Mental Health – Page 4 – Marked for Plot

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.

The Premise:
Mardy is an artist in a vaguely utopian future. Humanity banded together to help heal from the climate crisis, universal basic income is standard, and people eagerly volunteer their time for the good of the earth. Mardy’s main medium is machine tooling: manipulating metal and animatronics that are both functional and artistic. However, he’s constantly beaten by his rival Smith, and he’s wondering if he really has a future in art. Cue a chance meeting with Smith’s mysterious twin brother Wes, and slowly pieces start to slot into place for his next big step. Layered on top of all this is the single snag in the idyllic (if overheated) world: artificial intelligence is essential to the survival of the earth. Naming them, acknowledging their personhood, or encouraging independent decision making is a crime, out of fear they will abandon their duties keeping the world from tottering into destruction. Mardy disagrees and hopes his art is subversive enough to start making people rethink their beliefs.

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

A Strange & Stubborn Endurance (Tithenai Chronicles #1)

A recent friend of mine works at a local romance-focused bookstore. When I asked about great gay romantasy books, this was one of the first titles to come to her mind. And while I don’t think this touches on some of my all time favorites, there’s a lot of good things happening in A Strange and Stubborn Endurance that you don’t find in many other romance/fantasy hybrids. I’m curious to see what the sequel brings to the table, as it felt fairly resolved in book 1, but I’m definitely going to read it.

The Premise
Velasin is an unimportant child of a minor(ish) noble, and never expected to play any sort of significant role in his country’s politics. However, when he ends up engaged to a noblewoman from a neighboring country in an attempt to broker peace, he doesn’t know what to do. Homosexuality is taboo in his country, so he can’t even protest his father. When the ambassador who arrives to collect him sees Velasin being raped by his ex-partner, she mistakenly assumes a consensual act, and shifts Velasin’s betrothal to a nobleman: Caethari, the athletic scion of a noble house with little interest in ruling. However, their betrothal, marriage, and falling in love (in that order) is marred by a serious of brutal attacks that seek to either kill one of them, or to wreck the marriage (and the new alliance) before it can ever start.

Read if Looking For: Romantasy, traditional romance tropes and plotlines, serious considerations of sexual assault, wholesome leads

Avoid if Looking For: lots of magic, political intrigue, characters that aren’t pure good/evil

Three Meant to Be (Branches of Past and Future #1)

Magic school stories are a dime a dozen, and I do love stories of meddling kids and incompetent teachers. However, when Three Meant to Be was pitched to me as a Magic school story from the perspective of a teacher (and a gay teacher no less) it was an easy add to my tbr. I don’t think it totally scratched that itch in particular, but it was a damned fun book to read, and I’m excited for the direction it seems to be headed.

As an aside, happy teacher appreciation week to anyone working in schools! The work we do is important, essential, and tough. Keep on trucking.

The Premise:
Dorian is a high school teacher. Specifically, he teaches aspiring witches how to use their magic safely and effectively. He’s a telepath with a rocky ex-boyfriend with current benefits situation with the most famous enchanter in Chicago, a pair of absolutely adorable cats, and a lot of bottled up grief. When he sees a vision of one of his new students being brutally murdered however, he swears to do whatever it will take to save his charge.

Read If You’re Looking For: a twist on classic magic school stories, quick pacing, grumpy leads who smoke too many cigarettes, loveable casts

Avoid if Looking For: deeply realistic portrayals of teacher life, nonhuman characters, epic and dramatic twists

Silver in the Wood (Greenhollow Duology #1)

Silver in the Wood has been sitting on my bookshelf for a long time. Too long, to be honest. It has a sterling (and I think, well earned) reputation as an excellent novella featuring a gay lead, can be read in 1-2 sittings, and has immaculate vibes. It’s not a perfect book, but it was incredibly satisfying for the length of time I spent with it. Also, some of the best cover art I’ve seen in a good long while.

Elevator Pitch
Tobias is a woodsman. Or rather, he is a man of the woods, and has been for 400 years. He’s got some magic, but not as much as his Dryad friends, and mostly just tries to keep things quiet. Silver has purchased the woods and a bit more, and quickly sets to asking Tobias (and everyone else) far too many questions about local history. He particularly enjoys spending time with Tobias, but the weight of history presses down on Tobias, keeping him from accepting Silver’s overtures. In Greenhollow though, summer is dangerous, especially for pretty young men who are new to town.

Read if You’re Looking For: stories invoking folklore, redemption, bossy mothers, romantic subplots

Avoid if You’re Looking For: flirting with chemistry, tightly plotted books, satisfying explanations

Swordspoint (Riverside #1)

In terms of queer Fantasy, Swordspoint is one of those titles that gets thrown out a lot in terms of early representation. It’s also a seminal work in the Fantasy of Manners genre, and has a sequel following different characters decades later which I adored (you absolutely can read Privilege of the Sword first, though I anticipate most readers would prefer to start here). In the end I had more reservations about Swordspoint than Privilege, but I’m happy I read it and think there’s a lot to love here.

The Premise
Richard and Alex live in Riverside, a den of thieves and vice. Alex’s past is a mystery, but the former university student has a particular talent for cutting comments. Richard is a duelist, the best in town at the moment, hired by nobles to settle disputes and defend honor. They end up dragged into the plots of nobility, each of whom has an agenda of their own to try and gather as much possible without caring much who gets hurt.

Read If Looking For: dining room intrigue scenes, strict codes of honor, queer rep from the 80s,

Avoid if Looking For: lead characters with agency, conversations where the subtext is explained, romance plot structures

The Tomb of Dragons (Cemetaries of Amalo #3)

The ghost of a dead dragon; a tragic backstabbing in an opera; a man finally beginning to summon the will to move past condemning his own love to death. The Tomb of Dragons finishes the trilogy that Witness for the Dead started. In the end, I thought this was the weakest entry of the series, but it was well worth the read, and Addison continues to stand out as an author who staunchly refuses to adhere to modern conventions of how fantasy books ‘should’ read.

The Premise:
Book 2 of this series ended with Thara’s magic destroyed after a traumatic incident. It picks up with a death in an opera house, the disappearance of a noble in danger of fomenting rebellion, and a completely dysfunctional cemetery that Thara has been set by the Archprelate to get back on track. As with the other books in this series, it floats between plotlines smoothly, but the central one concerns a graveyard of dragons, and a ghost that seeks justice for its death hundreds of years ago.

Read If Looking For: slice of life following a death priest with depression, comically evil corporations, gay leads in non-romance books

Avoid if Looking For: books without cross-series references, mysteries, fast pacing

The City that Would Eat the World

2025 has not been my best year of reading (yet). There’s been quite a few disappointments, a decent number of ‘good, but not great’ books, and one or two that will stay with me. I’m happy to say that I finally found something addictive in The City that Would Eat the World. It was a raucously fun adventure in an alien world that is both utterly unlike our own, while mirroring it deeply.

The Premise
The City of Wall is … a bunch of interconnected walls. A lot of them. They currently cover about a third of Ishevos, with the age-extending god Cambrias driving its relentless expansion. Thea is a mimic exterminator who hosts a flagstone-counting god inside her soul, and Aven is a traveling adventurer visiting Wall looking for the next great thrill. They end up meeting after a god-killing artifact falls into Thea’s lap, and drawing a lot of attention that Thea very much doesn’t want, and Aven very much does. The resulting events will take them across the vast city, bring them into contact with heroes and monsters, and challenge their beliefs about the goodness of Wall (for Thea) or whether toppling it is even possible (for Aven).

Read if Looking For: easy reading, weird megastructures, batshit crazy plans, anticapitalist themes

Avoid if Looking For: themes you have to dig for, gritty and dark books, romantic subplots

A Fractured Infinity

If I had to pick a single book from last year that I fell in love with, it would be Welcome to Forever, by Nathan Tavares. It was ambitious, unabashedly queer, and wasn’t afraid to have characters make toxic (but realistic) decisions. A Fractured Infinity is Tavares’ only other published long form work (though I highly recommend his short story Missed Calls if you want to spend some time crying into the night). I saved this book specifically for my first read of r/Fantasy’s 2025 bingo challenge, and it was a great start. This book didn’t place Tavares as my all-time favorite author, but he has made the ‘must read’ list.

The Premise
Hayes is an indie documentary filmmaker who is grappling with the suicide of his only real friend, when he gets summoned to a secretive research facility. Yusuf is the assistant director of that facility, in charge of research into a device that can tell the future, and the past, and comes from another universe where alternate versions of Hayes and Yusuf are married. This book follows Hayes’s growing entanglement in the research project, his actions when everything goes sideways, and balancing the value of Yusuf’s life against the fate of billions of others.

Read if You’re Looking For: captivating and unlikable protagonists, blunt depictions of queerness, android drag queens

Avoid if you’re Looking For: grounded Sci Fi, traditional romance tropes

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.

Carl has arrived at Faction Wars, ready to kill a few thousand offworlders, win a bunch of money for Donut’s fan club, and try to figure out how to keep both Katia and Donut alive.

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.

Monk and Robot

Utopias are oftentimes criticized for being boring, and impossible to tell interesting stories in. Monk and Robot, a pair of books (Psalm for the Wild Built and Prayer for the Crown Shy) by Becky Chambers defied the saying entirely. I found myself quickly drawn into the world of Panga, enjoying my time with a cup of chai – fitting for a pair of books featuring a tea monk as a lead character.

Elevator Pitch:
Humanity has sworn to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. After machines came alive, humans committed to more sustainable living, building communities focused on supporting people’s needs, and generally living up to what we all have been trying to achieve for our lives. Nobody wants for food, or shelter, or access to any sort of necessities. And yet Dex finds themselves unsatisfied with life, drained from the work they choose to take on (and which they enjoy). And so they take their wagon into the wilds, where they meet Mosscap, a robot on a quest to ensure humans are doing okay. Together they will explore the wilds (in Psalm for the Wild Built) and society (in Prayer for the Crown Shy) and reflect on themselves and their place in this world.

Read if Looking For: low stakes stories, philosophic pondering, quirky robots

Avoid if Looking For: high octane stories, books with violence or external conflict