Trippy – Page 2 – Marked for Plot

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.

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

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

Split Tooth

Split Tooth is not a novel I should have enjoyed. Despite being an English major in college, Literature with a capital L has always rubbed me the wrong way. Even the more experimental Fantasy stuff I love tends to have strong roots in genre fiction tropes, like The Spear Cuts Through Water. Split Tooth was none of what I typically love, but I found that it became my first five star read of 2025.

Read if Looking For: books that blend poetry and prose, sparse magical realism stories, books with sharp edges, indigenous voices

Avoid if Looking For: traditional fantasy plot structures, easy reading

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.

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

The Darkness Outside Us

I intended for this book to be a light, fluffy read. Picked up in an airport bookshop as something to occupy me as I headed out to a summer teaching gig in Boston, I thought I was going to read a cute (and possibly spicy) romance set in a spaceship. I did not expect the emotional rollercoaster of stress, excitement, and sheer existential dread this book would pull out of me. It’s stood the test of time and is just as good on a reread as that first experience.

Read If Looking For: space thrillers, emotional romantic connections, looming dread

Avoid if Looking For: straightforward romances, thorough worldbuilding

The Daughter’s War

This book is a prequel to The Blacktongue Thief, which was a story that I enjoyed, especially for some of its worldbuilding elements. However, I had some issues with the pacing of the book. It was engaging enough that The Daughter’s War, with its promise of brutal goblins, an engaging central character, and horror elements, was a powerful draw. In the end I liked it more than Blacktongue Thief, and the books can be read independently of each other.

Read If Looking For: scary goblins, scary birds, mysterious wizards, the horrors of war

Avoid if Looking For: cinematic action scenes, traditional hero’s journeys

Rakesfall

The Saint of Bright Doors (Chandrasekera’s first novel) has been raking up award nominations from pretty much every major award, whether it be popular vote, juried, or a combination. It’s also a book I enjoyed quite a bit. I initially hadn’t because weirdly enough psychadellic tracings of two lovers across timelines/memories/reincarnations/whatever is weirdly popular in 2024 releases (see Welcome to Forever, Emperor and the Endless Palace, and Principle of Moments), and I’d already read a few. However, when comparisons to one of my favorite novels of all time, The Spear Cuts Through Water, were made by some reviewers, I knew it was time to give this acid-trip of a book a try.

Read If Looking For: Experimental Literary Fiction, layered metaphors, books that benefit from easy access to encyclopedias and dictionaries

Avoid if Looking For: light or mildly difficult reads, anything remotely straightforward in plot or structure

The Emperor and the Endless Palace

Reincarnation and recursive gay romance books seem to be a running theme of 2024 releases. I didn’t read all of them, but The Emperor and the Endless Palace seemed like the type of gay romance that was going to push past the cliches plaguing gay romances both in and out of fantasy spaces at the moment. And despite some classic debut-novel issues, it was exactly what I was looking for.

Read If Looking For: romances that aren’t quite Romances, looping narratives, lustful gay men, historical queer representation

Avoid if Looking For: saccharine queer stories, or books that aren’t romance heavy

The Storm Beneath the World

As and English teacher, I constantly tell my kids not to judge a book by its cover. Dumb advice, but I have to try to get them to give Tamora Pierce a try somehow. It’s also undoubtedly true that a good cover is far more likely to get me to actually look at a book and give it a shot, and great cover artists are hard to find (especially since they and the authors rarely get a lot of say in what the cover looks like). And I’m ashamed to say that, with two horrible covers, I didn’t give The Storm Beneath the World a shot the first few times I saw it. Eventually, the premise of excellent fantasy featuring insect-people got me to pick it up, and thank goodness people kept hyping it. I’m now happy to say that it has a third, much better cover (for my tastes at least), and I think epic fantasy fans will find a lot to love here.

Read If Looking For: classic epic fantasy style writing in a totally alien setting, insect characters, ethical quandaries

Avoid if Looking For: books that avoid brutal violence, books with familiar settings

Hyperion

Hyperion is one of those classic fantasy stories that’s genre defining, and often makes ‘must read’ lists. I have a rather thorny relationship with lots of these books. I find Lord of the Rings frustrating and Dune rather boring. I tend to gravitate towards lesser read early works, such as those by George MAcDonald. Hyperion though, is a classic that really captured my imagination and ran with it.

Read If Looking For: gorgeous prose, deeply fleshed out characters, classical references

Avoid if Looking For: books without men writing women problems, books with a singular driving plot

Walking Practice

Translated Novels tend to be some of the more unique reads. It’s easy to forget how much cultures have self-reinforcing patterns in their writing, even across subgenres. Walking Practice is a great example of how translated fiction can be an engaging experience that confronts your notions of how stories go.

Assuming you’re reading in English and not Korean, I highly recommend reading Victoria Caudle’s translation notes, which will provide key context for what the hell is going on with this book’s typesetting.

Read If Looking For: horror with deep themes, gruesome depictions of bodies, gore, and sex, utterly alien narrators

Avoid if Looking For: something like what you’ve read before