Disability – Page 2 – Marked for Plot

A Strange & Stubborn Endurance (Tithenai Chronicles #1)

A recent friend of mine works at a local romance-focused bookstore. When I asked about great gay romantasy books, this was one of the first titles to come to her mind. And while I don’t think this touches on some of my all time favorites, there’s a lot of good things happening in A Strange and Stubborn Endurance that you don’t find in many other romance/fantasy hybrids. I’m curious to see what the sequel brings to the table, as it felt fairly resolved in book 1, but I’m definitely going to read it.

Read if Looking For: Romantasy, traditional romance tropes and plotlines, serious considerations of sexual assault, wholesome leads

Avoid if Looking For: lots of magic, political intrigue, characters that aren’t pure good/evil

Compound Fracture

Andrew Joseph White is an author who has done a great job of pushing the YA space in the last few years. Hell Follows With Us was good, but The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is a real masterpiece of a historical fiction horror. He has a habit of breaking away from the typical prose stylings and plot progression that has begun to feel very repetitive in modern YA Fantasy, feeling more akin to something we’d have seen in the early 2000s content wise, but with a lot more representation and modern sensibilities.

Compound Fracture is much more realistic than White’s other works (barely any speculative elements at all) and is heavily inspired by his own life and family. You’ll find most of his trademark elements (body horror, trans & autistic lead, religious queerphobia), and generally speaking if you like his other books you’ll enjoy Compound Fracture. In the end, I found this the weakest of White’s novels so far, but still very much enjoyed it.

Read if Looking For: gruesome descriptions of wounds, Appalachian culture, realistic queerphobia descriptions

Avoid if Looking For: lots of fantasy/supernatural elements, nuanced villains

The Truth of the Aleke

The Lies of the Ajungo captured my attention with how deftly Moses Ose Utomi mixed fable elements into a simple, but tightly written novella with an entrancing setting and eye for exploring power as a motif. The Truth of the Aleke continues that journey, jumping forward several hundred years, abandoning the folktale-esque vibes for something more traditionally ‘epic’ while still maintaining the thematic core of the series.

Read if Looking For: interesting takes on traditional story beats, fallible characters

Avoid if Looking For: deep worldbuilding or complex magic systems

A Botanical Daughter

This book has been pitched as a mashup between Mexican Gothic, Frankenstein, written through the lens of Oscar Wilde. I don’t think that’s a perfect description, but it (and some phenomenal cover art) put this book on my list as I tried to tackle the new releases of 2024. Gothic fiction may not be my favorite genre, but there was a lot to love in this debut novel, even if there were places it was rough around the edges.

Read If Looking For: realistic gay relationships, cool fungi, gothic vibes

Avoid if Looking For: Romances, something viscerally scary, satisfying character arcs

Someone You Can Build a Nest In

Someone You Can Build a Nest in caught my eye with its cover as I was exploring 2024 new releases. I threw a hold on the audiobook at my local library and promptly forgot about it until it came up just as I was finishing a re-listen of Dungeon Crawler Carl. It was perfect timing, and ended up being a really wonderful read that is a good example of a book that manages to successfully balance romance and fantasy elements in its story.

Read If Looking For: quality asexual romance, plus sized queer rep, cozy/horror mashups

Avoid if Looking For: monsters that truly feel monstrous

The Bullet Swallower

The intersection between Speculative Fiction and Westerns is something I’ve been interested in exploring for a while now. I’ve got both American Hippo and Make Me No Grave on my bookshelf right now, waiting for me to find the time to get around to them. This was my first foray into the genre, primarily because the Magical Realism elements were intriguing, as was the parallel storyline in the pitch.

Read If Looking For: frank depictions of characters, family sagas, heaps of bravado

Avoid if Looking For: fast paced stories, lots of action scenes

The Storm Beneath the World

As and English teacher, I constantly tell my kids not to judge a book by its cover. Dumb advice, but I have to try to get them to give Tamora Pierce a try somehow. It’s also undoubtedly true that a good cover is far more likely to get me to actually look at a book and give it a shot, and great cover artists are hard to find (especially since they and the authors rarely get a lot of say in what the cover looks like). And I’m ashamed to say that, with two horrible covers, I didn’t give The Storm Beneath the World a shot the first few times I saw it. Eventually, the premise of excellent fantasy featuring insect-people got me to pick it up, and thank goodness people kept hyping it. I’m now happy to say that it has a third, much better cover (for my tastes at least), and I think epic fantasy fans will find a lot to love here.

Read If Looking For: classic epic fantasy style writing in a totally alien setting, insect characters, ethical quandaries

Avoid if Looking For: books that avoid brutal violence, books with familiar settings

The Mars House

Sometimes there are books that have an enduring impact on me, where my first impressions of a linger and solidify. Other times my opinions about books shift radically the further I get from them. The Mars House is one of those books. It’s a book that had been on my radar, and I got a gentle nudge when I stumbled across it on my library’s shelves. It was a roller coaster of loving it, and slowly falling out of love with it the longer I’ve been away from it.

Read If Looking For: interesting moral questions, grounded science fiction, talking mamoths, neat and tidy endings

Avoid if Looking For: quality queer representation, healthy

Masquerade

I’ll be honest that Masquerade was a bit of an impulse purchase. Heterosexual romance focused books aren’t something I read a ton of, but the idea of a Persephone story in precolonial Africa was intriguing.

Read If Looking For: romance with a twist, competent characters, evil characters

Avoid if Looking For: high fantasy

Walking Practice

Translated Novels tend to be some of the more unique reads. It’s easy to forget how much cultures have self-reinforcing patterns in their writing, even across subgenres. Walking Practice is a great example of how translated fiction can be an engaging experience that confronts your notions of how stories go.

Assuming you’re reading in English and not Korean, I highly recommend reading Victoria Caudle’s translation notes, which will provide key context for what the hell is going on with this book’s typesetting.

Read If Looking For: horror with deep themes, gruesome depictions of bodies, gore, and sex, utterly alien narrators

Avoid if Looking For: something like what you’ve read before