Fantasy – Page 2 – Marked for Plot

Novella Readathon #1: Penric’s Demon

I knew that I wanted to start my 31 Novellas in 31 Days Readathon with something that I was almost certain I’d love. Penric’s Demon was a great choice for that. I’ve liked Bujold’s work in the past, the novella has a sterling reputation, and possession is shaping up to be a running theme for some of my 2026 reads (I highly recommend Asunder and Striker V, was less enamored with Ninefox Gambit, and am probably going to read If Found, Return to Hell for this project). This novella is going to be a good fit for anyone interested in something relatively low key and character-focused. My only regret of reviewing this first is that I need to wait until the end of the month to read any more in the series, because I am chomping at the bit to follow these characters.

The Premise:
Penric is a minor lordling on the way to his own betrothal when he stumbles upon a dying woman. It turns out she was host to one of The Bastard’s demons, who jumped ship to Penric as her new host. Now he’s got the voices of the previous 10 hosts (12 if you count the lion and the sheep) in his head, magic powers he didn’t ask for, and a host of people jealous and scared of him. He really just wanted a quiet life, but at least the Demon (whom he names Desdemona) is nice. For her part, she’s just surprised that Penric is treating her with kindness and humanity, and quickly decides that she rather likes this poor oblivious young man.

Read If Looking for: friendly and oblivious doofuses stumbling into trouble, negotiating with ancient entities who are surprised at how chill you are, the goodness of humanity

Avoid If Looking for: satisfying plot arcs, malevolent spirits, energetic combat sequences

Comparable Media: The Goblin Emperor/Cemeteries of Amalo, Murderbot Diaries, The Dragon’s Banker

Monkey Meat: The Summer Batch

Back in April, I read the first collection of Monkey Meat stories and fell in love. Juni Ba’s art, humor, and themes were catnip for me. The vibes are Sunday Morning cartoons focusing on the dystopian nature of late stage capitalism, with heaping of weirdness thrown into the mix. Overall, I think The Summer Batch is (mostly) a direct upgrade, but the two can really be read in any order. Each story is self-contained, with only a few characters appearing in multiple stories – and never requiring you to have read earlier tales to understand what’s going on. All that’s important is that you’ve returned to Monkey Meat Island! Don’t worry, all we ask for access to the theme park is your immortal soul.

The Premise:
Welcome back to Monkey Meat island! Like last time, there’s a wide variety of stories within this volume. This time however, the book itself is a magazine created by the Monkey Meat corporation, meaning you also get complementary ads. Isn’t that great?

Read if Looking for: the corporation always wins, irreverent humor, in-book recommendations for real-world art, meta-commentary

Avoid if Looking for: optimism or escapism, realistic characters or situations, subtlety

Comparable Media: The Triangle Agency, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Rick and Morty

East of West – Star Wars meets Silverado

I’ve run into a lot of disappointing Weird West novels this year (followed by a really fantastic Fantasy Western in The God Eaters). East of West is a comic famous for being the Weird West of the comic world, though it mixes in more Sci Fi than true weirdness. Considering I read a trade, I only got about a tenth of the entire story to be told, which may not be enough to make a real judgement with. A lot of pieces got put on the gameboard, but none were developed enough to be anything other than introductory archetypes. There was enough interest here to make me want to read more, and the art style is just captivating

The Premise
Death is one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, but he has broken away from his fellows. He now stands in opposition to them as he seeks revenge on those who killed his wife. Meanwhile, the other Horseman are trying to bring about the End of Times. Death will assassinate world leaders, wage war, and bring his inevitability to bear. Meanwhile, War, Famine, and Pestilence work behind the scenes to chase Death down and destroy the world as they know it. Threaded through all of this is a vast Science Western world, giant fights, and political maneuvering from human leaders.

Read If You Like: genre blending, tropes on tropes on tropes, epic stakes from page 1, the feeling of being small

Avoid If You Dislike: archetypical (stereotypical?) characters, multi-pov comics, plentiful violence

Comparable Media: Descenders, Mistborn Era 2

The School for Invisible Boys

This book has been sitting in my classroom library for a little over a year, and it hasn’t gotten a ton of movement. This is fine: most books don’t. However, as I’m revamping my curriculum, I began to realize that my favorite 6th grade unit, Fantasy book clubs, has no queer options. Fixing that got added to my summer to-do list. I don’t think The School for Invisible Boys is the right pick for my curriculum, but I had a great time with it, even if I can see the areas where I’d like it to shift. Certainly it took me back to my own childhood, even though I wasn’t a Catholic school kid.

Also, shout out to Julian Callos for some ridiculously fun cover art!

The Premise:
Hector is a 6th grader at a Catholic middle school. Life is pretty hard for him right now. His new stepdad and stepbrothers are far more rough and tumble than him, and he feels consistently judged and bullied by them. He feels like his mother has left him by the wayside, and his decision to ask his best friend Blake to be his boyfriend had disastrous results. Now he’s on the run to avoid getting beaten up, only to find himself turning invisible. Turns out he’s not the only lost boy that St. Lawrence’s Catholic School for Boys has running around its hidden halls. Oh, and there’s also a giant tentacle monster too.

Read If You Like: the power of friendship, paranormal investigations, too many tentacles, Fantasy as allegory for the real world

Avoid If You Dislike: middle grade stories, tidy endings, muddled portrayal of healthy family dynamics, censoring slurs in kids books

Comparable Media: The Misfits, Lunar Boys, Spy School

The God Eaters – Soul Crushingly Good

Sometimes, a book hits you like a ton of bricks. They help you redefine your taste, shift the types of stories you pick moving forward, and relentlessly find their way into your recommendations to other readers. Over time, I’ve noticed that my version of these books tend to have rigorous character development, a strong narrative voice, and something to say that goes beyond ‘kill the villain’. The God Eaters is one of those books. Like most of the stories that rip my heart out of my chest, I don’t think it will be for everyone: This novel has too much romance for the typical Fantasy fan, and it trades the tropey goodness Romance enthusiasts crave for a more serious examination of trauma, colonialism, and survival, and most Western fans don’t want to read about two dudes kissing. For me, those elements add up to lightning in a bottle.

Will it be my book of the year? I hope not, only because I would love to read other books that hypnotize me like this one does. It’s definitely a frontrunner though

The Premise:
In a religious theocracy, a pair of remarkable men end up as cellmates in a prison for the magically talented. Kieran is a bandit fighting back against the country who killed his people, forced him into sexual slavery, and addicted him to opium. Ash and his Aunt published rebellious propaganda. The bandit can kill those he hates with a thought, and the writer has a minor empathic gift he uses to avoid trouble. Their journey involves ancient gods, prison breaks, treks across vast deserts, and a lot of agonizingly slow negotiation of their feelings towards each other. They mostly just want to live their lives free from the shadow of religious tyranny. However, the White Watch is relentless and the god who rules them even more so.

Read If You Like: Fantasy Westerns, introspection, anti-colonialist Fantasy from decades ago, awe-inspiring storms, thematically rigorous Romance

Avoid If You Dislike: yearning and pining, underexplained magic, tonal shifts in the third act, ‘he could never like me’

Comparable Media: Heart of Stone, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, The Fall of Kings

Drowned Country – Atmospheric and Moody

Reading sequels is something that I used to do all the time, but has really fallen off the more and more I read. Ironically, aiming for 200 books this year has made me more aware of all the things I’ll never have time to read, which makes picking up a sequel a pretty big deal for me. Even knowing this about myself, it was a surprise when I realized I hadn’t ever finished the Greenhollow Duology. They’re short novellas, and while Silver in the Wood wasn’t perfect, I also loved my time with it. Drowned Country is a straightforward improvement in my mind, though it didn’t address some of my core problems I encountered with Silver.

You can read my review of Silver in the Wood here.

The Premise:
Several years after Silver adopted the mantle of the wood and Tobias departed, he is summoned by his mother to help find a missing girl. What should have been a straightforward Vampire Hunt shifts as the trio realizes that the girl in question won’t take no for an answer when it comes to mixing with unnatural forces. Through this, Silver confronts his immediate and distant past, and his present moment with Tobias.

Read If Looking For: dark folklore vibes, faeries that feel truly evil, introspection, meddling mothers

Avoid If Looking For: believable romantic connections, dynamic plots, firm answers on how everything works

Nine-Tenths – Exploring the Complexity of Draconic Love

This book was a pressure cooker, and I’m so happy I read it. I’m slowly realizing that the romances that I love are the ones that take things seriously, instead of going on autopilot. Whimsical and campy romance is great, but I don’t typically have very much interesting to say about them, whereas this might be my longest review of 2026. There was so much that delighted me here, that pushed me to rethink what romance books could accomplish. It also fell into some really basic pitfalls that annoy me, and the ending was sloppy. I think its absolutely worth a look for anyone interested in a serious take on interspecies romance, but if solving systemic issues with a single conversation annoys you, be on guard.

The Premise:
Colin is a barista who is listlessly wandering through life and depression. One of the only perks is the hot and slightly creepy guy who has watched him while drinking coffee for the last two years – Colin has reciprocated those looks. When it turns out that Dav is actually a dragon, the coffee roaster gets melted with dragonife, and Dav volunteers to help out after paying for a new roaster to be shipped in, their romance kicks into high gear. However, relationships to dragons mean something very different than to humans, and that means the duo has a lot to work through.

Read If Looking For: protagonists to have tough conversations and return to them, a peek into draconic psychology, defeating the brain weasels, badass Lesbian aunts

Avoid If you Dislike: miscommunication, unscientific evolutionary biology, easy endings, coffeeshop romances, stuffy British formalities

Comparable Media: Dawn, Looking for Group, Heart of Stone

Call And Response – An Anthology of Duets

Call and Response is a fairly new anthology of short stories by Christopher Caldwell built around a delightful premise: what if each story comes in a pair? In Call, Caldwell introduces characters and worlds, only to return to them in Response. Sometimes these appearances are small cameos, other times they are directs sequels. Call and Response is unapologetically black and queer, with several stories sneaking semi-autobiographical details into the fantastic. This collection won’t satisfy those seeking the tight research of Ted Chiang or the experimental forms of Isabel Kim. However, Caldwell’s stories are candid, intense, and thoughtful. I’d love to see what he can do with a full novel.

Read If Looking For: stories of black resilience and rebellion, diverse representations of queerness, aquatic motifs

Avoid If Looking For: experiments in form or structure, answers to broken systems, unambiguous endings

Comparable Media: Convergence Problems, The Fox Roads, Ivy Angelica Bay

This Kingdom will Not Kill Me – Romantasy done Right

Earlier this year I read The Inheritance by Ilona Andrews and quickly swore to read more of her work. Her other new release is This Kingdom WIll Not Kill Me, which has been getting more mainstream buzz, likely because it is Andrews first book put out by one of the major publishers (I think it’s their first … this duo has written a lot of books). I had some reservations about this book at first, but I really like how Andrews straddles classic fantasy storytelling conventions with a heavier romance focus. This novel felt a lot like Romantasy written for fantasy fans, whereas much of the Romantasy market seems targeted at Romance fans. As someone who loves both styles of writing (and also Romance and Fantasy when isolated from each other), this felt fresh compared to a lot of what’s coming out right now.

The Premise
In classic Isekai fashion, Maggie wakes up to find herself stranded in the world of her favorite novels. Rellas is a cutthroat world about to be put into the hands of a brutal tyrant.Without knowing how long she’s going to be stuck here, she’d like to avoid that fate from coming to pass. She leverages her encyclopedic knowledge of this world and its major characters to pass herself as an information broker, getting herself involved with assassins, swordmasters, and aristocrats. Oh, it also turns out she can’t die, though that doesn’t prevent her from experience pain when people stab her.

Read If Looking For: a balance of romance and political intrigue, quick pacing, competent protagonists, indulgent use of tropes

Avoid If Looking For: instalove, protagonists who gain massive power, books that primarily live in ‘show’ instead of ‘tell’

Comparable Media: Inkheart, Rook and Rose

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr – Vignettes on Death

This book has been sitting on my desk as a potential whole-class read for high school level comics classes. It’s award-nominated and generally has a phenomenal reputation. At 128 pages, this story is absolutely worth a look if you’re in the mood for something contemplative with some light humor elements. It feels very much like an Autumn book, in that it asks readers to think about their own relationship with death, but it remains pretty accessible throughout. Plus, it’s popular enough that you can likely nab a copy from your local library!

The Premise:
A child destined to discover immortality is born, and with it comes layoffs. Death finds herself without work, trapped in a human body and the pesky mortality that comes with it. This comic covers her many lives (she gets brought back by her companion Life often) as she comes into contact with the child (and later teen, adult, and elderly man) who caused her downfall.

Read If Looking For: a god experiencing mortality, episodic story structures, casual cigarettes, quiet storytelling with vibrant colors

Avoid If Looking For: the political machinations of gods, experimental art, novel and original endings

Comparable Media: Cloud Atlas, Sandman. I’ve also heard that it pairs delightfully with Daytripper and Karmen, both of which I’m intent on reading soon.