Novella – Page 3 – Marked for Plot

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 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

American Hippo

Inconsequential history facts can be a ton of fun. Apparently in the 1910s, the US government considered importing hippos as a new source of meat during food shortages. If the cocaine hippos of Columbia (and really any other invasive species) have taught us anything, it likely would have been a horrible idea with lots of downstream consequences. Thankfully, that world didn’t come to be, but it did result in a set of novellas and short stories by Sarah Gailey reimagining this possible history, blended with some Western set dressing, which was a premise too intriguing to pass up. I ended up liking River of Teeth (novella #1) quite a bit, but was mostly disappointed by Taste of Marrow (novella #2).

The Premise:
Houndstooth is a Hop, who raises and wrangles hippos. After his breeding ranch burned to the ground, he turned to a life of crime. Now he’s offered a job by the federal government to clear out feral hippos from the land his former ranch sat on, and which his most hated foe now runs a gambling empire on. Houndstooth’s crew consists of Archie, a fat French conwoman and longtime friend of Houndstooth; Hero, a nonbinary poisoner and demolitionist that Houndstooth quickly falls in love with; Adelia, a bisexual contract killer who is very pregnant; and Carter, Houndstooth’s former ranch hand who now works for his enemy.

Read if Looking for: bloodthirsty hippos, tropey characters, criminal crews totally not breaking the law, a queernormative American history, relaxed reads

Avoid if Looking for: thought-out alternate histories, meaningful Western elements, consistent characterization

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.

The Premise
The captain of the Demeter has been hired to take fifty boxes of dirt to England. The captain spends the trip in a haze, torn between his constant desire for the companionship of men and his responsibilities as captain of the ship. And he dreams. Oh does he dream, and his dreams grow ever darker as strange things begin to take place on the Demeter, shifting what should have been an easy and profitable journey into a thing from nightmares.

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

The Four Profound Weaves

I’d been hearing a lot of buzz about the Birdverse series, and when a book club picked up The Four Profound Weaves for November, it was time for me to take it off the shelf as well. This book hearkens back to magic as mystical, inspects the internal journeys of an elderly trans man’s late transition, and takes us on a jaunt through several different cultures. Ultimately, I was disappointed in this despite liking a lot of individual pieces, and I’m curious to see if RB Lemberg’s short fiction will capture me more than this did.

The Premise
This book follows two main protagonists: the nameless man who struggles with what it means to be a man after transitioning late in life in a culture with rigidly defined gender roles (which map not at all onto our own, including as a reversal) and Uiziya a weaver who never realized her potential, and whom now seeks out her powerful and terrible Aunt to teach her the secrets to the weave of death. The two travel together, learn from each other, and must eventually face The Collector, who seeks to own all that is unique or special.

Read if Looking For: platonic bonding, characters with profound self-doubt, desert landscapes, magic carpets

Avoid if Looking For: novellas with a clear focus, nuanced villains, action scenes, happy queer stories

But Not Too Bold

Novellas have become one of my go-to library checkouts. With my limited budget, dropping $15 on a book that will take me a single evening to consume is a tough choice to make. However, I love the length and format, and I find that authors tend to be much more focused on what makes their work special in novellas. But Not Too Bold is an excellent example of that trend, and it put Cabaret in Flames (Hache Pueyo’s upcoming release) on my radar.

The Premise:
Dália’s promotion to Keeper of the Keys is only a small surprise. Nobody expected her mentor to be eaten, but when you work in a house owned and inhabited by Anatema, a fabulously rich pseudo-eldritch spider creature, you know that getting eaten is one of the hazards of the job. Thankfully, Dália is not a Bride, and thus her risk of being eaten is much lower than those who seek to marry into the wealth of the household. Unfortunately, Dália is quite beautiful, and Anatema cannot resist a beautiful woman. Dália must step carefully, but she finds herself at home with the strange encounters her new position throws at her.

Read if you Like: translated books, fast-paced horror, creepy spider monsters, tidy endings, descriptions of opulent mansions

Avoid if You Dislike: human/monster love stories, depictions of spiders, characters without self-preservation instincts, fairy tale ‘retellings’ far from the source material

Several People are Typing

Put simply, this book is a shot of adrenaline. I want to give a big shout out to u/diazeugma for recommending one of my new favorites during the r/fantasy pride month event in June. It took me a while to pull the trigger on this workplace comedy/horror book about a man stuck in the Slack chat of his workplace, a PR firm. When I did, I consumed the book in around 4 hours. At 250 pages, this reads a lot more like a novella because of how sparse the pages are. It’s not a book without flaws, but this book contains a level of joy few authors are able to capture.

The Premise:
Gerald is an underperforming grunt at a PR form who works for (mostly) horrible clients. His brain gets sucked firm’s Slack chat, unable even to check his emails, and Gerald finds himself with only unbelieving coworkers and an annoying help-bot for company. Be a fly on the wall for secret workplace affairs, existential crises prompted by sunsets, THE HOWLING, and a bidding war for Gerald’s now empty desk.

Read if You Like: The Office meets Twilight Zone, comedy from the absurd, the distillation of existential dread, captivating characters, train wrecks in slow motion

Avoid if You Dislike: not getting physical descriptions of characters, mysteries that never get explained, strong romance plotlines

The Long Past

Ginn Hale has been on my radar for a while. I hear a lot of praise for her Rifter series, and her new book (The Price of a Thousand Blessings) looks really interesting. However, when a wild west + dinosaurs book was pitched during an r/fantasy Pride Month post, I knew I had to give it a shot. I wasn’t blown away, but I see a lot of promise in Hale’s writing, and am interested to read some of her newer stuff.

The Premise:
Grover has done well for himself after the rifts opened up, flooding much of the United States and releasing dinosaurs into the world. He’s made a name (and a living) by taming an ostrich dinosaur mount, hunting and gathering valuable materials from the new wildlands, and generally staying as far away from the town’s racist priest and sheriff as he can. When an airship arrives with a contingent of mages (including the ex-boyfriend he thought was dead to the war) ready to look into mining the valuable materials from the rift, Grover is forced to take sides and reconnect with his beloved Lawrence.

Read if You Like: ranger archetypes, westerns, creepy twins, dinosaurs attacking airships, long-lost-loves

Avoid if Looking For: quick pacing, action-packed stories, deeply realized homophobic historical settings

The Truth of the Aleke

The Lies of the Ajungo captured my attention with how deftly Moses Ose Utomi mixed fable elements into a simple, but tightly written novella with an entrancing setting and eye for exploring power as a motif. The Truth of the Aleke continues that journey, jumping forward several hundred years, abandoning the folktale-esque vibes for something more traditionally ‘epic’ while still maintaining the thematic core of the series.

The Premise:
Several hundred years after the events of The Lies of Ajungo, The Cult of Tutu (the now-dead main character of Lies) has conquered the entire desert. Only the City of Truth stands free, relying on its warrior-seers to protect the city from the onslaught. Osi is a peacekeeper who dreams of bigger and better things, and his impulsivity leads him far closer to the action than he ever thought was possible. He wants to save his city, but Truth is not always as simple as it seems

Read if Looking For: interesting takes on traditional story beats, fallible characters

Avoid if Looking For: deep worldbuilding or complex magic systems

The Butcherer of the Forest

Dark, atmospheric fairy tales are right up my alley, and early reviews of The Butcherer of the Forest made it seem like a good fit for my tastes. This ended up being one part fantasy, one part horror, and one part wandering trip through an hallucination. It won’t be my favorite read of the year, but it was a great time in a small package.

The Premise
Veris is just a normal woman living under The Tyrant’s rule. She raises rabbits, pens letters for those who can’t write, and generally tries to avoid notice. Unfortunately, she’s the only person to ever return from The North Forest with one of the lost children. So when The Tyrant’s own children venture in, she is forced to once more visit her worst nightmares, for if she can’t save the children, her town will burn.

Read If Looking For: dreamy (or nightmarish) prose, fairy tale settings, unknowable beings

Avoid if Looking For: plot driven stories, explanations and justifications for the setting, tidy character arcs