Good Prose – Page 2 – Marked for Plot

Works of Vermin – When Bugs Go to the Opera

I have been dying to read this book for ages. Eldritch bugs + magic perfume + creepy operas = one hell of an idea for a book, and every review I’ve seen has said it lives up to its premise. I got lost wandering the streets of Hiron Ennes’ imagination. It is a decadent new entry in the New Weird genre, and it feels extremely apt for a world that sees the potential for the first human being to become a trillionaire. This book is a masterpiece, and I really wish I hadn’t read it near the end of the school year as my brain is struggling to remember which hallway the copy room is in.

The Premise:
Guy is a vermin exterminator in the undercity, struggling to support himself and his younger sister. Aster is the chief perfumer for the violent Grand Marshal, who wears the skulls of those who would kill him as helmets. An insect with a taste for fine art has begun feeding in the city, and political unrest has begun to stir.

Read If Looking For: violent revolutions, weird worldbuilding, the dangers of capitalism, so many operas, big ass bugs

Avoid If Looking For: windowpane prose, clear explanations of how things work, dramatic fight scenes

Comparable Media: Perdido Street Station, Ambergreis, The Divine Cities

The Spear Cuts Through Water – Epic Fantasy told Three Ways

Words are not enough to describe how nervous I was to suggest my in-person book club read The Spear Cuts Through Water. Was it everything I remembered, or are my memories clouded by the pink haze of nostalgia? Would my friends like it as much as I did? Was the brutality and violence of the book excessive? Would I still think about this as my favorite book of all time? That’s a lot of pressure to put on a book, and expectations are the mother of all disappointment.

Thankfully, it absolutely stood up to the book of my memories. I think I liked it more this time around, and I certainly noticed things that I had missed in my first readthrough. The jury is still out on whether or not my friends will love it like I do. My only regrets are starting this book a little too close to our book club meeting – it’s tomorrow! – which coincided with a bout of brain frog that left Jimenez’s gorgeous pose a bit more difficult than I was equipped to handle after a long day of work. However, I consider it the best book I’ve ever read, and it represents the direction that I wish epic fantasy would start to explore.

The Premise:
In the inverted theater, the child of Moon and Water performs for you a story of your people’s history. You’d heard this story before. It is the one your Lola told you and that you told your brothers in turn. It follows Keema and Jun, one an outcast with one arm and the other a monster of a man searching for a path towards redemption. They escort the Moon in her desperate bid to escape the empire freeing her from 8 generations of servitude and the people from 8 generations of tyranny. This is a tender story of the journey of two boys, a chronicle of the death of an empire, an exploration of guilt and shame and violence, and it is a story about how our past ripples into our future.

Read If Looking For: a simple story transformed by its format, an ode to the oral history of Fantasy, standalone epic fantasy, a very wise tortoise

Avoid If Looking For: straightforward storytelling, books free from graphic violence or sexual assault, rapid pacing

Comparable Media: Spear (by Nicola Griffith), Hyperion, Princess Mononoke

The Fall of Kings – Political Intrigue in Medieval Academia

I finally got around to reading the third – and final – novel in the Riverside series. While it is a sequel, they can really be read in any order or can stand alone just fine. In this entry, we trade swordplay for academic debate. Other than the shift from sword to pen however, the structural DNA of The Fall of Kings fits with its predecessors. Expect gorgeous prose, political intrigue, problematic queer leads, and lots of guys cheating on their wives.

The Premise:
Theron Campion is the heir to House Tremontaine, but he’s more interested in his various affairs than learning anything of politics. His newest infatuation is Basil St. Cloud, a Doctor of Ancient History who is angling for the Horn Chair and a significant pay bump. As the two kick off an affair, Basil begins to grow more and more infatuated with the idea that the ancient Wizards actually were magic, and that the Kings had a magical connection with the land. Theron, funnily enough, is a descendent of both the ancient Kings and the Duke who slew the last one. Their romance, politics (family, academy, city council), and emotions get swept up as part of the newest chapter of a very, very old story.

Read If Looking For: the cluttered posturing of university professors, morally and emotionally dubious characters, slow pacing, the importance of idle gossip

Avoid If Looking For: fleshed out female characters, the swordfights of earlier Riverside books, a book where you understand how the magic works

Comparable Media: Greenwode, The Goblin Emperor, Downton Abbey

The Memory of the Ogisi – A Haunting Conclusion to the Forever Desert

I’ve been chewing on the Forever Desert Trilogy since 2023. Books that are interested in the art of storytelling are candy for me, and this trilogy takes a different approach than most. I actually use the first book in the Speculative Fiction course I teach to high schoolers. This series benefits from gaps between each book in the series: the way Utomi plays with history in this trilogy works best when your memory of the past book is a little bit fuzzy. I liked the first two books in this series a lot, but this book is by far my favorite of the three. It’s pretty bleak, and probably not for everyone, but it really worked for me.

For reviews of the first two books in this series, see The Lies of the Ajungo and The Truth of the Aleke

The Premise
In this iteration of the Forever Desert, a minor historian departs from The City of a Thousand Stories in search of the famed Tomb of Osi. His journey brings him into contact with historians from other cities in search of other cities. What he finds causes him to rethink his society’s role in the world, and what he brings back sparks the change that will bring The Forever Desert into its next generation of oppression, control, and violence.

Read if: you’re looking for a blend of folkloric storytelling and epic fantasy, you’re interested in darkly thematic explorations of truth, power, and history

Avoid if: you dislike books that lack hope,you want worldbuilding to feel consistent and explainable

Comparable Titles: 1984, A Conspiracy of Truths, The Giver Quartet

Asunder – An Episodic Eldritch Fantasy

I think I’ve taken Asunder off my TBR about three times as I try to keep it at manageable levels. Invariably, I see a review that piques my interest enough for it to go back onto the pile. If I’m honest, the cover art put me off. It’s unfair, I know (don’t judge a book by its cover and all that), but Asunder’s cover is as beautiful as it is misleading. When I opened the pages, I assumed I’d be walking into a well-written romance with a teenage year old lead. Instead I walked through the dreams of dead gods as a 29 year old woman scrabbles to retain her personhood in the face of uncaring worlds. It will make you feel small and wonder and disgust and hopeless. If you’re willing to give it the space to breathe, it will take your breath away.

Elevator Pitch:
Karys is a Deathspeaker. In exchange for the ability to peer through the Veneer to see magic and talk to the recently deceased, she has sold her soul to an eldritch abomination with three faces and a body made of wings. During a job that’s gone horribly wrong, she stumbles across Ferain, an ambassador from her country’s former occupiers, who was attacked while returning home. To save his life and make a massive amount of money, she anchors his soul to her shadow. Getting him out proves to be much more difficult than getting him in, however, and the Saints of the eldritch gods she serves have taken an interest in this man. Her journey forces her into contact with a variety of haunted landscapes, uncaring gods, and ruthless criminals.

Read if: you like eldritch beings who bend reality to their will, episodic horror/fantasy hybrids, you want to feel the weight of selling your soul

Avoid if: you want a quick moving plot or dynamic action scenes, agreeable protagonists, straightforward romantasy

Comparable Media: The City of Stairs, Spirited Away, Wizard of the Pigeons

The Devils

I shouldn’t have been surprised at how controversial Joe Abercrombie’s new release would be in parts of the fantasy fandom. The Devils is a departure from Abercrombie’s reputation as a character-focused writer interested in deconstructing classic fantasy tropes, and a popular author straying from their niche invariably invites criticism. At its core, this is a misfit adventure novel with a collection of villain archetypes as major players in an ensemble class. I thought the book was fun, a great audiobook to listen to at the gym, but probably not one that’s going to get recommended by me unless it’s a unique fit to someone’s requests. Had a great time with it though.

The Premise
Brother Diaz is a monk who thought he was destined for greatness when he was granted an audience with the Pope. Instead, he’s put in charge of a ratag group of prisoners to escort the long-lost princess of the Empire to take her throne. He’s got to wrangle a suave vampire, a bloodthirsty werewolf, an elf assassin, an egotistical necromancer, an immortal paladin, and a normal woman who has worked any job you could possibly imagine for at least a few weeks. Together, they must beat the odds – mostly just dead Empress’ four sons, all of whom want the princess dead – and complete their holy quest despite none of them wanting to be there (other than the paladin).

Read if Looking For: villain of the chapter, big personalities, extended fight scenes

Avoid if Looking For: a carbon copy of First Law, historical accuracy, a book impossible to call ‘safe’

Hungerstone

Queerness and vampirism go hand in hand throughout literature. While I’m not well versed in the classics, The Book Eaters and Heart of Stone both showcased how vampire stories can be gripping in both romantic and horror spheres. Hungerstone is essentially a take on Carmilla (which I haven’t read), with a special focus on the main character’s relationship with her own agency. I think fans of gothic horror will love it, and is a good option as a starter to the genre if you like stories with a more internal focus (whereas something like Mexican Gothic or A Botanical Daughter would be better starting points for more plot focused stories). However, its much less vampire-forward than I would have expected.

The Premise
Lenore is trapped in a listless life and a loveless marriage. An orphaned noble with no money to her name, she married Henry (a corrupt steel magnate) to find a life of security. Now she finds herself without any clear anchors in her life, struggling to figure out how she can salvage some happiness. As they move to the countryside, they pick up Carmilla on the road, a mysterious stranger who seems in desperate need of care. As Carmilla starts to open up Lenore’s eyes to just how dire her situation is, Lenore finds he growing attraction to their new guests matched only by the horror rising in her as she comes to terms with the reality of her life.

Read if You Like: melancholy, living in a character’s head, depictions of abusive relationships and the effects of patriarchal structures

Avoid if Looking For: plot focused stories, lead characters who drive the story, a heavy focus on classic elements of vampire stories

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Sometimes, incredible books fall in your lap for no seeming reason (and by no seeming reason, I really mean Audible’s algorithim has learned that I like books about gay men). It’s certainly not my normal fare: I don’t read a ton of magical realism, and even less that pushes more on the literary end of things than the genre fiction side of that subgenre. Yet I’m so incredibly thankful I indulged the whim to dive into this book. It isn’t perfect, and likely won’t crack my favorite reads of the year, but it’s going to stick with me for a long time.

The Premise:
Maali is dead, stuck in a queue to find his way to the next life. He doesn’t know how he died, but he knows that he has unfinished business in the land of the living. He’s a war photographer in 1990 Sri Lanka, a gambler who loses more money than he makes, and a slut who has trouble remaining monogamous to the boyfriend he really does dearly love. He learns he has seven days before he is stuck forever in the in-between, and promptly sets off to try and get his partner and best friend to find his photographs, which have the power to topple a government.

Read if You Like: Magical Realism, ghosts, critiques of colonialism, dry humor

Avoid if You Dislike: tight plotting, morally upright characters, books lacking answers hard questions they bring attention to

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.

The Premise:
Odile lives in a small, unnamed town surrounded by villages, mountains, and a lake. The only thing distinguishing it from any part of rural France is that it is neighbored by it’s own past and future. Travel and visitation is highly regulated by the Conseils, who approve requests to visit only from family members who have lost a loved one, or who know their impending death will mean they miss important milestone’s in their family’s life, and even then visits are anonymous and highly monitored to avoid changing the timeline. Odile applies to apprentice as a Conseil, mostly at the request of her overbearing mother, even though she isn’t sure what she wants to do with her life. Normally quiet and tepid, she begins to open up to some other teens, right when she identifies a visitor from another valley, which shifts her trajectory in life forever.

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.

The Premise:
This story centers on Hans, or Hansel from Hansel and Gretel. The story mostly takes place after the events of the original fairy tale however, and follows him through several decades into his adult life. Featuring prominently in his journey are a girl and her brothers (cursed to be swans), Snow White’s evil Queen, and a loyal dog. This book is focuses on Hans’ journey to see if a happy ending is possible. The story is told in second person, with the ‘narrator’ being a sort-of explicit character who interacts with the story as Hans experiments with different possible paths through the situations he faces.

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