Mythic – Page 5 – Marked for Plot

The Traitor Baru Cormorant

Sometimes a book comes along that utterly redefines how you view books, reading, or genres. The Traitor Baru Cormorant was like that for me, a book that shook me to my core, and forced me to realize just how powerful Queer Fantasy could be. It remains one of my all time favorites. It isn’t for everyone though, and has a pretty clear style that is different from how most fantasy nowadays is written.

The Premise:
Baru is a genius. A savant at math and numbers, she’s been trained since a young age by the Empire to be of use. She’s also grown up seeing her beloved island home colonized by the soldiers of the Empire: trade, coin, and plumbing. She also happens to be Lesbian, a crime that forces her to repress her desires and live a life of shame. And she wants to rip the Empire to pieces. But to do that, she must first gain power in the Empire. And so she accepts a job to run the Economy of one of the Empire’s many colonies – not her own of course – and suppress their own rebellion so she may grow her own.

Read If Looking For: a book that will rip your heart out, economist lead character, anti-colonial stories

Avoid if Looking For: queer characters living happy lives, quick and/or breezy reads, twists that are complete surprises

The Bone Swans of Amandale

Fairy Tale stories have been all the rage for the past few years. In fact, now that 2025 has hit, I’m starting to grow weary of the deluge of fairy tale and mythology retellings. There are plenty of great ones out there of course, but I’ve just seen so many that they get lost in the shuffle. The Bone Swans of Amandale isn’t a retelling, though it does reference a few fairy tales, but instead is a story that evokes the dark fairy tale style in a way I haven’t seen any other book do.

The Premise:
This dark fairy tale adjacent story is told by Maurice, a rat-folk who can shift between rat and human. He’s got an unrequited love for a swan-folk lass named Dora Rose who can’t stand him, and whose sister (and whole extended family really) has been killed by the mayor of the nearby town, a descendent of ogres and giants who uses magic to keep the town spellbound. To help his childhood crush, he ropes in the Pied Piper and a few kids who’d gotten on the mayor’s bad side, and lets hell loose in the process.

Read If Looking For: charismatic and immoral lead characters, dark aesthetics, unique narrative voice, exquisite prose

Avoid if Looking For: straightforward thematic messages, ‘good’ characters

As a note, you can read Bone Swans from the collection Bone Swans: Stories, or you can read it for free here.

The Bone Ships

I came to the Bone Ships as part of r/Fantasy’s bingo project, looking for an interesting book for the ‘Weird Ecology’ square in 2023. This book came with a lot of accolades and, while I didn’t find all of it to my taste, it was good enough for me to read the sequels, which quickly cemented the series as some of my all time favorites.

The Premise:
Joron used to be the captain of a prison ship. A bad captain to be sure, but a captain nevertheless. That changes when Lucky Meas, a legend of the navy, takes his position without a word about why she’s on a prison ship in the first place. She starts whipping the crew into shape for a mission of epic proportions, with Joron trailing resentfully behind. Things are about to change, as the first dragon for many years has been spotted, and its bones will surely promise a naval advantage to whichever country can kill it.

Read If Looking For: dark and gritty stories, secondary worlds that don’t evoke real world cultures, books on ships

Avoid if Looking For: an upbeat read where everything goes well for the main character

The Spear Cuts Through Water

I have long been chasing classic epic fantasy stories featuring gay characters, and have been disappointed over and over again. I love romances (and read many of them) but finding stories focused on gay men where romance plot structures don’t dominate is horribly difficult. I put of reading The Spear Cuts Through Water for a long time, out of fear it would not live up to my hopes for it. When I read it, I discovered the best book I’ve ever read.

The Premise:
Jun is a guard. Keema is an outcast. They find themselves on a journey that will shape the fate of worlds as they help a dying god escape from the Empire that has enslaved it, and the Three Terrors who keep the land under the Empire’s control. But it’s also the story of a child hearing the story of Jun and Keema from their grandma. And it’s also the story of a person in the theater of dreams and ocean watching this story performed. These three narratives weave together seamlessly throughout the book, passing the story back and forth often, sometimes within the same sentence.

Read If Looking For: ambitious books, mythic style writing, heartrending and terrifying characters

Avoid if Looking For: a straightforward story