Marked for Plot

DNF Roundup – January Through June

Something I am trying (and largely failing) to get better at is dropping books that I’m not enjoying. I feel a compulsion to keep reading, even when I’m not enjoying the experience or getting anything out of the book. Here are a collection of mini-reviews for books I didn’t finish this year. I’ll flag how far I made it in each book and the reasons I put it down, as well as try to acknowledge the things it did well.

I’m hoping to have more of these, not because I like trashing books, but because I want to get better at using my reading time for books I love, instead of fighting against something that isn’t working. Will it happen? Probably not, but who knows.

Don’t Let the Forest In

Despite being a middle/high school English teacher, I don’t actually read much Middle Grade or Young Adult works these days. Sometimes I’ll preview a book for class, but rarely for personal pleasure. Oddly, the vast majority of YA that I read is horror, despite it not really being my favorite genre (it’s growing on me, I promise!). I picked up Don’t Let the Forest In in as some first steps to introduce more aro/ace representation into my reading diet. Overall, I thought this was a good book, and one that I’m glad I read. While I think some elements will frustrate readers who primarily pursue adult books, I think it’s got enough good things going on to be worth recommending to a broad variety of people.

Read if You Like: unreliable narrators, endings that stick the landing, impactful twists, creepy forest monsters

Avoid if You Dislike: archetypical side characters/set dressing, romantic tension derived lack of effective communication, slow pacing

How to Survive this Fairytale

I’m a sucker for Fairy Tale mashups. I grew up loving Into the Woods, I binged Once Upon a Time in college. Retellings are wonderful too, but there’s something special about taking the idea of storytelling, throwing a bunch in a blender, and seeing what new comes out of it. How to Survive This Fairytale made me laugh, made me cry, and made me cry some more. I’m usually not a super emotional person, but this book got to me in a really profound way. Hallow has a fantastic debut novel, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next. This is definitely on my shortlist for book of the year.

Read if You Enjoy: Fairy tale mashups, characters processing trauma, romance subplots, aggressively paced books

Avoid if you Dislike: 2nd person narration, tidy endings, protagonists not always being the center of the story, books without fight scenes

Dad Magic

I picked up this book excited for an urban fantasy with a middle-aged gay parent as a protagonist. It’s about everything you could expect from a book called Dad Magic, and features a lot of elements I don’t normally see in fantasy (urban or not). Ultimately, I didn’t like this book terribly much, and wish that I had DNF’d it. I think there’s a lot of readers who would like it though, especially if they can get into the dad-bod jokes that exemplify the tone of this story.

Read If Looking For: platonic bromances, father/daughter bickering, corny jokes and names

Avoid if You Dislike: different names for everything, suspending disbelief for plot and romance, shallow characters

Small Gods of Calamity

This seems to be the week of book club reviews for me. I’m very happy to be a regular participant in r/fantasy’s Beyond Binaries Book Club, which focuses on queer speculative fiction. This month brings us to a supernatural police procedural story. It wasn’t quite as dynamic a story as I would have liked, but I really enjoyed the lead character, setting, and magic. If you want to check out the mid-way discussion of book club, check it out here!

Read if You Like: loner cops, creepy possession spirits, immersive magic

Avoid if Looking For: thrills and chills, resolutions to all loose threads, critiques of criminal justice systems

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

One of the things I love about fiction (and fantasy in particular) is that writers can operate within a shared bank of references, playing with old ideas and twisting them into new shapes. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is just that. It takes a deal with a devil, the moral ‘be careful what you wish for’ and spins out an engaging tale from it. This was a pick for an in-person book club, and I very much enjoyed my time with it, even if I thought it missed some golden opportunities.

Read if Looking For: resourceful women, hot demons, leads going from overwhelmed to hyper competent

Avoid if You Dislike: constant flashbacks

The Long Past

Ginn Hale has been on my radar for a while. I hear a lot of praise for her Rifter series, and her new book (The Price of a Thousand Blessings) looks really interesting. However, when a wild west + dinosaurs book was pitched during an r/fantasy Pride Month post, I knew I had to give it a shot. I wasn’t blown away, but I see a lot of promise in Hale’s writing, and am interested to read some of her newer stuff.

Read if You Like: ranger archetypes, westerns, creepy twins, dinosaurs attacking airships, long-lost-loves

Avoid if Looking For: quick pacing, action-packed stories, deeply realized homophobic historical settings

Dudes Rock: A Celebration of Queer Masculinity in Speculative Fiction

I try to read a few anthologies each year, but it had been a while since I read one that wasn’t the collected works of a single author. Dudes Rock seemed promising, and I think the short story format has plenty of space to explore masculinity in bite sized chunks. I’d say that this was a pretty mixed bag in terms of anthologies. Some real bangers, but also a decent amount that I had little to no response to. But the stories that hit got me very interested in those authors’ other works.

Read if Looking For: short story collection featuring magic dildos, himbo cults, haunted houses, fairytale princes, and stories in the form of badly written job application essays

Avoid if Looking For: consistency in depths of theme and experimentation across stories

I’ll review each story in a bite sized chunk below (in publication order), but I want to flag my standout favorites of this collection were Rosa Cocdesin by Aubrey Shaw (gothic), The Depths of Friendship by Candy Tan (cheeky and fun) and Cigarette Smoke from the Fires of Hell by Jay Kang Romanus (intense characterization). In general, I thought the middle portion was stronger than the start or end of the collection.

Shoestring Theory

This is probably one of the maddest and rant-filled reviews I’ve written. Shoestring Theory had such potential to be a book I loved, and was headed in that direction. Having just finished the book, however, I can’t help but feel that a great book was sabotaged in the name of big reveals and a desire to capitalize on the cozy trend (to be clear, I love a cozy book, but I would not consider this a successful one). If you’re someone whom big fucking plot holes aren’t an issue, then I can heartily recommend this as a great read. I’m oftentimes that person myself, and I frequently read other people’s reviews for books I love thinking ‘that’s a great critique, but it worked for me’. I will highlight some of the things I liked about this book, but it’s going to be a lot of me venting about the direction it went.

Read if Looking For: big twists, toxic ex-husbands, bossy older sisters, quick pacing, good dialogue, tidy endings

Avoid if Looking For: intelligent or competent characters, logically consistent situations, healthy relationship dynamics

Red Dot

Sometimes, a single determined soul can hype a book so much that you reluctantly put it on your TBR. Usually, I end up never reading these books if they don’t keep popping up in various places. My reading list will already take 4 years to get through if I don’t add anything to it or read any sequels. In Red Dot’s case, the cover didn’t do it any favors. It isn’t particularly enticing (though in hindsight, I actually think it captures the book perfectly). For some reason, this was the month that Red Dot came off the bookshelf, and I found myself lost in the life of an artist with severe imposter syndrome. This is definitely a contender for my favorite book of the year so far, and I will proudly be the 24th person to rate this book on goodreads. It’s a hidden gem that I would love to see gain some new readers; it sucked me in and didn’t let go.

Read if Looking For: character-driven sci fi, utopian-adjacent climate change futures, accurate gay sex scenes

Avoid if Looking For: action focused stories, believable romance arcs, pessimistic views of the future