One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother has been shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it.
No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull is a twisty knot of a book. Told from the perspective of a first-person narrator who is disembodied for most of the novel, it recounts the lives of several people around the time that monsters reveal themselves to the world only for secret societies to try and hush up their existence again. A woman finds out her brother was killed in a police shooting, and then, she discovers he was a werewolf. A man hunts down clues left in an internet forum, and they lead him to a meeting of a secret society. A boy who may be a dragon is raised in seclusion to be a tool and finds freedom when a ring of fire ants opens a portal to the outside world. Many threads converge at a protest for monster rights.
Who is to say where they will go?
This is not a standard urban fantasy story. Turnbull has written a beautifully literary novel with references to The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Slaughterhouse-Five and a cast that is incredibly diverse in race and sexuality. If you are willing to sit with it and unknot the inaccuracies of its plot, there are surely rewards to be had here.
Availability: Book; eBook & eAudiobook in cloudLibrary Rating: *** Stars (I liked it) Reviewer: Catherine, Cataloging Librarian
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SERIES: Convergence Saga #1 AWARDS: LibraryReads Favorites: 2021 GENRE: African American Fiction; Urban Fantasy
TONE: Atmospheric; Suspenseful; Thought-Provoking
STORYLINE: Intricately Plotted; World-Building
WRITING STYLE: Compelling; Stylistically Complex
LOCATION: Boston, Massachusetts
SUBJECT: Loss; Missing Persons; Monsters; Police Misconduct; Protests, Demonstrations, Vigils; Secrets; Violence; Werewolves
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