Nautical – Marked for Plot

The Route of Ice and Salt

A Mexican horror novel following a ship captain of a ship transporting vampires, playing off elements of Dracula (which I haven’t read). It’s an excellent translation, and a dip into the more Literary side of horror than I normally go for. This was a good reminder of why I was a bad English major in college, and why genre fiction is my happy place over Literature. However, I’m glad I read this, and I think it’s much better at engaging with vampires’ historic associations with queerness in interesting ways than most other queer vampire books I’ve read.

Read if Looking For: intense focus on internal monologue, dream sequences, horror of the unseen, prose like liquid silk

Avoid if Looking For: direct plot or prose, ethical gays, paranormal romance elements, cute rats, protagonists who don’t sexually harass people, vampires with major speaking roles

Dark Moon Shallow Sea

I’m slowly beginning to think that David Slayton may not be the author for me. My reactions to this book feel very similar to his fairly popular series (by gay fantasy standards at least) White Trash Warlock. I don’t want to say that I don’t have any concrete issues with the book, but the biggest one is that the writing style just didn’t resonate with me. It just ended up being the type of story I likely won’t remember in a month.

Read if Looking For: thief protagonists, dead gods, insta-love triangles, eldritch fire dogs that are absolutely a good boy

Avoid if You Dislike: characters who are part of police forces, twists that feel coherent, breakneck pacing

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.

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

Running Close to the Wind

Alexandra Rowland has been one of my favorite authors ever since I read A Conspiracy of Truths, and their writing has never lead me astray since. Their most popular novel (A Taste of Gold and Iron) is also their weakest in my opinion, but still quite excellent. So this book was an easy pick for me for this card, and it met pretty much every expectation I had for it.

Read if Looking For: Raucously funny pirates, unhinged monologues, seagulls, cake decorating contests, sexual language (but very little actual sex)

Avoid if Looking For: a book that takes itself seriously