Reviews – Page 3 – Marked for Plot

Demigod 12 – Romeo and Juliet, but via Intergalactic Eurovision

Earlier this year, I fell in love with the slice of life Intergalactic Idol boot camp that was Divinity 36. With my push to actually continue reading the series that I’ve been enjoying – instead of leaving everything abandoned at book 1 – I picked up this audiobook for some long car rides to and from a cabin weekend. While it didn’t quite have the magic of Divinity 36, I had a great time with it and will totally and definitely finish the series this year … probably … assuming I don’t get distracted.

The Premise:
This book picks up with Phex and company going on tour as the opener for Tillum, the universe’s most popular Pantheon. Phex needs to balance the needs of both Pantheons with his growing feelings for superstar Missit, in a job where romantic and physical love are forbidden.

Read if You Like: the dangers of parasocial relationships, angst and yearning, the lack of agency in idol culture

Avoid if You Dislike: ‘how could he possibly love me’, protagonists without real flaws, grumpy/sunshine pairings

A Trade of Blood – Has the Magic Worn Thin?

I am remarkably behind on reading a lot of the hot new releases that have been coming out in 2026. Even ones I’ve been salivating for, like the new SM Hallow book that I have been promised gruesome necromancy, has been put on the backburner. But the Ana and Din series is one that my friends have all been reading too, so it got shunted to the front of the pile. This book brought me all sorts of fun ideas for my current tabletop role playing group – where my players are building up a cult to a god of mushrooms – but this was by far the most disappointing of the three. I’m not mad I read it, and it was an enjoyable time. However, I found myself wishing I’d picked up a different new release instead.

Because these are self-contained murder mysteries, you can probably read them in any order with minimal confusion. However, The Tainted Cup is not only the first in the series, but also the best in my opinion. It also provides the clearest on-boarding to the setting. This review will have some spoilers for early plot points (mostly the method of killing), so read on at your risk.

The Premise:
Ana and Din travel to farming country after the daughter and scion of the richest farming family turns up dead, with the likely culprit being the heir to their rivals, who control the great cattle herds of the Empire. As usual, all is not as it seems, and the killing method is far from typical.

Read if Looking For: murder mysteries, creepy mushrooms, ill-advised affairs

Avoid if Looking For: a serious critique of exploitative agriculture, truly weird worldbuilding

The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos

It’s pretty common for me to start stepping back into comics and graphic novels as school begins to ramp up. As I start exercising my work brain, comics allow me space to breathe as I handle the transition. This isn’t going to win any awards, but its a delightful queer superhero romp that I’m going to continue, and that my students will love! I especially appreciate its use of allegory and bringing modern plot structures to the superhero genre.

The Premise:
Christopher Chaos has always been different. He can see equations flitting through the world, and has all the makings of a mad scientist. However, when a werewolf classmate gets murdered by ghostly pale figures, he realizes that he’s not the only monster around. He and two other students connected with the deceased also find targets on their backs, they must learn to run away or fight back.

Read if Looking For: superhero tropes, monstrosity as queer allegory, a zombie-pigeon animal companion, corrupt cops

Avoid if Looking For: boundary-pushing stories or art, nuanced and complex villains, realistically violent fight scenes

Mage Errant – A Concussion Victim’s Dream!

August has ben so much fun! I have finally been blessed to join the concussion club and had a string of days where reading visually was simply not an option. It’s been two weeks at this point, and while my stamina is on the low end, it seems like I got the best possible version of a concussion possible. Hopefully this is the last time I feel compelled to reference it (outside of my August wrap-up). Mage Errant ended up being my audiobook series of choice, and I had a lot of time with a sleep mask over my eyes floating in and out of consciousness, especially for books 1-3. Thankfully, this is a reread for me, so I never felt particularly lost or confused. That said, the things that are popping up for me in this review are much more heavily weighted on the back half of the series – which is generally the better half anyways.

This will have some light spoiler elements for the first book in the series, but nothing specific or consequential.

Read if You Like: creative applications of magic, school settings, battles that span hundreds of pages, ensemble casts with plenty of queerness, morally complex (corrupt?) mentor figures

Avoid if You Dislike: prose that could use a line edit, characters leveraging ‘story logic’, critiques of imperialism, tonal shifts across the series from YA to Adult (no sex)

The Language of Liars – Award-Worthy in all the Right Ways

This book has all of the elements that typically appeal to me: it’s a novella, engages with questions of linguistics and ethics, and it asks the reader to be uncomfortable. The Language of Liars blew me out of the water. The opening sections left me with the feeling that this would be a good book, worth reading and recommending, but it got better and better. Every chapter sucked me in a little bit more until I sat in bed, story finished, thinking about the ending and its implications. I was not super enthralled by the 2025 novella nominations from most major awards. The Language of Liars has the right blend of thematic ambition, accessible writing, and the backing of a traditional publisher that make it an excellent candidate, and I will be happily advocating for it to make some waves on the awards circuit this year. To anyone who likes their stories to shine a mirror on our world without being too obvious about it, this is for you. There’s enough here for me to happily teach this novella in my Genre Fiction elective, and I’m desperately hoping one of the book clubs I participate in picks it up, because there’s so much to talk about from the last few chapters.

Really, truly an excellent piece of writing. Plus, the book is short and straightforward enough that the content-to-time-investment ratio is one of the best I’ve read this year.

The Premise:
Ro is a talented linguist, hoping to be the first in generations of his species to jump into another’s body. He succeeds, possessing a Star Eater who, like all of their race, mine the cosmic space dust necessary for faster than light travel. He has been trained for this moment, hoping to gather the information and skills needed to save the slow death of the universe’s society, which depends on the service (exploitation?) of the enigmatic aliens.

Read if You Like: autism-coded characters, uncomfortable questions about how you (the reader) live life, musings on linguistics

Avoid if You Dislike: straightforward prose, lack of clear solutions to problems, monolithic intergalactic governments

The Dawnhounds – Fungal Cities & Fascism

The Dawnhounds was the Beyond Binaries Book club pick over on r/fantasy. We had our midway discussion last week and will be wrapping it up on August 27th! This is a book that feels extremely ahead of its time, and fans of Perdido Street Station are going to enjoy it greatly. It’s the type of unapologetically political Fantasy that has been getting more and more traction, but this was written in 2019. I left feeling mixed about this book overall, but I got my concussion right around the halfway point, which definitely is when I started enjoying the book less. For those whom are drawn to the weird worldbuilding and ardently political themes, I think it brings a lot to the table.

The Premise:
Yat is a police officer in a city that has adopted biotechnology to replace the steel and iron of its former oppressors. She tries to do right by the city, but as a queer woman, she gets little respect from other officers. After she is murdered and comes back to life with the blessing of some eldritch power, she gets wrapped up in a conspiracy far bigger than she can imagine. Her path takes her to a pirate crew that has answers about what happened to her, and a realization about the system she worked inside.

Read if You Like: vaguely indescribable interludes, weird cities, characters having a crisis of faith, insect bullets

Avoid if You Dislike: spores, negative depictions of police, the power of LOVE, authors refusing to explain everything

The Girl With a Thousand Faces – Hong Kong Never Felt so Haunted

Sunyi Dean’s debut novel The Book Eaters is the type of story that I have spent three years thinking about. Needless to say, there was no question about whether or not I’d pick up her sophomore work. Craft remain Dean’s strength, as do characters that don’t quite line up with easy moral labels. However, I didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as The Book Eaters. As has been the case (and probably will continue for at least another week or two), lingering concussion effects are partly to blame. Not entirely though, I think.

The Premise:
At the end of World War II, Mercy found herself on an island outside Hong Kong with no memories. Thirty years later she is a ghost talker in the haunted Kowloon district, working for the leader of the Snakeskin Triad. She been seeing visions of a drowned woman, and they’re getting worse. It turns out that an evil spirit has very special plans for Mercy, and she’s not going to enjoy them one bit.

Read if You Like: haunting visuals, competent women in their 50s, casual queer representation, ghost cat sidekicks

Avoid if You Dislike: unconventional narrative structures, shifting POV (including 2nd person), depictions of drowning

Chai & Charmcraft -Cozy with a Side of Politics

For whatever reason, I’ve decided that this is the year I try and figure out what types of cozy fantasy I actually enjoy. It feels like there’s a ton out there in the mystery and/or small business owner space, ditto with cottagecore vibes. However, I’ve found that type of story hasn’t managed to hold my attention much. My favorites have all diverged from that formula pretty heavily. Chai and Charmcraft struck a similar chord to Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard and The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. It’s more saccharine than either of these, but retains some of the sharp edges and personal stakes that form the core of my cozy fantasy preferences.

The Premise:
Faraj is the God-Emperor’s brother, gifted with prophetic visions that make him invaluable to the throne. On a single night of indulgence, he chases a vision of a man tending a Jasmine plant that has followed him for decades. This leads him to a bathhouse/brothel in the Catspaw district where he meets Asharan, the keeper of the bathhouse. The two are smitten with each other, but their encounter quickly has implications far beyond what either of them ever intended. It doesn’t help that the night brings a cat-familiar into Faraj’s life, which are banned in the palace.

Read if You Like: the politics of gossip, indulging the joy of children, fat protagonists treated with dignity, catfolk who feel like cats

Avoid if You Dislike: extended conversations, overly-sweet dialogue and internal monologue, unconventional Romance plot structures

A Long and Speaking Silence – Delicious Food, Deficient Social Skills

The Empress of Salt and Fortune is one of my all-time favorites, and I have a lot of love for the Singing Hills Novellas. I actually use two of them in my high school genre fiction class for a novella-focused book club. They had some of my favorite explorations of how truth isn’t always a single idea, that a story is just as powerful as an action, and using framing narratives in novel and interesting ways. This book, like some of the other recent entries in the series, mostly lacks those elements. I implore you to set aside your expectations and come in open to something a bit different. I enjoyed the book a lot more once I gave up those comparisons – it was hard though.

This is technically #7 in a series, but the novellas are all independent and can be read in any order.

The Premise:
Chih is new to their job and has arrived in a river town preparing for a festival. Their purse is stolen, so they wait tables as waves of refugees enter the city. They collect stories, do their best to help others, and listen to the advice of Almost Brilliant. Mostly though, they’re desperately trying not to fuck up while they fake it until they make it.

Read If Looking For: mouthwatering food descriptions, a story focusing on Chih, sassy birds, the exhaustion of working multiple jobs

Avoid If Looking For: fresh examinations of refugee themes, explorations of truth and multiple perspectives

Villain – Psychologically Delightful

Hench is the book that relaunched my interest in Superhero media. It wasn’t the first to deconstruct whether or not the heroes are the good folks, not by any stretch of the imagination. However, it brought a modern take to the genre and reveled in delicious ambiguity. Villain was one of the releases I was most excited about this year. I think Hench is the stronger novel overall, but the highs in Villain are much more delicious and psychological.

This review will include plenty of spoilers for Hench, so I’d avoid continuing unless you’ve read it. See my review for that book here.

The Premise
Supercollider is nothing more than a ball of flesh, and isn’t long for this world. Leviathan and Anna (though now Auditor is more appropriate) have set their sights on The Draft, which is putting together a fresh response to the new strategies put forward by this villainous duo.

Read If You Like: the horror of involuntary medical procedures, competence porn, passing the point of no return, casual inclusion of mobility aids

Avoid If You Dislike: whiny antagonists, toxic romances, mandibles