Disability – Page 3 – Marked for Plot

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.

The Premise:
The Bullet Swallower primarily follows the bandit Antonio Sonoro, the descendent of a long line of tyrants and despots. He’s chasing after the score to end all scores, but quickly ends up trapped in a cycle of survival, hunting, and being hunted. Seventy years later, Jaime Sonoro, a movie star, is gifted a book chronicling his family’s cruel history. And lingering above it all is Remedio, a being who knows the men are damned, and can do nothing to escape the twisted fate of the Sonoro family.

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.

Elevator Pitch:
The world is a river of wind, through which continents on the back of ancient tentacle creatures host countries of insect-folk with some serious aristocracy issues. Four POV characters discover their Talent, a unique skill your are a prodigy at, but that has a serous dark side. Talents can be … well anything. Pottery, farming, conjuring fire, being lucky, sensing lies, etc. But using Talents overloads your brain with bliss leading to addiction, religious and social ostracization, and the promise of a relatively quick death as you ignore basic life needs to live in the bliss of your Talent. But with war looming as the Mad Queen Yil’s island approaches, these four protagonists find themselves pressed into service of Queen Nysh, putting their powers to use for the good of their society.

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.

The Premise:
Tharsis, once a martian colony and a now a full city in its own right, has separated significantly from earth. People have grown taller, more physically frail. They’ve also enacted a host of cultural changes to reform the issues the see from earth, removing gender and religion. The leading cause of death is accidental homicide from the stronger earthborn. A single bump is is enough to cause death. January, a refugee from earth, finds himself a second class citizen, forced to work in a water factory despite being the principal dancer at the London Ballet. He finds himself linked to Aubery Gale, a senator running for Consul of Tharsis on the platform that earthborn are exceedingly dangerous, and should be forced to go through the dangerous and debilitating naturalization process to make Mars safer for those who braved the journey generations ago.

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. Certainly it’s got a lot more going on than most Romantasy books do, and I appreciate the big choices made.

The Premise:
Òdòdó is a witch (more specifically a blacksmith) one of the many women who craft weapons and tools all while being looked down upon. And then, after her town is captured, she ends up dragged across the continent engaged to the king of Yorubaland, who claims he will do anything to earn her love. But she quickly starts finding that she went from one cage to another; this one is just more gilded. But she also finds herself attracted to the King, and the tension between these two ideas forms the core of the book.

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.

The Premise:
An alien is stranded on Earth, at the mercy of the planet’s intense gravity and its own need to eat. Thankfully, Earth is full of delicious, tasty humans! And so this shapeshifting creature laboriously makes its way through the city towards its meals, adapting its appearance on the premise of a fun hookup that turns into mealtime. When things go sideways though, the alien must adjust or starve.

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

The Spear Cuts Through Water

I have long been chasing classic epic fantasy stories featuring gay characters, and have been disappointed over and over again. I love romances (and read many of them) but finding stories focused on gay men where romance plot structures don’t dominate is horribly difficult. I put of reading The Spear Cuts Through Water for a long time, out of fear it would not live up to my hopes for it. When I read it, I discovered the best book I’ve ever read.

The Premise:
Jun is a guard. Keema is an outcast. They find themselves on a journey that will shape the fate of worlds as they help a dying god escape from the Empire that has enslaved it, and the Three Terrors who keep the land under the Empire’s control. But it’s also the story of a child hearing the story of Jun and Keema from their grandma. And it’s also the story of a person in the theater of dreams and ocean watching this story performed. These three narratives weave together seamlessly throughout the book, passing the story back and forth often, sometimes within the same sentence.

Read If Looking For: ambitious books, mythic style writing, heartrending and terrifying characters

Avoid if Looking For: a straightforward story

Mana Mirror

I’ve been a big fan and advocate of Tobias Begley’s previous series (Journals of Evander Tailor) in the progression fantasy space. I appreciated how they balanced small scale magic-school stuff with overarching plots, included quality queer rep, and had a clear grasp on characterization within a breezy writing style. So after binging book 3 in that series and seeing he had a new one coming out, I was overjoyed to see he had a new book coming out! Mana Mirror is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was definitely mine.

The Premise:
When Malachi got tested for magic and had the opportunity to pick opposing mana types for his spellcasting, he went with life and death mana. This caught the attention of a morally-questionable magi looking for a successor/experiment subject, and Malachi quickly ended up becoming apprenticed to one of the most powerful spellcasters on the planet. He’ll visit the local quest board often, learn about down payments on buying brooms, and meet a variety of cute folks along the way as he pursues a path towards magic that (among other things) will let him fully transition.

Read if Looking For: side quests, magic systems, wholesome family dynamics

Avoid if Looking For: action heavy, plot driven, or deeply thematic books

Running Close to the Wind

Alexandra Rowland has been one of my favorite authors ever since I read A Conspiracy of Truths, and their writing has never lead me astray since. Their most popular novel (A Taste of Gold and Iron) is also their weakest in my opinion, but still quite excellent. So this book was an easy pick for me for this card, and it met pretty much every expectation I had for it.

The Premise
Avra is many things. He’s a recently retired member of the Arasti military, he’s been (allegedly) blessed by the goddess of luck, he always pays his bills promptly, tips well, is a contented slut, and recently stole the most valuable mercantile secret of the richest country in the world (also his former employer). When he finds himself on the pirate ship of his on-again/off-again ex, he’s dragged back to the pirate isles against his will. While at his home away from home, he must contest with sea serpents, a nosy Ambassador, the annual cake decorating contest, and a ridiculously handsome (and criminally celibate) monk.

Read if Looking For: Raucously funny pirates, unhinged monologues, seagulls, cake decorating contests, sexual language (but very little actual sex)

Avoid if Looking For: a book that takes itself seriously

Welcome to Forever, by Nathan Tavares

This is a book that I picked up more or less on a whim. Another book by this author (which I haven’t read yet) was recommended to me, and when I saw this was being published in 2024, I committed to picking it up for my bingo challenge. I was not prepared for a story that would make me cry, force me to sit with my emotions for about a month before I could read anything with any depth whatsoever, and rocket into my all time favorites.

The Premise
Fox is a memory editor. He tinkers in people’s heads to delete trauma, raise contentment, and smooth out rough patches. He’s also recently been left by his partner of 16 years, Gabe. After a traumatic brain injury, Fox is at a memory rehab facility, struggling to call back his past and figure out who he was, only to discover that he doesn’t necessarily like that person very much. And then there’s Gabe, who seems to be at the center of his world, but whom Fox can barely remember at all. As Fox explores his memories and the brambles of his relationship with Gabe, Fox is forced to confront his past and carve a new path forward.

Read if Looking for: experimental books, weird memory stuff, complex characters, crying

Avoid if Looking For: straightforward writing, characters making good decisions, plot focused on action and/or external conflict