Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2021
400 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother was 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.
As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence. A professor follows a missing friend's trail of bread crumbs to a mysterious secret society. And a young boy with unique abilities seeks refuge in a pro-monster organization with secrets of its own. Meanwhile, more people start disappearing, suicides and hate crimes increase, and protests erupt globally, both for and against the monsters.
At the center is a mystery no one thinks to ask: Why now? What has frightened the monsters out of the dark?
The world will soon find out.
"Turnbull plunges readers into a layered world of monsters and secrets and uses his supernatural conceit to prompt them to examine the demons that already plague society and endanger the disenfranchised. The expert combination of immersive prose, strong characters, sharp social commentary, and well-woven speculative elements makes for an unforgettable experience. Fantasy fans won't want to miss this." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"As in Turnbull's first novel, The Lesson (2019), the otherworldly aspects of the story act as a lens that brings the characters' richly depicted lives and complex relationships into sharp focus...This is a deeply human story, beautifully and compellingly told." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Turnbull's sophomore work puts him at the top of the field of fantasy literary fiction. It reveals social faults with insightful commentary and intriguing characters." - Library Journal (starred review)
''A distinctive urban fantasy novel, Cadwell Turnbull's No Gods, No Monsters is an operatic story involving monsters, magic, and myth…Its precise language and masterful storytelling make each character's story compelling and immediate. Difficult magical concepts are also made accessible and engaging through logical explanations that sometimes become scientific. No Gods, No Monsters is a horror and fantasy novel with a sociological bent, in which many secrets wait to be unearthed.'' - Foreword Reviews
''No Gods, No Monsters is a haunting tale of the monsters that live among us, and those who despise them. Through a series of diverse, rich, and beautifully written voices, Turnbull deftly weaves together a story of supernatural beings, otherworldly entities, magic, and quantum physics, superimposed onto the social and political challenges of our mundane world. Throughout, we are forced to dwell not only our own humanity, but question who exactly are the monsters we fear? Once I started this novel I could not put it down. You won't be able to either.'' - P. Djèlí Clark, author of Ring Shout
"No Gods, No Monsters is both elegant and violent: a cutting, clarifying illumination of humanity in all of its magic and monstrosity. It balances narrative complexity with extraordinarily nuanced characters, and remains compulsively readable throughout. This is a story with blood, brains, and, ultimately, heart.'' - Isabel Yap, author of Never Have I Ever: Stories
This information about No Gods, No Monsters was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Cadwell Turnbull is the author of The Lesson. His short fiction has appeared in The Verge, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Asimov's Science Fiction, and several anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 and The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019. His novel The Lesson was the winner of the 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Award in the debut category. The novel was also short-listed for the VCU Cabell Award and long-listed for the Massachusetts Book Award. Turnbull lives in Raleigh and teaches at North Carolina State University.
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