Fantasy – Page 8 – Marked for Plot

This Inevitable Ruin (Dungeon Crawler Carl #7)

Dungeon Crawler Carl has quickly risen to one of my favorite series of all time. It’s brutally fast paced, irreverent, and has a delightful blend of horror, humor, and melodrama that I adore. This review is for Book 7, which focuses on the much-awaited Faction Wars. Be warned, spoilers ahead for anything in books 1-6.

Honestly if you’ve reached Book 7 of Dungeon Crawler Carl, you don’t need me to tell you whether or not you’ll like the series. If you’ve got no idea what this is, look at my review for book 1 linked above.

By a Silver Thread

The Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off has brought me some real gems (Orconomics in particular I loved) and also some real duds (I did not like Murder at Spindle Manor). But I do love self-published works, and so when the slate of finalists came out, I decided to grab the titles that called my name. I won’t be reviewing all of them, though I’d already read Wolf of Withervale which I quite enjoyed, but don’t see winning because of how unabashedly queer it is. Unfortunately, I found By a Silver Thread to be a missed opportunity with interesting ideas and flawed execution.

Read If Looking For: classic urban fantasy elements, fun magic, an interesting take on fey

Avoid if Looking For: tightly plotted stories, fleshed-out characters

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

The Bone Swans Collection

The Bone Swans of Amandale has been one of my favorite novellas for a while, and I’d been meaning to read the full collection it was included in at some point. I finally got around to it, and while I don’t think any of the stories quite captured the genius of Bone Swans, there were a few other gems in here. Expect dark fairy tale vibes to run through the series of stories as a motif, and generally high writing craft quality.

The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales

Generally speaking I only read two books at a time: one audiobook and one text copy. This book, however, has been sitting on my nightstand for around a month. Filled with 2-4 page stories (and the pages aren’t big) this collection of fairy tales and fables was perfect to read before bedtime, chipping away at it whenever I wanted to read, but didn’t have the brain power to commit to my longer novels.

Read if Looking For: stories that can be read 5 minutes, hopeful and magical vibes

Avoid if Looking For: complex or deeply thematic reads

Her Majesty’s Royal Coven

It’s been nice to see witches getting more love in fantasy over the last five years. Whether or not they delve into historical witchcraft or lean into fantasy cliches, they’re just a fun archetype. Her Majesty’s Royal Coven is a pretty damn good book focusing on what witchcraft in the modern age might look like. Like with a lot of modern fantasy, you’re getting some political commentary woven into the story, and this book does a good job of locking into an exciting plotline and sticking the landing.

Read if Looking For: witches, critiques of TERF ideology, witchy goodness, POVs from many ideological perspectives

Avoid if Looking For: Books with subtle themes, cinematic action

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

Speaking generally, I think comparisons to other books does a disservice to individual books. In official publishing industry pitches, this is especially egregious, where every book is _____ meets _____. While Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon absolutely stands on its own merit, it shares a lot of DNA with American Gods, and, considering that many readers are no longer interested in giving Neil Gaiman their money anymore, Shigidi is a phenomenal take on gods and modernity.

Read if Looking For: modern interpretations of myth, three dimensional characters, bisexuals everywhere

Avoid if Looking For: tightly focused ‘heist’ books, fast pacing

Cemetery Boys

The Paranormal Romance trend of the mid 2010s may have died down, but it never quite went away. Cemetery Boys was a delightful recent addition to the genre, eschewing many of the more stickier parts of the subgenre in favor of something refreshing and heartfelt, instead of being another drop of water in the vast ocean of edgy immortal love interests.

Read if Looking For: sweet romances, light mystery elements, transmasc latinx rep

Avoid if Looking For: surprising twists, action scenes, lots of magic

Light From Uncommon Stars

Sometimes you run into books that are really difficult to pitch. Light From Uncommon Stars sounds like a comedy book. Aliens running a donut shop certainly doesn’t sound like a book that takes itself particularly seriously. But this story made me cry, made me furious, and made me feel more deeply than I expected when opening the cover. This book is an emotional roller coaster, and a journey that isn’t happy, but is filling.

Read If Looking For: character-led stories, phenomenal music recommendations, genre bending novels, romance subplots

Avoid if Looking For: stories avoiding queer trauma, classic fantasy or science fiction plot beats

Sufficiently Advanced Magic

Progression Fantasy is a subgenre that happily draws on video games, anime, and tabletop RPGs as inspiration points. Sufficiently Advanced Magic happily wears its influences on its sleeves. It’s a big magic school story with lots of cool fights, badass moments, without a whole lot mental load required of the reader. And while I think I ultimately prefer Journals of Evander Tailor for my ‘queer kid enchants items in a big magic school’ read, this is a phenomenal option, and definitely the more widely popular one.

Read If Looking For: anime vibes, overly analytical characters, dungeon crawling

Avoid if Looking For: books without filler, mystic magic, healthy parent/child relationships