NonHuman Lead – Marked for Plot

Remarkably Bright Creatures – I Get the Hype … I Don’t Share It

This book was pretty far out of my wheelhouse, but it’s relentlessly good press plus my desire to stretch outside my comfort zone – this is so close to being realistic fiction in entirety – got me to pick it up. Octopuses are awesome, so what’s not to love? I left the book pretty torn: I understand why it worked for so many people, and I think if I were a bigger fan of realistic fiction I’d have enjoyed it. As it is, this was a slog to finish, despite really enjoying some significant chunks of the book.

Read If Looking For: heartfelt family stories, lovable old ladies, an octopus smarter than the humans who are stumbling through the plot

Avoid If Looking For: xenofiction to be the focal point, characters to communicate with each other

Comparable Media: A Man called Ove, Shadow Life

Monkey Meat – An Anticapitalist Fever Dream

I knew nothing about Monkey Meat other than its title and cover art. I didn’t quite know what to make of a hand crushing a Spam-esque can with a monkey on the front, but I knew I was interested in reading more. Monkey Meat: the First Batch is a zany and dark anthology that I fell in love with. It’s not the most original critique of capitalism I’ve seen, but it’s certainly one of the most engaging. I truly believe that if companies could get God to sign over the rights to people’s souls, they would absolutely do so. My only regret is that it doesn’t seem likely to get a sequel, but I will certainly be chasing down more of Juni Ba’s work in the future.

Read If Looking For: unbridled creativity, unconventional art styles, episodic structures

Avoid If Looking For: consistent worldbuilding, subtlety and nuance, grounded characters

Comparable Media: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Invader Zim, Rick and Morty

Interview With The Vampire – A Turning Point in Vampire Stories

Interview with The Vampire has been on my read list for a while. Actually, I’ve been interested in exploring the history of vampires a bit more deeply once I realized that the three original vampire novels (The Vampyre, Carmilla, and Dracula) are all super queer. Interview with the Vampire represented a shift in how modern vampires were written. Rice placed them at the center of the tale instead of as an antagonist to be vanquished. As with its predecessors, it’s also super queer-coded. I think I came into the novel with incorrect assumptions about what this book would be, which led to this being a more disappointing read than I was hoping for. In the end I enjoyed it, but I wish discussion about the book was more accurate to the reading experience.

Read If Looking For: musings on the nature of immortality, immoral protagonists, interesting monologues

Avoid If Looking For: two gay-coded dads raising their vampiric daughter together, main characters who didn’t own slaves, traditional plot structures

An Inexplicable Act of Doom – Percy Jackson, but Make it Gay

I grew up loving Greek Mythology and imagining that half the characters in the books I read were actually gay. I would have loved An Inexplicable Act of Doom, and wish more books like this had been published when I was a kid. While written with kids in mind, I think adults looking for a more low-key reading experience will enjoy it a lot as well. Plus who doesn’t love a sweet romance between a god of your inevitable and unexpected doom with a guy who’s supposed to perish horribly while flying through the air on mechanical wings?

Read if Looking For: harmless bickering, Greek Gods as narcissistic assholes, cozy adventures, witch Aunties who give great advice

Avoid if Looking For: typo-free books, positive depictions of Theseus, nuanced or complex themes & characters

Disclosure: I was asked to be an ARC reader for this book in exchange for an honest review, though I think this was closer to a final Beta-Read than a true ARC. I did also request that Cavehill would donate a single copy of the physical book to my classroom library for my students to read. I think they’ll quite enjoy it.

Unexpected Stories – Octavia Butler’s Posthumous Publication

Octavia Butler is, rightfully, a legend and institution in the speculative fiction world. I’ve taught her books in high school classes, enjoyed them on my own, and have found that she is one of the best writers at engaging in the uncomfortable messiness of the human experience. Unexpected Stories is a novella and a short story published posthumously. Both stories are part of the Patternist series, but stand on their own without context – I haven’t read the main series yet. It’s worth noting that Butler wanted both stories published while she was alive – one story was sold to be published in an anthology which fell through, and the other never got picked up by a publisher despite Butler shopping it around – so neither story is being published against Butler’s wishes.

At 81 pages, it was easy to devote time to these two stories from one of the genre’s masters. I enjoyed the first and felt rather unimpressed with the second, making this far and away my least favorite of Butler’s writing. That this volume is still worth recommending is an indication of just how much of a gift Butler has been to Speculative Fiction.

Read If: you like reading Butler’s work, are interested in exploring alien social dynamics, enjoy short stories with themes of justice and power

Avoid If: you’re looking for Butler’s deeper explorations of ethics and morality, look for friction between narrative and protagonist

The Cloak and It’s Wizard

After reading The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, I knew that I wanted something a bit less intense and heavy for my next read. The Cloak and its Wizard seemed just zany enough to satisfy. This met my needs for a fun and mindless breather book, though I found that I was ready for the story to wrap up about 100 pages before the book itself did. Ultimately, if the idea of a snarky magic item telling the story appeals to you, this is likely at least worth a look.

Read if: you enjoy harmless chaos, you want something lighthearted and pulpy, like adults with functional lives outside of The Plot

Avoid if: you’re looking for something deep and meaningful, you’ll get annoyed with the phrase ‘my wizard’, you like twists to help move the story forward

Comparable Media: Dr. Strange, Striker V, Dad Magic

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

As I continue exploring whether or not horror is the genre for me, Stephen Graham Jones has flitted in and out of my orbit. I had mixed feelings about Mapping the Interior, but Buffalo Hunter Hunter not only had glowing reviews, but also has one of my favorite covers of all time. There’s a lot to love here, but I found myself wishing it were a lot shorter than its actual length. Mixed feelings overall, but Stephen Graham Jones is definitely an author I want to read more of, because the parts of this book that worked really worked.

Read if: you like epistolary horror and framing narratives, enjoy framing narratives and/or epistolary formats, don’t care if the dog dies

Avoid if: you prefer books that get to the point right away, want traditional vampire representation, have an aversion to graphic depictions of violence – including historical events

Comparable Works: The Route of Ice and Salt, The Black Hunger, The Woods all Black

Wynd – A Casual and Delightful Middle Grade Adventure

I picked up the first book in this series as I collected books for a class on Queer Comics and Cartoons. It didn’t end up making the cut as a whole-class read, but it quickly found its way into my classroom library and has become quite popular. While the series isn’t quite finished – final book is releasing this year! – I figured finishing book 4 was enough to write a review about the series more generally. It won’t tickle the fancy of anyone looking for serious or deeply thematic fare, but it’s fun and quick and a truly delightful kids book that I think many adults would enjoy as a casual read.

Read if: you love classic fantasy tropes, comics with vibrant illustrations are your style, faeries-as-bugs sounds fun

Avoid if: simplistic morality will bug you, you dislike chosen ones & prophecies, fantasy racism isn’t a worldbuilding trope that works for you

Comparable Media: Fablehaven, Septimus Heap, Cece Rios, Amulet

Children of Time

I meant to read this book ages ago, but my dad (who never reads) picked it up off my bookshelf while visiting and took it back to Kansas. I finally resigned myself to not getting it back and grabbed another from a used bookstore. I’ve only read one other book from Tchaikovsky, and this confirmed that I like his books a lot, but they’re probably only for when I’m in the mood for something on the more breezy/readable end of things.

Read if Looking For: so many spiders, batshit crazy worldbuilding, spaceship politics

Avoid if Looking For: inhuman narration, stories focusing on first contact, messy thematic work

Tongues

It has taken me much longer to write this review than is normal. It’s tough to figure out how to talk about this book, or why I enjoyed it so much. I found this to be a bit like trying to point out a bird in the forest. The problem lay not with getting a friend to find the bird on the tree, but rather trying to get them looking at the right tree in the first place. Too zoomed in on specifics and a review loses any sense of cohesion, but too zoomed out and you have nothing interesting to say. There’s a lot to say about Tongues. Even when I end up disliking the choices an author makes in stories like this, I appreciate the gradual blurring of lines between Literary Fiction and Genre Fantasy. Thankfully though, I ended up liking Tongues a lot.

Read if Looking For:
– something weird
-something disturbing
– something baroque

Avoid if Looking For:
– something quick
-something sweet
– something simple