Reviews – Page 7 – Marked for Plot

Lunar Boy – Isolation and Identity in Middle Grade Comics

Talking about books with kids is one of the best parts of my job. Unlike most adults, they’ll gush about their favorites unabashedly and rip books they disliked to pieces. This means that I get a pretty good pulse on what books are worth a look – though my tastes don’t always line up with the kids. Lunar Boy is one of those books that kept coming up as phenomenal. Since nobody was reading it, I took my classroom copy home to read as a way to kick off my Spring Break. The kids were right; it’s good.

Elevator Pitch:
Indu grew up on The Moon before being rescued and adopted by an astronaut. When his new mother takes him home to Earth to join a new family, Indu deals with not knowing the language, siblings who don’t want him there, and feeling like he doesn’t know how to belong somewhere anymore.

Read If Looking For: immigrant narratives, a focus on inner conflict, familial struggles & triumphs, adorable pen pals

Avoid If Looking For: hard sci fi, adult fiction (this is very middle grade, with all the tropes and idiosyncrasies that come with that label), books that ask difficult questions

Comparable Media: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, A Song for You & I, Root Magic

The Fall of Kings – Political Intrigue in Medieval Academia

I finally got around to reading the third – and final – novel in the Riverside series. While it is a sequel, they can really be read in any order or can stand alone just fine. In this entry, we trade swordplay for academic debate. Other than the shift from sword to pen however, the structural DNA of The Fall of Kings fits with its predecessors. Expect gorgeous prose, political intrigue, problematic queer leads, and lots of guys cheating on their wives.

The Premise:
Theron Campion is the heir to House Tremontaine, but he’s more interested in his various affairs than learning anything of politics. His newest infatuation is Basil St. Cloud, a Doctor of Ancient History who is angling for the Horn Chair and a significant pay bump. As the two kick off an affair, Basil begins to grow more and more infatuated with the idea that the ancient Wizards actually were magic, and that the Kings had a magical connection with the land. Theron, funnily enough, is a descendent of both the ancient Kings and the Duke who slew the last one. Their romance, politics (family, academy, city council), and emotions get swept up as part of the newest chapter of a very, very old story.

Read If Looking For: the cluttered posturing of university professors, morally and emotionally dubious characters, slow pacing, the importance of idle gossip

Avoid If Looking For: fleshed out female characters, the swordfights of earlier Riverside books, a book where you understand how the magic works

Comparable Media: Greenwode, The Goblin Emperor, Downton Abbey

An Inexplicable Act of Doom – Percy Jackson, but Make it Gay

I grew up loving Greek Mythology and imagining that half the characters in the books I read were actually gay. I would have loved An Inexplicable Act of Doom, and wish more books like this had been published when I was a kid. While written with kids in mind, I think adults looking for a more low-key reading experience will enjoy it a lot as well. Plus who doesn’t love a sweet romance between a god of your inevitable and unexpected doom with a guy who’s supposed to perish horribly while flying through the air on mechanical wings?

The Premise
Moros, also known as Doom Incarnate, has been tasked with arranging the death of Icarus to appease Posiedon (who’s still pretty upset about the whole King Minos situation and is taking out his anger on anyone remotely involved). Icarus has been living in a tower on a deserted island for the past ten years, and has just built one of his late-father’s designs: a pair of mechanical wings. Moros can tell Icarus is about to die horribly and decides, against his orders, to intervene in order to save the young man from certain death-by-gravity. This sets them both on a journey that will thrust them into the machinations of the gods as each tries to defy what the Fates have foretold for them.

Read if Looking For: harmless bickering, Greek Gods as narcissistic assholes, cozy adventures, witch Aunties who give great advice

Avoid if Looking For: typo-free books, positive depictions of Theseus, nuanced or complex themes & characters

Disclosure: I was asked to be an ARC reader for this book in exchange for an honest review, though I think this was closer to a final Beta-Read than a true ARC. I did also request that Cavehill would donate a single copy of the physical book to my classroom library for my students to read. I think they’ll quite enjoy it.

March Reading Wrap Up

Overall March was a solid month of reading (20 books!), including some real highlights of the year. We’ll see how I feel about them in a few months, but Drome, Beyond Redemption, and The Memory of the Ogisi are all on my shortlist for favorite books of the year. Mostly, I’m staring down April 1st with a small army of achillean novels I’ve been holding off on reading until the r/fantasy Bingo challenge resets. More on that tomorrow!

Mini Reviews

Hench – Revenge is Best Served With Excel Spreadsheets

I don’t do many rereads, but when I saw the audiobook for Hench was available without a wait time, I couldn’t resist checking it out. Villain, the sequel, releases later this year, and I will definitely be putting it on my reading list. I think I’m a little more hesitant about some of the thematic work in Hench than I was during my first read, but this is a rock solid revenge story that stands out in a cluttered Superhero landscape.

The Premise
Anna is a Hench, but really she just does data entry and analysis. When her first time working in the field goes wrong though, she finds herself with a terrible injury, a grudge against the world’s most powerful superhero, and a desire to start revealing the great harm that ‘heroes’ do to society. She tumbles down a rabbit hole that gives her with the resources to turn her from a minor supporter for villains into a person feared and despised by ever super in the world.

Read If: clever characters work for you, unreliable narrators are a plus, you think iguanas deserve only the best

Avoid If: you dislike critiques of policing, body horror makes you squeamish, you demand nuanced and thorough themes

Comparable Media: The Boys, Watchmen, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

Sea of Grass – A Foray into Nonfiction

The prairies of the American Midwest and West have always been special to me. I grew up in a rural farming community in Kansas, a place where thunderstorms and tornadoes were both pedestrian and awe-inspiring. Much of the land I grew up on gets a bad reputation for being flat, but nothing makes you feel smaller than sitting in a vast ocean of corn staring up at the night sky. Living further north (and in a major city), I miss the stars, the silence, and the swaths of empty space from the prairie.

Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie is a deep exploration. It begins by tracing the history of the prairie at a large scale: from its importance to indigenous communities to the current cash crop craze of corn and soybeans. Following that, it devotes time to specific topics: insects, soil, nitrogen, bison, etc. It shifts between testimonials, scientific research, and case studies as it makes its case for the ecological and societal importance of the great American prairies.

The Inheritance – My New Addiction

How have I never read an Ilona Andrews book before? Why have I delayed long on picking up one of their books? Where can I find more? These are the questions running through my head as I type this. It is 11:00 pm on a Sunday night. Tomorrow morning my dog will wake me up at 5:30 for a morning walk before I try and get a quick gym workout in, followed by the daily onslaught of questions that comes with teaching 11 year olds. My bedtime was an hour and a half ago, and I probably won’t fall asleep until midnight.

The Inheritance touched something inside me. Not anything particularly deep or meaningful. No, this book touched the ‘holy shit that was so much fun’ part of my brain, which is a part of my reading life that’s been a bit neglected recently. I want more, and I want it now. The rest of the series has not yet been published, which is a grave injustice for which I have no remedy.

The Premise
Ada is an Assessor. When portals to hostile alien worlds began to open up and humans got magic powers, corporations discovered a lot of money could be made from alien ecologies. The government employs Ada to use her magic powers to identify useful materials in the Breaches and keep the guilds from underpaying taxes on what they collect. When a mission goes wrong and she gets stuck alone in a Breach with nobody but Bear the Dog, she knows survival will be nearly impossible. Thankfully, something super special happens that gives her a fighting chance, and possibly the single most important human being alive. Meanwhile, Elias (the guildmaster for the recent mining expedition) is gathering a team of experts to try and close the Breach as he realizes that the survivors might not be totally honest about everything that happened leading up to the catastrophe.

Read If: you want popcorn fantasy with a middle-aged mother in focus, badass German Shepherds sounds appealing,

Avoid If: overly tragic backstories piss you off, you want characters to slowly grow in power and skill, you’ve got a phobia of bugs and spiders

Comparable Media: Solo Levelling, Mage Errant, Dungeon Crawler Carl

Drome – A Modern Ode to Mythic Hero Stories

Drome is probably the platonic ideal of comics for me. It was adrenaline injected directly into my brain. I couldn’t stop thinking about it when I tried opening up my current novel. I had meant to spread this read out over five days – the book is split into five sections. Instead I finished it in a single day that was also filled with book club, yard work, and a friend’s Irish folk music concert. While Drome doesn’t quite top the emotional resonance of The Magic Fish, it captures so many of the things I love in Fantasy and Comics. It honors mythology without being a pale imitation, it leverages simplicity for power, and it uses its visual medium as an asset to be leveraged. Drome is on a lot of ‘Best of 2025’ lists in the comic world, and it’s clear why.

For those of you who don’t read many comics, I cannot stress enough that Drome is absolutely worth checking your public library for. Unlike many of my favorite comics, this one doesn’t have the same density, making it a very low time commitment for those who don’t spend much time with comics.

The Premise:
Drome bills itself as a creation myth, but I don’t think that’s accurate. It begins with the creation of life, but it quickly shifts focus. Instead, Drome feels much more like stories of Achilles, Gilgamesh, or Beowulf. It follows a demigod created by Day to bring control to a violent world. This warrior is herself rather violent, but does her best to shepherd humanity into a prosperous future. As with many of the best hero myths, her story isn’t always a happy one, but it’s one of the few modern stories that evokes the feeling of old mythology without retelling original myths.

Read If: you love reading about mythological heroes, enjoy visual experimentation, want a grand story that can be read in a single sitting

Avoid If: simple and predictable plots annoy you, you need a simple happy ending, lack of dialogue will hinder your enjoyment of a comic

Comparable Media: Tongues, The Spear Cuts Through Water, Hyperion

Beyond Redemption – Addictive and Epic Grimdark

Historically, Grimdark hasn’t really been my speed. Plenty of books I’ve enjoyed, but the hopelessness and gore kept me from picking up the sequels. Beyond Redemption has convinced me that, as with my Horror journey – I might not dislike Grimdark as much as I thought. Certainly it’s reminded me that I need to read more by Fletcher, because I adored The Storm Beneath the World. Beyond Redemption is quick moving, intense, and dark without going too far. The mix won’t be right for everyone, but it worked for me.

The Premise:
Belief defines reality, which makes the delusional very dangerous indeed. This book follows two main groups within this world: a theocratic ruler with manipulation powers trying to build himself a god, and a trio of criminals who (eventually) get it into their head to kidnap the little boy being groomed to become god. You’ve got gruff veteran soldiers with more scarred skin than smooth, a man turning himself into the greatest swordsman in the world, scientists who try to bring about delusionists with torture, doppelganger trying to take the place of their creator, and a pyromaniac who can light a city ablaze with a thought.

Read If You: like an innovative premise executed to its fullest potential, don’t mind a little backstabbing or cannibalism, enjoy dry humor that doesn’t overdo itself

Avoid If You: want heroics, characters who have their shit together, positive representation of … pretty much anything.

Comparable Media: The Storm Beneath the World, First Law, Angels Before Man

Unexpected Stories – Octavia Butler’s Posthumous Publication

Octavia Butler is, rightfully, a legend and institution in the speculative fiction world. I’ve taught her books in high school classes, enjoyed them on my own, and have found that she is one of the best writers at engaging in the uncomfortable messiness of the human experience. Unexpected Stories is a novella and a short story published posthumously. Both stories are part of the Patternist series, but stand on their own without context – I haven’t read the main series yet. It’s worth noting that Butler wanted both stories published while she was alive – one story was sold to be published in an anthology which fell through, and the other never got picked up by a publisher despite Butler shopping it around – so neither story is being published against Butler’s wishes.

At 81 pages, it was easy to devote time to these two stories from one of the genre’s masters. I enjoyed the first and felt rather unimpressed with the second, making this far and away my least favorite of Butler’s writing. That this volume is still worth recommending is an indication of just how much of a gift Butler has been to Speculative Fiction.

Read If: you like reading Butler’s work, are interested in exploring alien social dynamics, enjoy short stories with themes of justice and power

Avoid If: you’re looking for Butler’s deeper explorations of ethics and morality, look for friction between narrative and protagonist