Queer – Marked for Plot

Novella Readathon #18: The Iron Below Remembers

Every year there’s a book. A book that blows my mind and makes me want to scream from the rooftops how much I love it. Typically, this book is a little more niche, with choices that keep the story from appealing to the broad audience needed for breakout hits. I’ve championed Welcome to Forever by Nathan Tavares and How to Survive this Fairytale by SM Hallow, and now its time for me to tackle The Iron Below Remembers. This book examines how history gets layered and built, revels in queer sexuality, and uses a superhero framework to focus on the intensely personal. Characterization is consistent and exciting, and our characters aren’t stand-ins for the reader’s hopes and dreams. It’s kind of a perfect mix for me, though there are a few elements that I think will put off the general reader. Certainly it’s a strong contender for book of the year (the only current competition is The God Eaters by Jessee Hajicek). I’m mostly just disappointed I didn’t pick it up sooner.

Elevator Pitch:
Professor Yadav’s specialty is ancient history, specifically the Karthik Empire, a South Asian colonizing force whose lasting impact is comparable to our world’s British Empire. His boyfriend is Ezra/Savior, a beloved superhero with golden retriever energy. When one of Savior’s battles uncovers a pristine artifact of sorcery – whose use and knowledge has been lost to time – Yadav’s connections see him as one of the primary researchers studying it. As his academic star rises, relationship dynamics shift. Woven through their journey are Yadav’s academic musings on the Karthik Empire.

Read If You Like: superhero settings from the perspective of a normie, fictional academia, relationships as something requiring work and investment

Avoid If You Dislike: abundant talk about sex (but very little actual sex happening), anecdotes that don’t connect with the main plot, footnotes, superhero settings without many superhero plot beats

Novella Readathon #16: Brimstone Slipstream

I underestimated Brimstone Slipstream, and for that I think I owe Matt Weber an apology. I looked at the cover of this novella and assumed it would be a high-octane dragon racing story; Nascar meets Fantasy. I would have enjoyed this of course, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought the book. Instead I got a delightful epistolary novel masquerading as a long-form news story, one whose political undertones are far more interesting and serious than my expectations. In fact, it looks like book 2 in the series, a full-length novel, is going to be more traditionally structured and plotted. Goodness knows I’ll find out before too long, because this kind of knocked my socks off. Finished the whole thing after driving for 5 hours, when I should have been asleep and bone tired. At ~50 pages, this is probably more a novelette than novella proper, and it is well worth the time. Plus, it works well as a standalone, not requiring sequels for the story here to feel like a complete product. Plus it only has five ratings on goodreads. Be a trendsetter! Dragon lovers unite!

The Premise:
Zaya and Kiriki are the rising stars of Brimstone Slipstream. Notably, their success hinges on a whip-smart ground crew and their mastery of psionics. Anyone can become empaths, but the skill comes more naturally to their ethnic group, who form the majority of the working class but almost never the financially stable. This report chronicles moments from their rise to fame and success, their support team which is akin to family, and the history of both the city and dragon racing.

Read If Looking For: narrative reporting, the brutal exhaustion of a culture without maternity leave, evocative infodumps, transparent portrayals of well-meaning people with biases

Avoid If Looking For: flashy dragon racing sequences, fully explained worldbuilding, books that follow the laws of physics

Novella Readathon #15: The Salt Grows Heavy

As I slowly grow into reading horror, I’ve had a complicated relationship with the more grotesque side of the genre. I thought I disliked it, and certainly I need to avert my eyes in any medical show I watch. Body horror authors like Andrew Joseph White capture that visceral repulsion that forces me to skip pages. I thought that The Salt Grows Heavy might be similarly challenging for me. This book features the plucking of eyeballs and the cradling of intestines in one’s hands, yet it was palatable even for me. Khaw married this body horror to a dark fairy tale atmosphere; the result so enchanting that I couldn’t look away.

The Premise:
The mermaid has given birth to her children, and they have feasted upon the land. The country which stole her from the water lays in ruins, a corpse to rot in the sun. Now she travels with the plague doctor, seeking a new country and a new home. They come upon a commune of children and their saints, the strange trio who pursue surgical immortality. The mermaid and the plague doctor’s shifting relationship is confronted by the plague doctor’s past, and the mermaid must decide what is important to her, versus what is simply meat to be consumed.

Read If Looking For: bespoke body horror, the tentative love of monsters, uncommon word choices, inhabiting the mind of a creature of the deeps

Avoid If Looking For: windowpane prose, genre romance, Disney mermaids, fast pacing

Novella Readathon #14: Werecockroach

This book has been sitting on my TBR mostly because I was curious what a book with this title would be about. I’ve seen lots of odd shapeshifter characters, but this one really takes the cake. I knew a few things about the book (such as this having aromantic and asexual representation), but not much else. I certainly did not expect this book to feature an alien’s arriving on Earth. I’m glad I read this book, but I don’t think I enjoyed it enough to pick up the sequel, which is coming out later this year.

The Premise:
After a fire at his old place, Rin is hunting down a new apartment. He’s broke, meaning his new spot is as cramped as you can get while still having your own room. His new roommates are unorthodox, and it later revealed that both can turn into cockroaches. Mix all of this in with an alien ship that has appeared over London, and Rin is in for a very unusual week.

Read If Looking For: cutesy cockroaches, found family, characters representing multiple marginalized groups

Avoid If Looking For: serious explorations of first contact stories, creative use of the werecockroach idea

Novella Readathon #13: Cinder House

I have a soft spot for Cinderella. I wouldn’t describe it as my favorite Fairy Tale, but somehow pieces of it keep capturing my imagination. As a child, I watched the VHS for Ever After so much we had to buy a new copy – I still love it, corny dialogue and all. My teenage self enjoyed the goriness of the Grimm Fairy Tale. As an adult, The Magic Fish became my all-time favorite graphic novel (though that goes far beyond Cinderella). Cinder House enters in the long line of Cinderella tales I adore. In classic Marske fashion, it weaves together the fantastic and romantic elements to find a really excellent balance

The Premise:
Ella died shortly after her father, killed by a combination of poison from her stepmother and falling down the stairs (but really it was the poison). Now a ghost posessing the house owned by the woman who killed her, Ella cleans and cooks for her stepfamily, unable to live a life apart from the building that has become her body. Cue some classic Cinderella elements, such as the Prince holding a ball to find a wife, which has a lot of the traditional trappings of Cinderella. For the most part, this book is Cinderella + the main character is a ghost who feels the house as her new body.

Read If Looking For: chronic illness coding, the sensuality of bare feet on carpet, a friendly bit of correspondence, your body is a temple

Avoid If Looking For: fairy tales that invert the original, Cinderella that eschews insta-love, criticisms of monarchies

Novella Readathon #12: A Necessary Chaos

I have not yet read a proper Romance for this project, though plenty of the novellas feature romantic subplots. A Necessary Chaos entered my TBR when it was described as ‘Mr. and Ms. Smith, but Fantasy and Gay.’ This pitch combines three of my favorite things – I don’t know why I love that movie so much, sue me – and I hoped it would be a nice tonal change after The Lathe of Heaven. The two had a pretty stark contrast; as A Necessary Chaos is, quite frankly, a bit of a mess. It was a mess that worked for me however, because it was so tailored to the things that I enjoy. As it stands though, I can only recommend this for people for whom the premise is immediately exciting.

The Premise:
Vade is a Whisper, a member of the Empire’s magical secret police, seeking revenge on the rebels who killed his sister. Althus is an anarchist in the Phantom Dragon, hoping to bring the system crashing down. The two have been lovers for years, meeting up to spy on each other. Just as they start thinking that their feelings are too serious for a fake relationship, however, they each receive the needed push to finally commit to killing the other. Perhaps them being honest with each other about who they are was the key to unlocking a true relationship all along, and it will bring an Empire to its knees.

Read If You Like: steamy action romance, cool magic powers, torture demons, love was the real magic all along

Avoid If You Dislike: unredeemably evil villains, abrupt changes in allegiance, typos

Novella Readathon #10: North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Witcher

North Continent Ribbon went on my reading list after it got shortlisted for the Ursula Le Guin prize. Those books tend to be hit or miss, but always have a strong sense of identity and something new to bring to the genre. Ribbon was no exception; I’m sure the structure of this novella has been done before, but I haven’t read one like it. It lives in an in-between space between a short fiction/mosaic novel and a more cohesive novella, which was a really cool experience. This story isn’t the densest thing I’ve read, nor the most profound. It has lingered with me, however, and I think that’s the sign of something really special. I think I’d have picked it to win over Rakesfall, which won that year.

The Premise:
North Continent Ribbon covers ~450 years of a far flung planet, initially settled as a location to build faster-than-light ships. Each story is a discrete piece of short fiction, focusing on its own characters and conflicts. However, they layer on top of each other to tell a larger story of cultural formation and change.

Read If Looking For: unique worldbuilding that doesn’t feel gimmicky, nuanced anticapitalist themes, interpersonal conflicts framed through systemic pressures, collective bargaining

Avoid If Looking For: the protagonists always winning, traditional story structures, conflict resolution via combat, romance-free books

Novella Readathon #8: Party of Fools

When I saw that one of the bingo squares for this year’s bingo focused on food, I knew that I would be reading Party of Fools for this readathon. What a better choice for the Feast Your Eyes on This than a series called Empire of Eats? This book is marketed as a comedy, but come expecting silly rather than a full-on comedy. It had a surprising amount of anti-imperialist content than I was expecting. This is not a farce with food; it’s something more akin to how Discworld uses comedy to explore real issues – though stylistically the two are different styles of comedic fantasy. The blurb says ‘Make sure you have some good food on hand, because you’re bound to get hungry along the way‘ and truer words have never been written.

I came looking for a light read after Autobiography of Red, and I left with some of the most fun I’ve had in ages.

The Premise:
Reed and Gladys are retired from their day jobs. Now the Bard and Barbarian moonlight as members of the Resistance, which makes it quite the coincidence when the Immortal Emperor walks into the bar that Gladys’ son runs. Vallora is looking for a break from the life of nobility and to try good food, her chief guard Andromeda is frantically searching the city for her, and the two rebels see an opportunity to strike a blow against the empire. But first, we must eat!

Read If Looking For: charcuterie boards, autistic viewpoint characters, breezy prose, D&D misadventure vibes

Avoid If Looking For: books that demand attention to understand, trope-free stories, realistic dialogue

Novella Readathon #7: Autobiography of Red

Two weeks ago, if you asked me the novella I was most excited to read, I’d have responded Autobiography of Red. It’s got several ardent supporters whose taste I trust, it tackles an obscure figure from Greek mythology, a creature whom exists only for Herakles to kill, and it deals in thorny and tragic gay relationships. Unfortunately, what should have been catnip for me ended up as a frustrating reminder of why I tend to avoid Literature. While I’ve enjoyed several novellas with a more Literary bent (most recently On the Calculation of Volume), this one ended up feeling more like work than enjoyment. I do plan to eventually reread it, and I’m hopeful that I’ll get more out of it on a second look, because the bits I liked were really quite phenomenal.

The Premise:
While there are some introductory materials and extra bits, most of this story is the autobiography of Geryon: a boy and man in the mid-1900s who is red and has wings. This goes largely unremarked in the story. It traces his troubled childhood and teenage affair with Herakles, his listlessness in adult life, and a chance reunion with Herakles that is perhaps not everything Geryon wanted it to be. This is … a poor description, I will admit. I’m not sure how to give a better one though. Mostly it asks you to crawl inside Geyron’s head as he floats through different portions of his childhood and young adult life.

Read If Looking For: Literature with a capital L, tortured souls, photography motifs, blank verse, books that feel like Indie Films

Avoid If Looking For: straightforward narratives, clear happy endings, adventure and thrills, Romance beats

Novella Readathon #5: If Found Return to Hell

I didn’t know a ton about If Found Return to Hell coming into the first page, but I had assumed it would be a fairly standard horror story featuring a possession. Look at the cover! It’s actually a lot more like Penric’s Demon, though a bit goofier: this book is a big marshmallow with a gooey center. It finds a better balance in tone than a lot of cozy fantasy does, however, which made me like it a lot more than one of the many Legends and Lattes clones. However, I was kind of hoping this would be a nice accompaniment to The Haunting of Hill House, which my partner forced me to watch (though I’m now largely a fan). The second book of this readathon to underdeliver horror yet provide great cozy vibes, which is odd considering this is only the fifth book I’ve read for the challenge.

The Premise:
Wen works for One Wizard, a megacorporation to solve all of your wizarding needs! Unfortunately, they mostly answer phones, listen to complaints, and transfer customers to other departments. When a young man calls in with a massive sigil on his wall and no memories of what happens, Wen gets clearance to investigate. Soon, they end up playing host to a man possessed by a Prince of Hell, and Wen doesn’t know what to do about that.

Read If You Like: found family, late stage capitalism + magic, cozy fantasy that doesn’t overplay itself, developed platonic relationships

Avoid If You Dislike: second person narration, asshole parents, stories with relatively low stake

Comparable Media: House on the Cerulean Sea, Penric’s Demon