We Are The Crisis is the second book in the Convergent trilogy written by Cadwell Turnbull. Admittedly it took me a little bit to get into what was happening because it had been so long since I had read the first book No Gods, No Monsters. I really should have gone back and re-read it before I started but after a little bit things started coming back to me. It may be a few years into the future but things are just as crazy as ever.

I think part of the reason why I had so much difficulty remembering is because everything feels very disjointed. It seems like everyone would either like to see the monsters thrive or to have them completely removed. There is so much misinformation being spread by conspiracy theorists and those in power. The goal is always to keep the monsters in the minority. Once again, I enjoyed the way that the author paralleled present day issues with the issues that the monsters were experiencing.

The thing that kept pulling me and continuing to read was the way Cadwell Turner wrote. The descriptions of the monsters are just so well done. You can see their strengths and their flaws. There is multiple levels of representation within the different groups. As the monsters are struggling, they are also continuing the grow and get stronger. Unfortunately their strength is often misconstrued causing the conspiracy theories to go.

We Are The Crisis left me with several questions regarding the main plot. Or should I say plots? Given the fact that this is a multi universe story, some of the monsters are disrupting things in more than one world. And each world has a different perspective regarding the monsters. I have a feeling everything is eventually going to come to a head together. I'm very much looking forward to the conclusion of the this trilogy!

No Gods, No Monsters was an incredible book. It really stuck with me. The audiobook was more incredible in that it was the most immersive audiobook I had listened to. We are the Crisis follow this path. The story picks up several years after the end of No Gods, No Monsters. Life is not better. The future does not look brighter. The characters have to negotiate through so many obstacles as they try to live their lives, including fear founded in reality. A hard book to read or listen to but incredible all the same.

Yes, They're back! Cadwell Turnbull's "We Are The Crisis" features Laina, Ridley, Rebecca, Dragon, Melku, Sondra, Sonya, and Cal, who have returned after their successful premiere in "No Gods, No Monsters" to captivate us once more.

Turnbull's writing is rich and detailed, evoking the reader's heart, soul, and mind as well as thoughts and deeds. That he can write a story so vivid and unforgettable is nearly unbelievable. This world has always included monsters, but now that they have come to light, humanity must respond.

With excellent character development and shifting relationship dynamics, WE ARE THE CRISIS is a deserving follow-up. I'm still fascinated by this world and its mysteries, and the plot moves along nicely as magic is further explored and secrets are exposed. I heartily thank both Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC to review.

I’ve been waiting for this book for a long while. No Gods, No Monsters took up a lot of my headspace, and I really needed Mr. Turnbull to move some of these characters along for the sake of my sanity.

I was not disappointed in the slightest.

The thing about Mr. Turnbull’s writing, especially in this Convergence Saga is that you can’t help but get very very invested while also being completely lost as to where you are, and who you are dealing with.

Continuing on a couple of years after No Gods, No Monsters, We Are the Crisis continues with how the world is reacting to the revelations of the “Boston incident.” Monsters are now known to the general public, but there is a massive political debate over what rights monsters should have (if any), and a human-supremacist group, Black Hand, is committing more and more atrocities against monsters and monster supporters.

On the flip side, there is a pro-monster activist group, New Era, who is working to build a cooperative network between monsters and humans, but there is also an even more esoteric bit of subversion going in within New Era perpetuated by the cosmic elements we were introduced to in No Gods, No Monsters.

All of the tensions from all sides — and there are a lot of sides — seem to be pressing together into a Gordian knot situation that seems both hopeful and hopeless at the same time.

Much like the previous book, We Are the Crisis is one that is going to require re-reading and analysis to fully follow what is going on. While it is very complex, it is amazingly entertaining. I read almost three quarters of it in one sitting: it’s that captivating.

This series is very important in regards to how it approaches civil rights, and the concepts of autonomy and free will. Mr. Turnbull deftly glides between story lines and locations while building up a slow pressure that comes to a head in a way that, while everyone saw coming, nobody expected.

I read No Gods, No Monsters last month and enjoyed the story about supernatural beings (like the X-Men) stand solidarity with the POCs to stand against the injustices of the world.

While I did enjoy the first book, the sequel We Are the Crisis lost some of its steam. Characters from the first book are present but several new characters are introduced and I found it a bit hard to follow the relationships of all of them and which sides they’re on.

I also felt like this is more of a continuation of the events from the first book and not a lot of new developments/elements happened in this book. I understand a lot of the sequel/second books are like this but I prob will not read the third book in the series.

3.5 ⭐️

Following the events of the first book, this second installment in an incredibly original series was equally impactful, if more of a consolidation of previously introduced ideas rather than the introduction of new ones. It was exciting and chilling in equal measure, with some really fascinating philosophical discussions about the nature of humanity and the ethics of registration. Overall, whilst this is not a series that will appeal to everyone, I really enjoy it and will be waiting eagerly for the next book.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I enjoyed this book just as I did the first one. I really love a good plot. The twist and turns I am going to make sure I read more from this author. Great work!

I never realized this was a sequel, so unfortunately I couldn't appreciate it to it's full capacity. I did skim the first few chapters and enjoyed the writing style and concept. I am looking forward to obtaining the first book and returning to give this a proper review.

Grateful for the chance to read this ARC.

As touched on in my reflection of the first installment of this trilogy, I was hesitant about continuing this series. Not for lack of being good!, but for its density and complexity. For not understanding so much of it while also loving the monster creation and fight over humanity.
Hoping that this chapter of the series made more sense... I am not sure that I understand any of the mysticism or multi-verse storyline any better at all, but... I DID greatly enjoy the story.

Turnbull is an artist.
A master storyteller, creator of amazingly vibrant personalities and such a believable world of fantasy.... readers cannot help but to keep turning pages.

Not sure that much more action really took place throughout the plodding mystery of fantastical events... but, somehow, it sure felt like so many things happened. Another testament again to Turnbull. Nothing more progressed, really... while, at the same time, so many poignant 'personal' travails, emotive moments, and powerful struggles layered a reality that otherwise grounds this ridiculously fabulous story.

As with the first book, I am not eagerly awaiting diving into the next one. .. but... I will be watching for it... to slip right back into figuring out where we are going... and anticipating as masterful a wrap-up of these disparate characters' sagas as the author has somehow crafted throughout. So effortless masterclass storytelling.

This is a great follow up to the amazing No Gods, No Monsters. I had honestly forgotten some of the events of No Gods, but I was able to pick up the plot quickly. We catch up on old characters like Ridley Laine, Rebecca, Cal and Dragon and are introduced to new characters like Alex. The characters start to circle closer to each other and the overall story becomes more clear. It's still difficult to summarize this book, so much is still unclear. The book goes back and forth quickly between time and place, but I wouldn't call it disjointed. The story really flows.

I would recommend reading Caldwell Turnbulls "review" of No Gods, No Monster on Goodreads. He goes into his process and clarifies certain points. It acts almost like a reader's guide.

Again, Turnbull delivers a story that both looks at bonds of family and the paranormal. He uses complex structures to engage his readers and keep them guessing. There is a undertone of darkness that permeates the atmosphere and as more is revealed, the reader faces the choice of realizing that there is always more to every origin and every story.

3.5 stars.
This story picks up after the horrific ending in "No Gods, No Monsters", and continues with the darkness, love, desperation, violence and almost hopelessness described in book one. For anyone who has not read book one, do not start here.

This book is well written, and author Cadwell Turnbull dives deeper into some of his characters, expanding their experiences and responses to the existential crisis they're faced with as shapeshifters in a world that in some cases hates them enough to kill them, and in others, is debating how to integrate the shifters into society.

Some of the shifters are working to build their safety through activism, even while the monster haters, some organized into a pro-human group called the Black Hand, face off repeatedly. This action is cover for two ancient orders who have different aims and secrets and information about the gods and magic that have overtaken life.

Where I enjoyed book one unreservedly, I had a tough time getting through this book. I'm not entirely sure what did not work for me this time, as Turnbull writes wonderfully, and does interesting things with his characters. I particularly liked his exploration of characters, and how they are coping with the upending of their world, whether because of their new powers, or because of their fear over the changes to those they knew, or their assumptions about their world. The book is wonderfully dark with big stakes, and I just wish I had enjoyed it more than I did.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Blackstone Publishing for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Count on Turnbull to deliver a sequel that is equally expansive and genre-defying as No Gods, No Monsters. Now that the monsters are out of hiding, the plans from unfathomable cosmic powers, old secret societies, and monsters fighting for social justice are bursting at the seams, keeping the momentum of this multiverse saga going strong.

This is an exciting series about being a monster and having to know that you will have to fight for your rights. The characters are excellently crafted. They are diverse in who they are and their background, yet you understand each one.

As intriguing as this series is, I wish there were more answers to the conspiracy theories. I feel as if Cadwell Turnbull is holding back the world-building from us. I want to feel the world as much as the characters.

This review is based on an advanced reader copy provided through Netgalley for an honest review.

As I was thinking how to start this review of Cadwell Turnbull’s We Are the Crisis, planning on noting how it slots into the category of “one of those books I admired but didn’t fully fall into,” I thought I’d refresh my memory of my thoughts on its predecessor, No Gods, No Monsters. And darn if I didn’t open that review with “the book had me admiring it more than enjoying it.” So I guess we’re both pretty consistent, huh?

And indeed, We Are the Crisis has all the same strengths I praised No Gods, No Monsters for: a complex structure, wonderfully crafted sentences, a strong sense of timeliness, a diverse cast of characters, a richly layered exploration of multiple weighty themes. They’re all here again as the novel picks up a few years after the events of book one (some spoilers for that book to follow).

Ever since the “monsters” have been revealed to the world (or one of the worlds—more on that later), it seems to be heading down a path toward inevitable conflict, despite attempts by some to avoid war (and attempts by others to encourage it). Some monsters are disappearing, perhaps going into hiding, perhaps being kidnapped, perhaps being killed. Some monsters are forming activist groups, revealing themselves to select groups, and seeking out human allies. On the other side, human supremacist groups (particularly one known as the Black Hand) are becoming more public and more active, with if not active support from law enforcement at least a willing oblivious eye or a suspiciously slow response to attacks on monsters. Bills are being debated over legal protection for monsters. And behind it all, two ancient Orders or cults of monster continue their age-old battle even as one deals with its own schism. And, as noted earlier, key events are occurring on more than one world, as amongst all the other things Turnbull’s trilogy is, it’s also a tale of the multiverse, which allows for a semi-omniscient narrator “dreaming” his way across the universe (s) as well as (and this is all I’ll say about this), one hell of an ending.

We met that narrator in book one, along with most of the main characters driving events (or reacting to them) here, including but not limited to:
• A trio of werewolves: Ridley and Laina (husband and wife) and Rebecca
• “Dragon”: a young monster who recently escaped long imprisonment and manipulation
• Alex, a former CIA agent, spying one of the monster activist groups (though she may not fully know who for or why)
• Sondra: a senator from St. Thomas who is also a were-dog
• Aleister Crowley: yes, that one
Violence is prevalent throughout the book as the world (s) seemingly careens toward war between humans and monsters. Lynch mobs are mentioned, “disappeared” monsters, and the book starts off with a bang, in a classic werewolves vs. vampires fight scene. Several other such scenes follow, along with one more wide-scale conflict that Turnbull nicely builds up to with increasing tension in the moments beforehand. But amongst all the actual violence, off-stage violence, and predicted violence, characters, often at great risk to themselves, still try to find a way through to a new world where humans and monsters can peacefully co-exist. A better world overall — more open, more just, more equitable; a world less driven by competition and capitalism. Whether that’s a fool’s dream has yet to be seen.

In that vein, Turnbull is working in some well-established terrain. The monsters can clearly be read, a la the X-Men, as a stand-in for any marginalized group, and it doesn’t take much imaginative work (really, none at all) on the reader’s part to replace “monster” at various points in the text with any such group (“queer”, “Black”, “refugee”, “migrant”, etc.) and have the rephrased sentence mean exactly what it means in the universe of the novel. Equally familiar is the question of “Just who really are the monsters here?”, though to his credit Turnbull doesn’t present a simple, pat answer to that by painting all monsters as good/victims and all humans as bad/predators. Keeping to his deeply realistic despite the fantasy trapping style, Turnbull present it as the complicated mess life usually is. Finally, we’re also dealing with a recognizable “found family” theme, though I’d say less prevalently than in book one (mostly because the families have already been found), as well as the usual messiness of actual families.

Familiar as the metaphors and themes might be, there’s no doubt Turnbull executes those themes exceedingly well. Just as he handles any of the technical craft. Characters are sharply drawn; for the most part the dialogue is realistic and natural, with a few speechifying moments outside of the actual speeches; the structure requires readerly attention as it moves backwards and forward in time and space and across multiple worlds, but those shifts are handled smoothly and clearly and I have no complaint about an author requiring a reader to pay attention; and as noted above, Turnbull shows a deft hand at creating tension.

My only issue, and not much one honestly, is that as with No Gods, No Monsters, I felt curiously distant from the book’s events and characters. I admired what Turnbull was doing on a craft level, his ambition on a thematic and structural level, found myself nodding my head in agreement with some of the characters’ thinking, felt at least somewhat anxious at all the appropriate moments, but never felt fully immersed in the story, never felt like I was fully inhabiting the story or its characters. It impressed me, it stimulated me, it provoked me, but it didn’t move me. But that simply prevented me from giving it a 5 out of 5; otherwise, it’s a book and a series I’m happily recommending.

I think this series of novels that discuss the sources of Otherness and the artificiality of the idea of a permanent identity deserves all the praise I can heap on it. Using modern culture's delight in cryptids and monsters as real entities, Author Turnbull offers a wise and inclusive look at how identity can be imposed from outside and then used to oppress and persecute the recipient of that imposed "self". Horror fiction is supposed to scare us with the monsters, not FOR them. This subversion of the literary status quo is ideally suited to slide in under the resistant person's radar and make them think again about what a monster is, and who decides what that identity means. This is something that has needed doing since the days of myth...Beowulf is, at the end of the day, about a mother seeking vengeance for the harm done to her child...and what could be more subversive than that?

The very concept of debating rights is absurd on its face. You don't grant rights. Rights are, then they get denied by the controlling elites to serve their own purposes. Granting rights is best framed as removing impediments unjustly placed in the path of those attempting to exercise their natural rights. When that fact comes dangerously close to becoming part of the great mass of people's consciousness, a crisis must be manufactured to distract and re-Other the group that is deemed undesirable by the controlling elites.

The existence of Others is necessary for the forces of control to make the eternally useful and rouinely succesful lie of Us-vs-Them work to absorb the mass of humanity in fighting against those who have the most in common with them so the controlling elites don't have to worry about how they can keep their power, privilege, and prestige intact against the outrage and hatred of those they oppress to serve them, not their own needs.

Political fiction done so well that, unless you already knew it was political, you wouldn't know. For that reason, I encourage you to gift it to your videogame addicted teen boy. Anything we can do to wedge his mind open a wee tiny bit for non-authoritarian thoughts to enter is good.

I really love the way Turnbull blends gods, monsters, and the occult into one gripping saga. It's unlike anything I've read before. And while there are a lot of different storylines happening at once, every character has so much depth and complexity that I'm completely engrossed no matter who's POV the chapter is focused on.

Upon finishing this book -- the second book in the Convergence Saga -- I was only slightly less confused than when I started it. There are multiple layers and many characters moving toward convergence. These characters are monsters or otherwise otherly gifted. They're in Boston and the British Virgin Islands, and most definitely in the multiverse: "The heart of the question is the fear of infinite unknowns, descending forever, turtles all the way down. Places to hide and places hidden. The universe has legs." This book felt like a bridge between Book 1 and Book 3 in the saga. I'm still on board, wondering where those legs will walk.

[Thanks to Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

While I did receive an eARC, I also have to admit that I loved No Gods, No Monsters so much that I periodically checked for this book’s release and preordered both a physical and audio version as soon they were listed and will be doing the same for the third and final installment.

We Are the Crisis takes place 3 years after the events of No Gods, No Monsters and builds of of it beautifully. I highly recommend a refresh of No Gods before jumping in to this though because Turnbull jumps right back into the story despite the time jump and there are so many points of view that it can be hard to keep the plot/characters straight. Turnbull has said that his protagonist is community and that is abundantly clear as the story jumps from perspective to perspective.

He’s also said that this trilogy will be structured so that Book 1 focuses on the people, Book 2 the monsters, and Book 3 the gods, and thematically they will be Revelation, Reckoning, Reconciliation. As such, We Are the Crisis follows the backlash of the reveal of monsters in No Gods. In my opinion, this is contemporary fantasy and speculative fiction at its best. It’s full of emotion and life and makes the reader think while remaining an engaging story. I cannot wait to see how the series wraps up!

If that sounds at all interesting, I recommend checking out A (SORT OF) GUIDE TO READING NO GODS, NO MONSTERS to see if this series might be for you! Dion Graham narrates the story beautifully, though I recommend also having a physical or ebook version to help reference.

This continues to be an interesting series, but it also continues to be confusing and hard to follow. There are so many characters and while they are all dealing with some of the same issues, I found it difficult to find a through-line that would tie it all together. I'm not sure if I'm up for the finale.