Of Anarchy and Monsters

No Gods, No Monsters by Caldwell Turnbull (2021, Blackstone Publishing) – A young man is killed by the police in Boston. Beyond a single death, a fearsome truth is revealed. Monsters are real. When a group of them reveal themselves during a protest event, the world is stunned. Just as quickly, the video of what happened disappears. And the world wants to pretend it never happened. But it did, and a group of people attempt to find a way to navigate new realities and old hatreds.

Brilliant, challenging, not an easy read but an enthralling one. Turnbull is reaching for something ambitious here and succeeds. All the “monsters” that we want to believe are only figments of imagination turn out to be real. When one of them is killed by police, and his final transformation from werewolf to human is caught on a bodycam, the monsters are out of the bag. Except some power doesn’t want them there. Ancient conflicts and secret societies crash into the “real world”, bringing pain to families, both biological and found. The characters stretch across gender identities, races, and attractions. It’s a story that swerves from person to person, point of view to point of view, and between realities.

The book defies easy category. Fantasy? Yes. With a very Adult Urban streak. The writing is beautiful, the storytelling impeccable. Here are creatures that have haunted humanities nightmares for centuries, brought into the 21st Century in a way that feels new and in our moment.

This is a story about the “others” that live among us. Not just the “monsters” but sexual identity, cultural identity and sexual preference all play a role here as well. The world is filled with “others”, to someone any of us can be “other” as well. It’s also about family, and what that term can mean in the modern world.

This was another book that I was uncertain about at the beginning. The POV of the storytelling moves throughout, and sometimes it took a minute for me to remember who this was. It took a little while for my brain to settle into a groove, but once I did, I couldn’t wait to keep reading. If you want brilliant writing and are willing to accept the challenge, this is a book worth waiting for.

Rating – 4 stars Recommended

“No Gods, No Monsters” is scheduled to hit shelves September 7.

This review was based on an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) and is consistent with our published Review Policy.