Mythic – Marked for Plot

Novella Readathon #20: Lanny

This is the third, and probably final, Literary leaning novella I’m reading for this project. If we’re nitpicking labels, Lanny is probably closest to Magical Realism, but I think it generally defies easy categorization. It took me a while to settle into Porter’s rhythm, but portions of this book had me in a stranglehold. I think it’s a more approachable entry point into Literary writing, only one step beyond The Spear Cuts Through Water. It’s a personal and intimate window into the souls orbiting around a very special young boy named Lanny and the village where he lives.

The Premise:
Lanny is a very special child. In his life are parents Jolie and Rob, an older artist named Pete who bonds with Lanny during art lessons, and the mythical creature Dead Papa Toothwort. Lanny is in tune with the supernatural, able to defy logic and physics. When Lanny disappears, the town blames Pete, who gets cast as a pedophilic gay man. You’ll enter the mind of townsfolk, visitors, and our core cast of humans. Part three sees them seeking out Lanny in the domain of Dead Papa Toothwort, and mostly reverts to the original prose style. Throughout the book, we never experience Lanny’s POV.

Read If Looking For: experimental storytelling techniques, nature and humanity elementally joined, gritty human relationships, joyful human relationships

Avoid If Looking For: good dads, the magic to make sense, pain-free books, standard narration and dialogue

Novella Readathon #15: The Salt Grows Heavy

As I slowly grow into reading horror, I’ve had a complicated relationship with the more grotesque side of the genre. I thought I disliked it, and certainly I need to avert my eyes in any medical show I watch. Body horror authors like Andrew Joseph White capture that visceral repulsion that forces me to skip pages. I thought that The Salt Grows Heavy might be similarly challenging for me. This book features the plucking of eyeballs and the cradling of intestines in one’s hands, yet it was palatable even for me. Khaw married this body horror to a dark fairy tale atmosphere; the result so enchanting that I couldn’t look away.

The Premise:
The mermaid has given birth to her children, and they have feasted upon the land. The country which stole her from the water lays in ruins, a corpse to rot in the sun. Now she travels with the plague doctor, seeking a new country and a new home. They come upon a commune of children and their saints, the strange trio who pursue surgical immortality. The mermaid and the plague doctor’s shifting relationship is confronted by the plague doctor’s past, and the mermaid must decide what is important to her, versus what is simply meat to be consumed.

Read If Looking For: bespoke body horror, the tentative love of monsters, uncommon word choices, inhabiting the mind of a creature of the deeps

Avoid If Looking For: windowpane prose, genre romance, Disney mermaids, fast pacing

Japanese Gothic – Time Travel Behind the Sword Ferns

I knew very quickly that this was a new release I wanted to carve out time for. As much as I don’t love derivative naming conventions, I loved Mexican Gothic and had high hopes for Japanese Gothic. Ironically, they are very different types of Gothic fiction, and I don’t think this book references the style of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s at all. Considering this one is getting a good amount of buzz, I think you can expect to see more [Country] Gothic titles in the future. It’s a shame, because I think Japanese Gothic stands on its own two feet as a really delightful horror story, even if not every element worked for me.

The Premise:
Lee is a college student who fled to Japan after murdering his roommate. His father lives in an old Samurai house with a rotating cast of short-term Japanese girlfriends. Meanwhile, Sen is the son of a disgraced Samurai in the late 1800s, and she desperately wants to live the path of the warrior and live up to her father’s hopes. The world has moved past Samurai, however, and she knows her father’s living breath is a testament to his cowardice, which he takes out on Sen. These two protagonists discover that they can communicate through time. Lee hopes that Sen – obviously a ghost – can give him insight into how he can find the mother who was kidnapped when he was a child. Sen hopes to find details of her family’s fate, for she would do anything to protect them.

Read If You Like: paranormal time travel, historical settings, turtle myths, a creeping sense of unmooring from reality, psychological horror

Avoid If You Dislike: abusive families, unreliable narrators, dead animals, descriptions that feel claustrophobic

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

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

The Red Winter -A Bloody Debut

Are werewolves going to be a theme of 2026 for me? This is the second book in as many months that did some really interesting things with werewolves in historical France (read this for more straightforward and readable style, or try The Wolf and His King for a more bespoke experience). My partner and I are watching the Twilight films for some fun date night mockery. I really want to read The Devourers by Indra Das soon. Werewolves just seem to be everywhere in my life right now.

If you’re interested in a werewolf story that focuses on hunting one down and killing it, this is your jam. No werewolves were kissed in the reading of this book, and they spend most of their time ripping the hearts out of any living thing they can find. I actually think that a good comparison point for this story is The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, but darker and geared towards adults. The Red Winter is one of the most competently-written debut novels I’ve picked up recently, and I’m excited to read more by Sullivan in the future.

The Premise:
Sebastian was granted immortality when he bonded with Sarmondel, his demonic Guest. This book him reminiscing about his time in France in the 1700s. One storyline follows him joining a large hunt for a monstrous beast ravaging the countryside, falling in love with the young lord Antoine along the way. Another is set 20 years later as he is summoned by Antoine’s son to kill the beast that returned to ravage the countryside. The final storyline is told by Livia, Sebastian’s succubus slave, as she investigates the supernatural oddity that is Joan of Arc. At the center of all three storylines is the Warfather, Ares, Mars, whom Sebastian’s Guest hopes to feast upon.

Read If Looking For: brisk narration, a trail of bloody bodies, snarky footnotes, religious zealotry

Avoid If Looking For: deep characterization, romantasy, impactful female characters

Comparable Media: The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obafulon, These Burning Stars

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 Wolf and His King – Dripping with Intentionality

This book was a match made in heaven for me. Queer yearning? Check. Unconventional and bespoke prose? Check. Thematic depth without being preachy? Check. The Wolf and His King I’ve read in a long time. I didn’t love how they tackled writing the ending, but The Wolf and His King is a book I will be happily shoving into the hands of my friends.

As a note, those looking for a traditional Romantasy story will be disappointed. There are absolutely romantic elements to the tale, but you won’t find the story focusing on Bisclavret and the King’s developing relationship. The book is more interested in each of their personal journeys, despite their mutual affection for each other. Like other books that are sort-of-technically Romances that don’t read like most books in the genre, The Wolf and His King is best viewed as a book that happens to include some romance elements, which I think will help temper some misplaced expectations based on how the book has been pitched.

The Premise
Bisclavret lives in a self-imposed exile. He turns into a wolf against his will, and fears that venturing to court will put himself and others in danger. When the King dies and the new King returns from his own exile though, Bisclavret has no choice to but venture forth and swear fealty to the King. The King, meanwhile, is awash with self-doubt and a search for meaning about what type of King he’d like to be. He is taken immediately with Bisclavret, and the two form a close bond while each struggles to find a good path forward with their life. And the Wolf? The Wolf is always present, waiting to come out.

Read If Looking For: dreamlike prose, characters exploring their own self-doubt, a marriage of theme and structure

Avoid If Looking For: critical examinations of monarchies, fleshed out female characters, leads who are proactive

Comparable Media: Song of Achilles, This is How You Lose the Time War, Spear (by Nicola Griffith)

Drome – A Modern Ode to Mythic Hero Stories

Drome is probably the platonic ideal of comics for me. It was adrenaline injected directly into my brain. I couldn’t stop thinking about it when I tried opening up my current novel. I had meant to spread this read out over five days – the book is split into five sections. Instead I finished it in a single day that was also filled with book club, yard work, and a friend’s Irish folk music concert. While Drome doesn’t quite top the emotional resonance of The Magic Fish, it captures so many of the things I love in Fantasy and Comics. It honors mythology without being a pale imitation, it leverages simplicity for power, and it uses its visual medium as an asset to be leveraged. Drome is on a lot of ‘Best of 2025’ lists in the comic world, and it’s clear why.

For those of you who don’t read many comics, I cannot stress enough that Drome is absolutely worth checking your public library for. Unlike many of my favorite comics, this one doesn’t have the same density, making it a very low time commitment for those who don’t spend much time with comics.

The Premise:
Drome bills itself as a creation myth, but I don’t think that’s accurate. It begins with the creation of life, but it quickly shifts focus. Instead, Drome feels much more like stories of Achilles, Gilgamesh, or Beowulf. It follows a demigod created by Day to bring control to a violent world. This warrior is herself rather violent, but does her best to shepherd humanity into a prosperous future. As with many of the best hero myths, her story isn’t always a happy one, but it’s one of the few modern stories that evokes the feeling of old mythology without retelling original myths.

Read If: you love reading about mythological heroes, enjoy visual experimentation, want a grand story that can be read in a single sitting

Avoid If: simple and predictable plots annoy you, you need a simple happy ending, lack of dialogue will hinder your enjoyment of a comic

Comparable Media: Tongues, The Spear Cuts Through Water, Hyperion

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