12

Vibe

cosmic horror oppressive bleak

A dark horror. Expect rich worldbuilding, dense, literary prose, epic scope. Deeply introspective. Ends on an unresolved note. Contains notable violence.

Style Fingerprint

Prose density 78
sparsedense
Pacing 45
slow burnpropulsive
Emotional tone 25
darkhopeful
Worldbuilding 85
minimalmaximal
Char / plot 60
character-drivenplot-driven
Interiority 70
externalintrospective
Ending 10
unresolvedcathartic
Stakes 90
intimateepic

Content

Violence 95%
noneextreme
Sexual content 10%
noneexplicit
Humor 10%
seriouscomedic
Romance 0%
nonecentral
Speculative hardness soft/vibes → hard sci-fi / rigorous magic

Structure & Cast

Structure
Word count27,638
Page count~111 pp
Prologue—
Epilogue—
Tensepast
Cast & World
POVthird limited

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