
No Gods, No Monsters
Cadwell Turnbull
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Description
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.
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.
Product Details
Publisher | Blackstone Publishing |
Publish Date | September 07, 2021 |
Pages | 387 |
Language | English |
Type | |
EAN/UPC | 9781982603724 |
Dimensions | 8.3 X 5.9 X 1.5 inches | 1.6 pounds |
About the Author
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 first 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.
Reviews
"Juxtaposing supernatural scenes with themes of otherness and humanity, this novel leaves some questions to be answered in the next book of the series. It has a multiracial cast of characters with broad LGBTQ representation. Turnbull's sophomore work (after The Lesson) 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)""It's such an expertly crafted novel that I'm almost mad about it; it's smart and intense in the best way. Turnbull pulls no punches here, and the result is something powerful."
-- "Christina Orlando, Tor.com""Profound and unsettling in the best way...Sharp, insightful social commentary wrapped up in a tale of the uncanny."
-- "Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author""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""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""You'll stay up all night bingeing this cosmic political thriller about monster factions battling over the past and future of the multiverse. Cadwell Turnbull has created a fascinating world of supernatural conspirators whose goals are sometimes unknowable, and sometimes align perfectly with the mundane, systemic injustices of human life. No Gods, No Monsters is also a moving journey through many families across many worlds--all coping with traumatic loss, but finding new ways to love each other."
-- "Annalee Newitz, author of The Future of Another Timeline and Autonomous""Across a web of storylines, we follow a series of characters ranging from a college professor looking for a missing friend--only to discover a secret society--a werewolf who's trying to protect her pack from the public, and more. The book makes for excellent commentary on the state of society, as Cadwell Turnbull follows the implications as those supernatural creatures and beings make their existence known to the rest of the world."
-- "Andrew Liptak, Polygon""Turnbull's prose is captivating, poetic without being pretentious, a pleasure to read...His story has a painful ring of truth to it, despite the fantastic creatures that populate it, and a beautifully layered complexity that makes it difficult to set down. A stunning, enthralling novel."
-- "New York Journal of Books""Turnbull's second novel, No Gods, No Monsters, the first in a planned trilogy, expands on the complexities of liberation movements as competing factions of magical beings decide the course of the 'monster' social justice cause...Indispensable work...No Gods, No Monsters makes room for this more steady-eyed, honest sort of hope."
-- "Fiction Unbound""No Gods, No Monsters is an enthralling and audacious novel that takes you on a dizzying ride deep inside a hidden world existing just beneath the surface of our everyday reality. You might think you know what kind of monster story this is when you start reading. You might even think you understand what kind of world the story takes place in, but Turnbull has other plans. Page by page, chapter by chapter, the walls, the ceiling, the floor of the reality you thought you found yourself in as a reader, are removed, until you're falling into the starlit depths of an entirely different, fearsome, and awe-inspiring universe."
-- "Maria Haskins, writer and reviewer""The Lesson was a perfect debut, and this is a perfect second novel. Big and bold and ambitious, packed with everything we need right now: more heart, more monsters, more cooperative solidarity economies."
-- "Sam J. Miller, Nebula Award-winning author of Blackfish City and The Blade Between""Turnbull delves into the complexities of injustice and identity in this powerhouse contemporary fantasy...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)""A much-anticipated new work that launches the Convergence Saga."
-- "Library Journal""No Gods, No Monsters is a thrilling story, set in a world not unlike our own, that follows events in the wake of the discovery that creatures from myth and legend are real. It's a page turner...an exciting plot, full characters, complex moral dilemmas, mystery, mayhem, with a bit of romance. This science fiction/fantasy story grabs your attention from the beginning. I love the way Turnbull changes the narrative of hate and division that has been written about so many times and makes us ponder the question, Who are the real monsters?"
-- "Keri Cooks, Forbes""Structurally ambitious, intricately imagined."
-- "Elizabeth Bear, Hugo Award-winning author""Like Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin before him, Turnbull uses the tools of science fiction to illuminate the human heart."
-- "John Kessel, Nebula Award-winning author, on The Lesson""Magic and monsters roam every corner of this page-turner, but the real star is Cadwell Turnbull's breathtaking prose. A perfect hymn to otherness and the beauty of the strange, No Gods, No Monsters is so good it reads like music. Simply masterful."
-- "Sylvain Neuvel, author of the Themis Files, The Test, and A History of What Comes Next""Turnbull is a rising star in the science fiction and fantasy world."
-- "The Verge"Earn by promoting books