Page Turner – Page 2 – Marked for Plot

The Inheritance – My New Addiction

How have I never read an Ilona Andrews book before? Why have I delayed long on picking up one of their books? Where can I find more? These are the questions running through my head as I type this. It is 11:00 pm on a Sunday night. Tomorrow morning my dog will wake me up at 5:30 for a morning walk before I try and get a quick gym workout in, followed by the daily onslaught of questions that comes with teaching 11 year olds. My bedtime was an hour and a half ago, and I probably won’t fall asleep until midnight.

The Inheritance touched something inside me. Not anything particularly deep or meaningful. No, this book touched the ‘holy shit that was so much fun’ part of my brain, which is a part of my reading life that’s been a bit neglected recently. I want more, and I want it now. The rest of the series has not yet been published, which is a grave injustice for which I have no remedy.

The Premise
Ada is an Assessor. When portals to hostile alien worlds began to open up and humans got magic powers, corporations discovered a lot of money could be made from alien ecologies. The government employs Ada to use her magic powers to identify useful materials in the Breaches and keep the guilds from underpaying taxes on what they collect. When a mission goes wrong and she gets stuck alone in a Breach with nobody but Bear the Dog, she knows survival will be nearly impossible. Thankfully, something super special happens that gives her a fighting chance, and possibly the single most important human being alive. Meanwhile, Elias (the guildmaster for the recent mining expedition) is gathering a team of experts to try and close the Breach as he realizes that the survivors might not be totally honest about everything that happened leading up to the catastrophe.

Read If: you want popcorn fantasy with a middle-aged mother in focus, badass German Shepherds sounds appealing,

Avoid If: overly tragic backstories piss you off, you want characters to slowly grow in power and skill, you’ve got a phobia of bugs and spiders

Comparable Media: Solo Levelling, Mage Errant, Dungeon Crawler Carl

Drome – A Modern Ode to Mythic Hero Stories

Drome is probably the platonic ideal of comics for me. It was adrenaline injected directly into my brain. I couldn’t stop thinking about it when I tried opening up my current novel. I had meant to spread this read out over five days – the book is split into five sections. Instead I finished it in a single day that was also filled with book club, yard work, and a friend’s Irish folk music concert. While Drome doesn’t quite top the emotional resonance of The Magic Fish, it captures so many of the things I love in Fantasy and Comics. It honors mythology without being a pale imitation, it leverages simplicity for power, and it uses its visual medium as an asset to be leveraged. Drome is on a lot of ‘Best of 2025’ lists in the comic world, and it’s clear why.

For those of you who don’t read many comics, I cannot stress enough that Drome is absolutely worth checking your public library for. Unlike many of my favorite comics, this one doesn’t have the same density, making it a very low time commitment for those who don’t spend much time with comics.

The Premise:
Drome bills itself as a creation myth, but I don’t think that’s accurate. It begins with the creation of life, but it quickly shifts focus. Instead, Drome feels much more like stories of Achilles, Gilgamesh, or Beowulf. It follows a demigod created by Day to bring control to a violent world. This warrior is herself rather violent, but does her best to shepherd humanity into a prosperous future. As with many of the best hero myths, her story isn’t always a happy one, but it’s one of the few modern stories that evokes the feeling of old mythology without retelling original myths.

Read If: you love reading about mythological heroes, enjoy visual experimentation, want a grand story that can be read in a single sitting

Avoid If: simple and predictable plots annoy you, you need a simple happy ending, lack of dialogue will hinder your enjoyment of a comic

Comparable Media: Tongues, The Spear Cuts Through Water, Hyperion

Beyond Redemption – Addictive and Epic Grimdark

Historically, Grimdark hasn’t really been my speed. Plenty of books I’ve enjoyed, but the hopelessness and gore kept me from picking up the sequels. Beyond Redemption has convinced me that, as with my Horror journey – I might not dislike Grimdark as much as I thought. Certainly it’s reminded me that I need to read more by Fletcher, because I adored The Storm Beneath the World. Beyond Redemption is quick moving, intense, and dark without going too far. The mix won’t be right for everyone, but it worked for me.

The Premise:
Belief defines reality, which makes the delusional very dangerous indeed. This book follows two main groups within this world: a theocratic ruler with manipulation powers trying to build himself a god, and a trio of criminals who (eventually) get it into their head to kidnap the little boy being groomed to become god. You’ve got gruff veteran soldiers with more scarred skin than smooth, a man turning himself into the greatest swordsman in the world, scientists who try to bring about delusionists with torture, doppelganger trying to take the place of their creator, and a pyromaniac who can light a city ablaze with a thought.

Read If You: like an innovative premise executed to its fullest potential, don’t mind a little backstabbing or cannibalism, enjoy dry humor that doesn’t overdo itself

Avoid If You: want heroics, characters who have their shit together, positive representation of … pretty much anything.

Comparable Media: The Storm Beneath the World, First Law, Angels Before Man

An Inheritance of Magic – Featherweight and Enjoyable Urban Fantasy

An Inheritance of Magic has been buzzing around my circles as one of the better Urban Fantasy series to come out in the past few years. This isn’t a subgenre I spend a ton of time with, but I’ve found that widely loved series tend to be reliably enjoyable for me (other than Dresden Files), and An Inheritance of Magic certainly lived up to that premise. It’s not perfect, clearly wants to prepare you for a long series, and seems to be a solid and readable ‘zero to hero’ story.

The Premise:
Stephen is an aspiring mage who wants nothing more than to make enough to pay rent and to start hunting down his father who vanished mysteriously a few years ago. When a strange woman claiming to be a distant relative of the mom who walked out on Stephen when he was a baby, his life is set to change. The assholes of that family see him as nothing more than a pawn, and the cost of growing in magic is exorbitant. Still, it gives Stephen the clues he needs to finally start making progress in his own craft and the connections needed to begin looking for his father. Before any of that though, he needs to make sure that the capitalist chokehold the rich have on magic doesn’t crush his dreams before they can even begin.

Read if: you enjoy reading about plucky underdogs making it work, are in favor of Orca whales crashing billionaire Yachts off the coast of Spain, are looking for something tropey and simple

Avoid if: comedically evil villains put you off, you dislike explanations of magic, religious logic problems put you off

Comparable Media: Tarot Sequence, Arcane Ascension, Witch Hat Atelier

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.

The Premise:
In a city where being touched by the unnatural wilds marks you for death, young Wynd hides his ears at all costs. However, Pipetown is simmering with tension, and few realize how close the continent is to open warfare. Wynd ends up fleeing with a reluctant prince, a cute gardener, and his adoptive sister, and his adventures put him in contact with several human factions, a bug-faerie culture in the midst of its own political revolution, and a very militaristic society of vampires.

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

The Strength of the Few – An Addictive & Hollow Sequel

The Will of the Many was a bit like fast food. I was unable to put it down, burning through the book in little more than a day. I loved every second of it. Afterwards, I began to notice that the story wasn’t as filling as I thought while reading. I knew I wanted to read the sequel, but I entered with reservations. The Strength of the Few was almost exactly what I thought it would be: fun when little thought was applied, but very difficult to ignore some glaring issues that kept rearing their heads. Will I buy the final installment when it comes out? As with the Pokemon games, my answer is always no. As with Pokemon, I’ll probably break that answer as soon as the book releases and end up disappointed.

While this review doesn’t focus on specific plot points, it will spoil the nature of the twist revealed in the Epilogue of Book 1. This information is also located on the back cover of the book, but I figured I should give a heads up.

The Premise
After going through the gate, Vis is cloned to exist in three worlds. Res (the one we already know), Obiteum (a desert world with not a lot of people, but a lot of necromancy), and Luceum (northern European coded with plenty of druids). He is Synchronous, one of the two to exist in all three worlds at once. He is one of two people who can use the magic of all three realms. And the other? He’s the immortal in charge of the end of the world, and Vis must stop him.

Read if: You want to see Vis keep being awesome in three worlds instead of just one, expansive scope is important to you, there’s even more noble women falling in love with Vis

Avoid if: You were hoping for a political plotline of Vis working from the inside, exploring his moral qualms with Will is important to you

Comparable Titles: Red Rising, The Name of the Wind, Ironbound, Mistborn

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.

The Premise:
A planet was terraformed, meant to be home to monkeys infested with an evolutionary super-virus to help them prepare a civilization for humans to inherit. Things went wrong, and invertebrates ended up with the virus instead. We follow two societies across thousands of years: the spiders who raise from a simple hunter/gatherer society into spacefaring astronauts, and a spaceship carrying what may be the last of humanity, seeking one of the homeworlds. They will only briefly interact in this book, as their storylines largely remain separate but for a few discrete moments in time.

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

Striker V: Elements of Change

This was meant to be a book I read when I was on the treadmill, taking a break from curriculum writing, or when I couldn’t fall asleep. The type of story it didn’t matter much if I drifted in and out of. I was reading it on my cell phone, not even a damned e-reader. Striker V gripped me in the early chapters and didn’t let me go for a good long while. This novel examines Superheroes from a more person-first perspective than the standard, caring just as much about how humans would react to the constant violence of superhero activity as the fights themselves. It didn’t quite stick the landing, and I have some issues with the resolution of the story. However, it did things I haven’t seen much in superhero stories, and those bits felt just as interesting as The Watchmen.

Elevator Pitch:
Striker is the fifth superhero with his name. He’s got seven years until retirement and two years until he reaches his heroic lineage’s average age of death (none have survived to retire). He’s got big muscles, a massive healing factor, and some touch-based mind syncing. He’s been worn down by the constant pain of his existence, the fear that no matter what he does his bones will be ground to dust over and over while the public excitedly waits for him to fall from a skyscraper one more time so that Subway will give away free promotional sandwiches. The shifts have been longer recently with increased villain activity, and the book opens with him in a desperate battle against his best friend in the world, who has just now gone rogue.

Read if Looking For: mental health struggles, governmental bureaucracy (and sometimes humor), dystopian superheroes, happy endings

Avoid if Looking For: nuanced climaxes to nuanced conflicts, creative superhero powers, villains that make sense, tonal consistency

Ironbound

Progression Fantasy isn’t a genre I’ve spent that much time with recently. However, as I’ve been clearing out my Kindle Unlimited cache, it popped up and I said ‘fuck it, let’s take a risk on another Roman-coded setting.’ Will of the Many was fun. Not mind blowing, but fun. And I think that’s where I fall with Ironbound. The Holy Roman Empire may consume the minds of straight men, but 700 pages of it was more than enough for me to feel exhausted by the end.

The Premise
Castor has worked all of his (admittedly rather short) life trying to earn the Empire’s favor to gain magic. Few earn the privilege, for the metal granting these powers is a rare resource. The story begins when his school goes through their final tests, determining which students will become elite members of their society. Unfortunately, things go to pieces when a wolf-headed monster attacks the ceremony, and Castor takes the blame. HIs family dead, his life forever changed, Castor vows revenge against the Empire who wronged him.

Read if Looking For: an overpowered morally upstanding hero who has been utterly wronged, lots of fight scenes, Roman settings without any of the queerness from actual Rome

Avoid if Looking for: thematic depth, creative use of powers, female characters (even side ones)

The Power Fantasy

When I explored the idea of using comics in an Ethics class I’m putting together for high schoolers, The Power Fantasy was one of the most-recommended titles. It’s easy to see why, as the whole series is one big thought experiment on whether people with extreme superpowers can exist ethically (notice I said exist, not behave). It’s also got a clear thematic lineage with Watchmen, taking the superhero deconstruction presented by Moore in directions that feel much more 2025. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s quite straightforward enough for me to want to use as a whole-class read with high schoolers, it’s great for anyone looking for something to chew on.

Elevator Pitch:
In this version of earth, Atomics (people with superpowers) began appearing in the 1940s with a woman gave birth to a literal angel. While most Atomics have minor powers, there are six Superpowers currently alive; the book defines a Superpower as “an individual with the destructive capacity of the nuclear arsenal of a major world power.” These six characters form the core of the main cast. There’s a psychic and moral philosopher, the idealistic angel reminiscent of Superman, a gravity manipulator who hosts a floating commune, a girl who transforms into a kaiju when angry, a woman with deep connections to Hell, and a man whose technology borders on magic. They don’t all get along, and each has their own idea about what a good and just world looks like.

Read if Looking For: ensemble cast of morally dubious supers, cigars that defy gravity, non-sequential storytelling

Avoid if Looking For: authors who hold your hand, heroes vs villains storylines, dramatic fight scenes