Favorites – Marked for Plot

Eight Billion Genies

Wish fulfillment (and how it can go horribly wrong) has been a mainstay in storytelling for a long, long time. I, like many of my generation, remember reading and analyzing The Monkey’s Paw in high school English class. In recent years, I haven’t found myself drawn towards stories featuring wishes, as I haven’t seen new ground being broken on a thoroughly explored idea. Eight Billion Genies changed that. Charles Soule and Ryan Browne created something really special with this one, and at 275 comic book pages, it’s a quick read.

Read if Looking for: ensemble casts, stories spanning centuries, mischievous (but not evil) genies, whimsical art

Avoid if Looking for: morality lessons, stringent wish fulfillment adherence, innovative villains, genies with any relevance to their mythological origins

Looking for Group

November through January has historically been a heavy romance season for me, and Looking for Group definitely jumpstarted that process. It was a bit of an impulse buy. Alexis Hall has been hit or miss for me, but the nerdy vibes of a video-game focused romance caught my eye. Also, the cover art is gorgeous (though inaccurate to the point of infuriating me. The whole schtick is that the love interest hates high elves and only plays dark elves … so why is a high elf on the cover? Also the humans are above the wrong characters). ANYWAYS. This book won me over by successfully executing romance plotlines with realistic characters and pacing, which I really enjoyed. If anyone else has good recs for other down-to-earth romances, I’m all ears!

Read if Looking For: nerdy characters, realistic conflict resolutions and relationship development, bisexual awakening storylines

Avoid if you Dislike: video game chat dialogue, extensive descriptions of MMORPG gameplay, meet-cute, physically tame romances

Several People are Typing

Put simply, this book is a shot of adrenaline. I want to give a big shout out to u/diazeugma for recommending one of my new favorites during the r/fantasy pride month event in June. It took me a while to pull the trigger on this workplace comedy/horror book about a man stuck in the Slack chat of his workplace, a PR firm. When I did, I consumed the book in around 4 hours. At 250 pages, this reads a lot more like a novella because of how sparse the pages are. It’s not a book without flaws, but this book contains a level of joy few authors are able to capture.

Read if You Like: The Office meets Twilight Zone, comedy from the absurd, the distillation of existential dread, captivating characters, train wrecks in slow motion

Avoid if You Dislike: not getting physical descriptions of characters, mysteries that never get explained, strong romance plotlines

The Other Valley

Literary Fantasy/Science Fiction isn’t something I read a ton of, but after this year I’m starting to think I should be reading more of it. The Other Valley wasn’t on my radar at all until it starting coming up repeatedly by reviewers I trust as one of the top books of 2024. As someone who read a lot of books published last year, this book is going to be my go-to example for how there are more phenomenal books coming out every year than you will ever be able to read. This is a frustrating and humbling thought, and one I’m slowly beginning to accept. It’s also the type of book that gave me a small existential crisis on whether I was doing anything meaningful with my life, which I’m still in the process of working through.

Read if you Like: stoic protagonists pushed to their limits, snapshots of emotional intensity, books that feel like indie-films

Avoid if You Dislike: Time travel that makes very little sense when you pick it apart, fast-paced novels

How to Survive this Fairytale

I’m a sucker for Fairy Tale mashups. I grew up loving Into the Woods, I binged Once Upon a Time in college. Retellings are wonderful too, but there’s something special about taking the idea of storytelling, throwing a bunch in a blender, and seeing what new comes out of it. How to Survive This Fairytale made me laugh, made me cry, and made me cry some more. I’m usually not a super emotional person, but this book got to me in a really profound way. Hallow has a fantastic debut novel, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next. This is definitely on my shortlist for book of the year.

Read if You Enjoy: Fairy tale mashups, characters processing trauma, romance subplots, aggressively paced books

Avoid if you Dislike: 2nd person narration, tidy endings, protagonists not always being the center of the story, books without fight scenes

Red Dot

Sometimes, a single determined soul can hype a book so much that you reluctantly put it on your TBR. Usually, I end up never reading these books if they don’t keep popping up in various places. My reading list will already take 4 years to get through if I don’t add anything to it or read any sequels. In Red Dot’s case, the cover didn’t do it any favors. It isn’t particularly enticing (though in hindsight, I actually think it captures the book perfectly). For some reason, this was the month that Red Dot came off the bookshelf, and I found myself lost in the life of an artist with severe imposter syndrome. This is definitely a contender for my favorite book of the year so far, and I will proudly be the 24th person to rate this book on goodreads. It’s a hidden gem that I would love to see gain some new readers; it sucked me in and didn’t let go.

Read if Looking For: character-driven sci fi, utopian-adjacent climate change futures, accurate gay sex scenes

Avoid if Looking For: action focused stories, believable romance arcs, pessimistic views of the future

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

The Darkness Outside Us

I intended for this book to be a light, fluffy read. Picked up in an airport bookshop as something to occupy me as I headed out to a summer teaching gig in Boston, I thought I was going to read a cute (and possibly spicy) romance set in a spaceship. I did not expect the emotional rollercoaster of stress, excitement, and sheer existential dread this book would pull out of me. It’s stood the test of time and is just as good on a reread as that first experience.

Read If Looking For: space thrillers, emotional romantic connections, looming dread

Avoid if Looking For: straightforward romances, thorough worldbuilding

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.

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

Hyperion

Hyperion is one of those classic fantasy stories that’s genre defining, and often makes ‘must read’ lists. I have a rather thorny relationship with lots of these books. I find Lord of the Rings frustrating and Dune rather boring. I tend to gravitate towards lesser read early works, such as those by George MAcDonald. Hyperion though, is a classic that really captured my imagination and ran with it.

Read If Looking For: gorgeous prose, deeply fleshed out characters, classical references

Avoid if Looking For: books without men writing women problems, books with a singular driving plot