NonHuman Lead – Page 4 – Marked for Plot

Fables: Volumes 1-3

After trying to hype How to Survive This Fairytale everywhere I could, I got recommended the Fables comics as another take on a dark fairy-tale mashup story. Sort of like if the TV show Once Upon a Time had been produced by HBO instead of Disney, which I think is a pretty good comparison point. This review covers the first three volumes ( Legends in Exile, Animal Farm, and Storybook Love). I’ll definitely be reading more of this, but I didn’t love it so much that I’m putting the rest of my backlog on hold to keep pursuing it.

Read if Looking For: fairy tales with blood, gore, and sex; morally dubious characters, traditional American Comic Book Art with modern storytelling sensibilities

Avoid if Looking For: thematic depth, emotional art styles, niche or non-European fairy tale references (so far)

Perdido Street Station

This is a book that’s been sitting on my ‘priority read’ bookshelf for about three years now. New Weird is a genre I’d been interested in, and Miéville’s reputation as an author who is concerned with his books as political objects pushing against the autoritarian status quo of fantasy really appeals to me. However, I’m finding that extremely large books put me off more than they used to, and I kept pushing it off until I was in the right mood. I left the book with mixed feelings. In some parts I felt in awe of what Miéville was accomplishing, and elsewhere I was disappointed in the choices he made to the point where I considered stepping away for a week or two. I have the feeling that I’ll be thinking about this book for a while, as it seems the type of story to sit with you.

The Premise
New Crobuzon is a dirty, grimy city. It’s filled with trash, corruption, and enough police brutality to make Vladmir Putin proud. It’s also home to humans, cactus-people, women with scarabs for heads, avian humanoids, literal demons, hands that can posess people, a whole caste with intensive plastic surgery forcibly grafting on mechanic or animal parts onto their bodies, among other things. This story mostly follows a dating couple: Isaac (a scientist) and Lin (an artist). Isaac gets recruited by a bird man without wings to get him to fly again, and Lin is recruited by a crime boss to create a masterpiece sculpture. Events spiral out of control, bizarrely leading to eldritch abominations let loose across the sprawling metropolis.

Read if You Like: unhinged worldbuilding, examinations of power and culture, eldritch horrors, characters without happy endings, books to chew on

Avoid if Looking For: fast paced stories, consistent female characterization, happy and mindless books

Mister B. Gone

I’ve known the name of Clive Barker for a while now. Hellraiser is influential enough that even someone who absolutely despises horror movies knows its basic imagery. He’s an author lauded as a pioneering queer writer and an author I had no intention of touching with a 10 foot pole. Mister B. Gone was recommended to me by a friend who swore it was their favorite book of all time though, and so I took the plunge into this dark comedy. It wasn’t a perfect book, but the writing was engrossing enough that I’m curious to try some of his books that are more widely lauded.

The Premise:
Jakabob Botch is a demon. A rather incompetent and pathetic demon really, who can’t even work magic properly. And he’s trapped inside a book, the book you’re reading incidentally. Throughout his recounting of his life’s story on Earth, he besseeches you to burn the book in your hands, to end his pitiful existence trapped in ink and paper. But fine, why not, he’ll tell you a little bit more, but only if you promise that you really will destroy the book by the end of it all.

Read if You Like: Fourth-wall breaking, morally bankrupt (but likeable) protagonists, humorous asides, demons and angels

Avoid if You Dislike: books without a strong A-Plot, engrossing climaxes, straightforwardly gay characters

Toward Eternity

It’s been a while since I read a book whose back cover so poorly represents what is in the book itself. Anton Hur was done dirty by his publisher on this one, because the premise for the book is much more interesting than what’s shared. I expected a story about how society is adapting to technology that turns people immortal, with a focus on a patient/researcher and his poetry AI bot. While all that is indeed there, this story is actually a millennia spanning reflection on what it means to be a person, a unique individual, and how choices can echo across time. It has at least seven different POV characters who almost never repeat past a single chapter. A much more ambitious novel than it appears; it reminded me a lot of The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez, which is about as high of praise as I can possibly give.

The Premise:
Okay, let’s try to do a better job than the publishers. This book starts in a near-future world where emerging research shows nanomachines can turn you immortal and cure pretty much any ailment. Dr. Beeko runs this lab with Yonghun (who has undergone the research) and who has disappeared mysteriously. One of the only witnesses is Panit, Yonghun’s AI poetry-analysis machine who has been collecting dust for years. From this setup, we start exploring these events from these character’s points of view, then shifting to other patient’s experiences with nanotherapy, before jumping forward in time to explore a new version of the world where we see how these nanobots have shifted the world again … and again … and again. To give some sense of scope, the book is split into five sections: near future, future, distant future, very distant future, and eternity, and the choices of the original cast filter down into later storylines, they aren’t lead characters continuously throughout the novel.

Read if Looking For: books spanning millennia, philosophical musings, epistolary novels

Avoid if Looking For: straightforward stories, single POVs, everything explained in the end

Heart of Stone

Vampire love stories are a dime a dozen. And while vampires can capture my attention, it’s pretty rare. I was part of the Twilight generation, and have gone full circle from ‘binge read all four’ to ‘these suck’ to ‘actually for YA they’re fine, and the first movie is delightful with a glass of wine’. Some other stories that lean more into the horror or gothic history of vampires, such as The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean, left me extremely impressed. Heart of Stone, however, is a pretty straightforward vampiric romance, and thus not something I was enthused to pick up. Enough people had praised it, however, that I decided to give it a shot. It was a pleasant surprise, and one of the better fantasy romances I’ve read, if nothing else than because it wasn’t trying to be like every other fantasy romance out there.

The Premise
Henry is a vampire. Every few decades he moves, starting a new life, a new set of hobbies, and bringing some household staff who are ‘in the know’ with him. Theophilus is his new secretary, terse and introverted, frighteningly competent, unwilling to give any indication of his personal ideas and ideals. Both are gay, yearning for connection, and generally unwilling to speak about that part of their lives because London in the mid 1700s isn’t a great place for gay men. The book chronicles the growth of relationship into friends, and then into something more.

Read if you Like: contemplative and slow books, romances without hamfisted setups, extended conversations that exist without the need to push plot forwards

Avoid if you Dislike: characters who refuse to talk about their feelings, magic age gap romances, low spice books

Falconsaga

Falconsaga made it on my reading list as one of the rare books about queer men written by a queer man that I’ve found so far published this year. While I thought the representation did a great job of presenting gay men as humans independent of their romantic and sexual identities, I generally found the book to be on the disappointing side, especially after a few Urban Fantasy books that really blew me away. However, for those looking for something that dives into Icelandic folklore, I think it would be a great fit. I’m also very much in the minority so far based on other reviews, so take my opinions with a grain of salt.

Read if Looking For: prophecies, tragic backstories, sinister family members, Icelandic myth, grounded gay representation

Avoid if Looking For: tightly plotted books, subtle foreshadowing, page-turners, critical takes on magical age-gap relationships

The Witchstone

Good Omens is a book that casts a very long shadow. Even when books aren’t explicitly setting out to be humorous, it’s tough to avoid comparisons when your lead characters are angels and demons. In this case, we’re only working on the demon half of the equation, but with humor as a core part of the story’s pitch, it immediately had a lot to live up to. Unfortunately, I found The Witchstone to mostly be a disappointment, though I wouldn’t go so far as to call the book a bad one.

The Premise
Laszlo (800) is a demon, a nepo-baby, and about the laziest curse keeper you could possibly imagine. He ignores his job of cultivating misery in his assigned family and instead messes around finding ways to swindle enough money to buy the newest Gucci shoes. Unfortunately, a new manager gives him an ultimatum: shape up within a week, or get turned into primordial ooze. The Drakeford family meanwhile, is cursed to turn into monsters, slowly becoming more and more violent and deformed until they need to be put down by their own children. Maggie (19) and Lump (11) get dragged into Laszlo’s orbit when he arrives on their doorstep, claiming he has the keys to solving their family’s problems.

Read if You’re Looking For: plucky humans, sassy demons, some casual tentacle horror

Avoid if You’re Looking For: humor that’s insightful and cutting, tonally consistent books, the next Good Omens

By a Silver Thread

The Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off has brought me some real gems (Orconomics in particular I loved) and also some real duds (I did not like Murder at Spindle Manor). But I do love self-published works, and so when the slate of finalists came out, I decided to grab the titles that called my name. I won’t be reviewing all of them, though I’d already read Wolf of Withervale which I quite enjoyed, but don’t see winning because of how unabashedly queer it is. Unfortunately, I found By a Silver Thread to be a missed opportunity with interesting ideas and flawed execution.

The Premise
Lola is a changeling, supposed to have died as a child after replacing a human baby. However, a ruthless blood mage has kept her alive, turning her into a servant dependent on his medicine to keep her from dissolving into a monster. Unfortunately, he has gone missing, his home ransacked, and Lola only has enough pills for a few days. The hunt is on to find her master, and she’s willing to work with anyone to guarantee that she stays human(ish).

Read If Looking For: classic urban fantasy elements, fun magic, an interesting take on fey

Avoid if Looking For: tightly plotted stories, fleshed-out characters

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

Speaking generally, I think comparisons to other books does a disservice to individual books. In official publishing industry pitches, this is especially egregious, where every book is _____ meets _____. While Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon absolutely stands on its own merit, it shares a lot of DNA with American Gods, and, considering that many readers are no longer interested in giving Neil Gaiman their money anymore, Shigidi is a phenomenal take on gods and modernity.

The Premise:
Shigidi is a nightmare god. Well, a retired nightmare god who escaped the Spirit Corporation grind and now works freelance to try and gain the prayers and souls needed to sustain him. He and Nnemona, his succubus partner, are offered a final job to clear their debts away and open an opportunity for a life in their homeland. But it means breaking into the London Museum through their tight security. This book drifts between years, exploring the current and past dilemmas facing Shigidi and Nnemona, culminating with their final caper.

Read if Looking For: modern interpretations of myth, three dimensional characters, bisexuals everywhere

Avoid if Looking For: tightly focused ‘heist’ books, fast pacing

Light From Uncommon Stars

Sometimes you run into books that are really difficult to pitch. Light From Uncommon Stars sounds like a comedy book. Aliens running a donut shop certainly doesn’t sound like a book that takes itself particularly seriously. But this story made me cry, made me furious, and made me feel more deeply than I expected when opening the cover. This book is an emotional roller coaster, and a journey that isn’t happy, but is filling.

The Premise:
A young trans girl flees and abusive family with her violin. The ‘Queen of Hell’ seeks to find a seventh student and convince them to sell their soul to a demon for musical immortality. An alien on the run from the End Plague runs a donut shop. Their stories – and others – connect and intertwine in a tale of what it means to be human (or alien) and what it means to live a life worth living.

Read If Looking For: character-led stories, phenomenal music recommendations, genre bending novels, romance subplots

Avoid if Looking For: stories avoiding queer trauma, classic fantasy or science fiction plot beats