Fantasy – Page 16 – Marked for Plot

The Emperor and the Endless Palace

Reincarnation and recursive gay romance books seem to be a running theme of 2024 releases. I didn’t read all of them, but The Emperor and the Endless Palace seemed like the type of gay romance that was going to push past the cliches plaguing gay romances both in and out of fantasy spaces at the moment. And despite some classic debut-novel issues, it was exactly what I was looking for.

The Premise:
Two men, soulmates, find each other across various lifetimes. Dong Xian is a clerk at the Endless Palace 2,000 years ago, scheming for power. He Shican is something of a lost soul, an innkeeper in the woods of China in the 1700s. And River, who immigrated to America as a young child, is has recently come out and is exploring his identity in the hedonistic LA queer community. As their stories progress, so too do they intersect, replay, and unravel.

Read If Looking For: romances that aren’t quite Romances, looping narratives, lustful gay men, historical queer representation

Avoid if Looking For: saccharine queer stories, or books that aren’t romance heavy

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

An Academy for Liars

Dark Academia isn’t a subgenre I read a lot of. I tend to prefer my magic school stories on the kid-side of things. But when this year’s bingo card asked me to dive into a Dark Academia, I started looking for a 2024 release that would satisfy me. An Academy of Liars seemed like fun, and I had a great time with it, even if I had some issues with the book’s execution.

The Premise
Lennon’s life is in pieces when she’s invited to Drayton, a college secluded in time and space for those who have the gift to persuade people (and reality itself) to bend to her will. She just fled an engagement with a cheating fiancé, is in the midst of a sever mental health crisis, and is looking to reinvent her life. While there, she meets a hot tattooed professor who becomes her advisor, and discovers that she’s got abilities that the everyone is jealous and terrified of. Oh, and the school and all its inhabitants are all harboring dark secrets. Fun times!

Read If Looking For: Dark Academia with a romance focus, fast paced books, rats named Gregory

Avoid if Looking For: healthy relationship dynamics, quality mental health rep, books that will make you think

The Brides of High Hill

I’ve got a great love for The Singing Hills Cycle, and picking up the newest release was a relatively easy decision for me. The series of novellas focuses on a historian cleric on various adventures, collecting the stories of the people and creatures of their world, which has clear Chinese and Mongolian influences. Storytelling, perspectives, and the meaning of truth are running motifs throughout the series, and they can be read in any order.

Elevator Pitch:
A historian cleric accompanies a young girl to her wedding, only to find that there is something dark going on in this house. The girl’s future husband has a mysterious past, the servants are tight lipped, and the cleric’s companion bird isn’t at their side to offer advice. And the cleric has a crush on the girl about to be married, and is desperate to save her from what they see as a potentially disastrous situation.

Read If Looking For: gothic horror, haunted houses, light mystery elements, quality prose

Avoid if Looking For: deeply thematic works, traditional fantasy storytelling

A Deadly Education

I grew up in the era of Harry Potter. I dragged my parents to bookstores, standing in line for midnight releases. I went to Harry Potter themed summer camps. I asked for my mom to knit me scarves with the colors of each Harry Potter house. And while I’ve soured on Harry Potter for a variety of reasons – Rowling’s raging transphobia being only one of many – A Deadly Education plucked at the joy of magic school stories, which is something that’s never going to entirely vanish from my fantasy reading habits.

The Premise:
I pitch this story as a magic school where everything tries to kill you: the monsters, the students, even the furniture. El is foretold to be a sorceress of epic proportions. With a knack for apocalyptic magic and stealing power life itself, she’s been told from a young age that she’s going to rip apart wizarding society at the seams. Not that she ever uses those dark powers. She mostly just wants to survive her four years at this death-trap of a school in one piece on her shoestring mana budget. When she finds her big moment to show off and win alliances ruined by class savior Orion, her path shifts forever.

Read If Looking For: brutally fast pacing, snarky narrators, magic dystopias

Avoid if Looking For: characters growing in power, grey morality

Siren Queen

Nghi Vo won me over with her novellas in the Singing Hills Cycle, and I was curious what her writing was like outside the quiet reflective stories of those novellas. And so I turned to Siren Queen, put in a loan for an audiobook, and spent hours putting together a puzzle so that I wouldn’t have to stop listening.

The Premise:
Siren Queen a memoir-style magical realism story about a second generation Chinese girl who dreams of becoming a movie star (and I use the word star quite literally here), in the early 1900s as the era of silent movies has faded. She claws her way into the spotlight, finds love with several women, and discovers the many prices of fame. At the core of the story is the intersection of racial, gender, and queer identities, and how they impact her life.

Read If Looking For: magical realism, entrancing prose, character studies

Avoid if Looking For: happy queer stories, plot points that all resolve neatly

Empress of Salt and Fortune

I credit my relatively newfound love of Novellas to Empress of Salt and Fortune. I used to be the type of reader who loved doorstopper books – and I still do! – but had a ‘more is always better’ approach to books. Now, I think that the length of a novella gives space for writers to do really interesting, focused stories. I tend to find them more cohesive on the whole, and Empress of Salt and Fortune is a great example of Novellas at their finest.

The Premise:
The Empress has died, and the spell sealing the home she spent exile in has lifted. At this lakeside villa where she lived after bearing the Emperor’s son and was cast aside, ventures a cleric of an abbey devoted to historical knowledge and truth. Joining them is their eidetic bird companion, and the Empress’s closest handmaiden. Rabbit shares her stories from her time with the late Empress with Chich (the cleric), reminiscing about the past and dwelling on what was was truly important.

Read If Looking For: framing narratives, the human impact of rebellions, emotional stories, character studies

Avoid if Looking For: traditional action and politics to happen on screen

A Conspiracy of Truths

My love for framing narratives will likely become a running theme on this blog. When executed well, I find they make stories come to life, and they inherently channel the oral storytelling traditions that the fantasy genre calls home. A Conspiracy of Truths is one of the best of them. This book was an impulse purchase from Half Priced Books, and it gave me not only one of my favorite books of all time, but an author whose catalog blows me away.

The Premise:
Chant is a traveling storyteller. That’s an oversimplification, but it’s the easiest way to explain what he does. He’s old and doesn’t have time to explain things, especially when he’s been accused of witchcraft and espionage and is put on death row. And he hasn’t lived this long just for some idiotic children making a power grab to leave him as collateral damage. So, with the help of his wildly naive apprentice, he leans into the accusations, using his skills as a storyteller to sell the fact that yes he is a witch, and yes he is a spy, and yes you should keep me alive and use me. And if the city burns down because of what he says … what’s that to him? He didn’t ask for them to throw him in a jail cell.

Read If Looking For: unique protagonists, political manipulation, the power of storytelling

Avoid if Looking For: stories where the main character can leave a prison cell to actually take part in what’s traditionally the ‘plot’ of a book

The Scarlet Throne

Fantasy and Science Fiction with unique inspiration points are always interesting to me. So when I heard about a debut novel based on the Living Gods of Nepal, it was easy to make space in my reading life to check it out. It was pretty easily my favorite debut of 2024, and didn’t show any of the shakiness that often plague debut novels.

The Premise:
The Scarlet Throne follows Binsa, a teenager who holds the goddess of wisdom inside her. Only she isn’t actually. Instead, she’s got a demon who gives her enough power to fake it while the actual goddess is … well actually she has no idea where the goddess is, or if the goddess is even real. And with her tenure as host of the ‘goddess’ rapidly coming to a close, Binsa is grasping for any way to avoid being thrown out of the temple to scrape by for the rest of her life. And the demon she hosts whispers in her ear. The future is hers, but grasping it will require sacrifice.

Read If Looking For: villain stories with actual villains, fire breathing goats, toxic family dynamics

Avoid if Looking For: flashy stories, books where villains are simply misunderstood

Jade City

When I heard about Jade City, the things people told me about were great fight scenes and cool magic systems. I picked it up because I love these things. Instead what I got was an intensely character focused family drama with organized crime (kind of) as a backdrop. Plus some cool fight scenes, of course.

The Premise:
Janloon is a city that, after a long war for sovereignty, owes its freedom to two clans: Mountain and No Peak. This book follows the newest generation of the Kaul family, who rule No Peak Clan. Lan is in the process of taking over leadership from his grandfather, the war hero who is overly involved. Hilo is a firebrand whos penchant to start fights must be reigned in now that he’s in a position of authority. And Shae is back in Janloon hoping to live a life free of the influence of her family. And then there’s Anden, adopted and still a student, but a prodigy of great proportions. A gang war with Mountain Clan is brewing, and No Peak may not be situated win the fight.

Read If Looking For: morally grey leads, deep themes, character focused writing

Avoid if Looking For: lots of fight scenes