The premise of this book grabbed my attention, but it was executed in a way that I found difficult to follow. There are many POVs and the book jumps around frequently between plots, time periods and characters making it a bit disjointed and confusing. The characters are well created and interesting, but I often had to keep flipping back to remember who each character was and what they were doing when I last saw their POV. The plot is very original and creative and the tone was a dark style that worked well for the material. I loved the author’s creativity but feel this book would have benefited from additional editing to the format. More indicators of who the POV was and what timeline, longer sections that related before starting something new, more time with each main character, etc. This has such potential and great ideas, I think with some formatting changes it would have been a much higher rating from me. I would read another book by the author because I enjoyed the unique concept.

Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for providing me this eARC to read and review.

#NoGodsNoMonters
#NewSeries
A good start to a new fantasy. It has a lot of characters, but a very intriguing plot.

English/ Spanish
First, thanks to Netgally for letting me read it in advance in exchange for an honest review.

No gods, no monsters is complicated, but let's try to organize my thoughts. Everything starts with a corpse, all good stories start with a death body, right? The story goes like this; Laina has lost her brother Lincoln, a couple of days after the funeral she receives a disturbing visit and a video related to Lincoln’s death is released on the internet revealing that monsters are real, that werewolves exist and that beasts are walking among us.

Here we find ourselves among a lot of characters that leads us to secret societies, gods looking for silence and protest in favor of liberty and against hate crimes and discrimination.
The good aspects:

Well I have to say the account is one of the strongest points of the book, the author has an incredible management of the time, the memories and the monologues. Even though it has a lot of information it is easy to follow the story thanks to the writing style.

The only bad aspect I can recall is that there are too many characters and it is very difficult to follow what happens with each one of them. At the beginning there are Laina and Ridley, then we have a teacher inside a secret society o wanting to enter in one; after there is a dragon and so on. Sometimes it looks like the book is not going to take back the stories of the previous character, because it keeps introducing more almost every chapter. And when the old ones appeared again I didn’t even remember them.

Basically the problem of the plot is that inside a complex structure there are way too many characters and it is difficult to keep track of them and their personal plot.
To sum up I really enjoyed the book, the topics behind the story gave a lot to think about and to reflect on. The plot kept me at the edge of knowing what was going to happen next. 4/5 stars.

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Todo empieza con un cadáver, así es como inician las buenas historias, ¿no es cierto? La historia va algo así, Laina ha perdido a su hermano Lincoln, un par de días después del funeral recibe una visita perturbadora y un video relacionado a la muerte de su hermano se hace viral en internet revelando que los monstruos existen, que los hombres lobo son reales y que aquellas bestias caminan entre nosotros. Así es como iniciamos esta historia, pero no lo es todo.

Nos encontramos después con distintos personajes que nos llevan a sociedades secretas, dioses que buscan silencio y marchas en favor de la libertad y en contra de los crimenes de odio y la discriminación.

Lo bueno: bien debo decir que la narración es de los puntos más fuertes de este libro, tiene un manejo impresionante de los tiempos, los recuerdos y los monólogos. A pesar de que tiene demasiada información no se hace pesado de leer, y eso es gracias a la escritura.

Lo único malo que puedo decir de este libro, es que tiene tantísimos personajes, que es muy difícil de seguir, en un principio de la historia nos presentan a dos personajes; Laina y Ridley, después nos pasamos a un maestro, después pasamos a un dragón y a veces parece que el libro no va a retomar a los personajes anteriores, o que los olvidó en algún punto, por que cuando vuelven a salir simplemente ya no los recordaba.

Aquí el problema es que tiene una historia y una estructura tan compleja que le exige al lector atención, pero con tanto personaje es difícil centrarse en el problema principal. Por lo que parece, va a haber una continuación, igual hubiera sido mejor distribuir los personajes para que fuera más sencillo para el lector tener una continuidad en los eventos que estaban sucediendo.
En general me gustó mucho, los temas de trasfondo me dieron mucho en que pensar y reflexionar y la trama me mantuvo siempre al margen de querer saber que iba a suceder. 4/5 estrellas.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and Cadwell Turnbull for the opportunity to review this book.

This book starts with Laina getting the news that her brother has been shot and killed by Boston cops. But this case is not what it seems, something much bigger is at play here!

The writing in this book was beautiful and I thought the premise of this book sounded great. Unfortunately I found it pretty difficult to follow with the book jumping around a lot between different point of views. I really wanted to love it but I just found it hard to connect with this book.

I found Turnbull’s writing to be very captivating. I think that Turnbull did an admirable job of tying all of the narratives together of each monster and each relevant character and did it with such ease. The world that Turnbull created was so intricate and detailed, it was crazy.

The characters that Turnbull created were so relatable and human, even though they were also monsters. I particularly was interested in Dragon, Melku, Sonya and Rebecca. I would have loved to learn even more about Sonya, Dragon, and Melku and I hope that Turnbull plans to write a sequel so that I can learn more about the powers and abilities of each of these characters. The originality and creativity that Turnbull used to write this story is very evident and shines through in their writing.

At first, I had no idea how all of the pieces of the story would fit together but Turnbull managed to do it almost effortlessly. My only complaints about the story were that it seemed a bit too dragged out and long, at some points, and that it was a bit too cerebral for me. Some sections were hard to grasp and understand but it may just be because I have never read another story like this and it took me time to adjust to Turnbull’s style of writing and the genre written within.

CW: sexual abuse, child abuse, drug use, police shootings, mass shooters

It is hard to describe this book because I admit I’m not entirely certain what happened, but I’ll do my best. Laina’s estranged brother Lincoln is killed by the police because he allegedly became violent and threatening in a drug-induced crisis. The police refuse to release the tape of the shooting, which understandably makes Laina suspicious. After all, Lincoln was naked during the confrontation, how threatening could he have been? Laina is given a USB containing the video of the shooting by an apparently disembodied voice and what she sees on it doesn’t make sense: a scared policeman pursues a monster - some kind of big wolf - down city streets and shoots it but, after the monster dies, Lincoln is lying there in its place. Laine posts the video online, and the world wakes ups the next morning to the knowledge that monsters are real. Later that same day, more wolf-like monsters block a bridge and turn back into humans in front of the police and cameras. Very soon, the end of both videos disappears from every recording of it on every computer and camera in the world so that the evidence of monsters is erased, and most people go back to not believing. Hate rimes against suspected monsters escalate while some groups of humans work to become allies and protect monsters. Meanwhile, at least two groups are working against each other: one wants the existence of monsters out in the open while the other wants it to remain hidden. Or something like that.

I loved this book right up until the end. It’s an intricate piece of work, with multiple characters who intersect at crucial moments, and it always hides more information than it reveals. It explores philosophical questions and scientific theories, perhaps hinting that the line between Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, is more difficult to perceive than we think, and that magic could be explained by quantum physics (or quantum physics could be explained by magic). Some of the creatures and the magic are derived from African, Caribbean, Indigenous and other traditions outside the white Western world, which feels original and I would have loved to learn more about this aspect of the fictional world. The mood is a dreamy kind of dread, the pace is slow and deliberate so that the tension mounts and I was constantly afraid of a terrible tragedy happening. When the tragedy does happen, it is very familiar, something we see on the news time and time again, although it is driven by magic.

The only reason I can’t give this book five stars is that there isn’t really an ending as such. I turned the page, and was faced with the blank pages at the back of the book. Over, just like that. While there is a hint in the dialogue just before that end that what happened was only the beginning and that similar events will occur in an almost cyclical fashion for some time yet, I didn’t find it satisfying. Some of the characters had just found each other and I was interested is seeing what they would do together. The motivation of the group that causes the tragedy is not explained, so that the mystery remains nearly as opaque as it was at the start of the book. I understand that this how life is, the truth is rarely presented wrapped up in a neat little bow, but fiction is usually more tidy than life.

I have a feeling (perhaps that’s all in my head) that there is an analogy made between the “monsters” in the book and Black people in the United States and other predominantly white societies: the fear others feel about them and the violence this causes, the way in this book they are killed by the police out of misunderstanding and the influence of something that is outside them.

I’m having trouble summing up my opinion of this book, but I know I will be thinking about it for a long time, which is why I am giving it a rating of 4.5 stars. Any book that carves out a place in my head is a book I recommend, even if, as in this case, I was disappointed by the pieces left unresolved.

NO GODS, NO MONSTERS is a profoundly experimental work featuring time travel, werewolves, tech wizards, witches, and gods all competing for space in a multiverse that reminded me most of the one featured in THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS by Karen Lord. Like much of Lord's work, Turnbull works simultaneously in quantum physics and the culture of the African diaspora, in monsters and gods and in science and politics. This is no surprise, as the authors share a similar cultural background -- while Barbados and the U.S. Virgin Islands are not the same place, they are close cultural cousins. Turnbull brings his own roots into this work deftly, using the narrator as a connector between storylines set in the northern climes of Boston, the hills of Virginia, and the island of St. Thomas.

The plot of this book revolves around very compelling current events, flipped on their heads. Laina, one of the main characters, starts the story examining the body of her brother, who has been gunned down by police. She was estranged from her brother because of drug use, and the emotional fallout from his loss would be enough to shake most people, but the mystery deepens when a disembodied voice offers Laina information on her brother's murder. Thus Laina is plunged into the world of magic. Notably, this scene parallels a storyline that appears later in the tale, where we learn that the narrator also had a brother lost to substance abuse who was gunned down.

The way loss functions as apocalypse, as unveiling, is a strong theme in the book. Not every character experiences it, but many of them do. What is revealed by the loss can be corruption, but can also sometimes be magic and community. Most likely, it is a mixture of both. Magic is not benign in this novel -- on the contrary, magic is treated as a force of nature. It can have benefits and joys, but is just as likely to cause grief. Sometimes, as with the narrator, it seems almost a neutral force -- but not everything is clearly visible in this book. There are layers within layers, each waiting to be picked apart.

For that reason, NO GODS, NO MONSTERS might be a hard read for some. While the various plots do ultimately connect, it does take some time to get there. This was fine for me -- I found each of the threads of the story to be ultimately compelling in their own way, and was happy to be along for the ride. It's a smart book, a puzzle in need of assembling. If that's the kind of thing you enjoy, this will be the book for you. That said, you won't get all the answers here -- the end obviously leaves things open for a second book. I'm excited to see where it goes.

To put it simply this book follows the lives of a few different characters, that are all connected in some way, as they try to navigate their lives after the existences of monsters is brought to light. However it is so much more than that. I think anyone’s who likes fantasy and dark fantasy will like this.

This is the kind of book that makes you think even after you’ve finished it. The plot is complicated and I found that I was confused at the beginning as to what was going on but not because it is badly written, it is beautifully written and the confusion came from the many different characters you get to know, their role in the story and how they are all connect to each other. I found that once I became attached to one character we jumped to another but as the book goes on you get used to it and it does get easier to read. Regardless of that I found it really interesting and have never read a book like it. I would recommend reading this book purely because of its uniqueness and how well it is written.

This is going to be an incredibly difficult review to write, because I do not want to trespass Spoiler territory but I really, REALLY, want to talk about this book in depth. And I’m pretty sure I can’t do both.

Let’s say this book is about monsters. Furry, four legged monsters who suddenly showed themselves to a world which was not ready for them. And two-legged monsters as well, but we already knew they existed, didn’t we? We see them every single day, trying to appear more human than what they’ll never be able to be.
Let’s also say that the monsters want to achieve some rights: Some of them just want to be left alone to roam the Earth and be happy with what they are. They’re asking for something that is basic for humans, and they feel partly human as well. However, the road to achieve this is not an easy one, and some of the other monsters do not agree with them. War is a possibility.
And let’s finally say that we, as the reader, don’t always know who the monster really is. This book shows us some people’s life in a messy, chaotic, real way, and we are the ones who need to gather the pieces and reach a conclusion.
But nothing ends. It bleeds.
And the pages of this book are filled with blood, with messed up lives, with pain so real and so well described one wants to enter the book just to hug a character (and maybe kick some other in the face. Hard.) This apparent chaos may repel some readers, but those who keep on will find an amazingly threaded story with unique and deep characters who don’t hesitate to spill their most profound fears and their most violent rage.
To close, let me just point that the writing is so beautiful one would like to re-read the story again and again and just underline passage after passage after passage. And then re-read it one more time. I really hope this isn’t the last time we are given passage to this world.

Unfortunately this was one book I was unable to finish. I found to many groups of people, too many plots and too many time changes. When one thing happened that would grab my attention that part of the story got dropped and I don't even know if it was finished. Sorry. I really wanted to like the book and the premise peaked my interest. It just didn't carry through for me. I guess the last page of the book describes it all when it says "Nothing ends. It bleeds." This describes my feelings of the various plots contained within.
#NoGodsNoMonsters#NetGalley

This concept is so cool! The beginning was a little hard to follow, because it hops from one character's perspective to another. Once I got used to the jumping it was a little easier. There was a lot of world development that kept me going more than the action in the book. It was face-paced mostly because you were following a variety of character's stories. I was confusion on some of the use of pronouns. The book was in third person at some spots but then it would switch to first. This made more sense after you learn more out about Calvin. I wish the different parts gave some direction about which character you were reading about. It was a big idea that did not have enough time to develop in the way I would have liked. I hope there are more books to develop the storyline.

Received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

DNF'ed at 50%. I really wanted to like this book, but the disjointed POV chapters made it too difficult to follow.

From what I could understand, each chapter is a different POV, some returning, some new, but most centered around an incident with a main character's brother being killed by the police. Turns out the brother was a werewolf. Al the POVs are affected by the incident in their own ways and we see society slowly changing to accept or reject the presence of supernatural creatures.

I do think it's a really interesting urban fantasy novel and it will definitely appeal to those who like the book's chaotic, but unique writing style. It's just not going to be for everyone, including me. It's also definitely more on the macabre and dark style tonally, so that will also not appeal to everyone.

Turnball clearly has mastered writing and character dialogue, but I think he just needs a bit more focus here to help piece the novel together. If you're interested in horror and urban fantasy and can handle unique writing choices, then this is for you.

No Gods, No Monsters by this new to me author Cadwell Turnbull, published by Blackstone Publishing is a full length, stand-alone, not easy to find the right genre for book. It's fiction, pnr story, fantasy, part non-fiction-ish, you get the picture.
The story starts out with a bang when Laina discovers her brother was kbc. What then happens is more than fantastic. I really liked the writing and the storyline, only at times I was overwhelmed. All in all an ok read, 3,75 stars.

WOW

Such an amazing book with such a rich and deep plot. It's one of those books that you can read over and over again and still not fully understand what is happening. There are so many unanswered questions in the book, but I almost feel as though it's fitting. That's the way life works. We don't have all the answers and we probably never will.

Please please please get this book when it is released. Hands down will be one of the best books in 2021!

I was really excited about the premise of this book, but I don’t think it ended up being for me, which is fine. I think a lot of people with love this book, but I am not and have never been an urban fantasy fan, so I was left with the impression that this book was just meh. 10 points for representation and 10 points for creativity. I hope this book finds its audience, but it’s audience is not me.

What a strange and frustrating book. I thought it was beautifully written with lovely prose and turns of phrases, but this was a convoluted mess in terms of characters and perspectives. It would change from one character to another without any real indication. I would be left confused as to which character I was following and who this new character was. Had they been introduced before? What had I missed? The author also messed with the timelines which added to my feeling of being lost.

I don't need my stories to be linear. I like adventurous storytelling, but this really need a strong guiding hand from an editor. There were too many characters and except for Laina, Rebecca, and Ridley, I didn't think I got to know any of them. Having all these disparate characters come together towards the end of the book gave me little pleasure. For such a long book, this felt very truncated. I don't know if there was an issue with my ARC or if the book just ends that way, but there was no resolution. It was over abruptly and with no indication that the end had been near. I kept trying to flip the page to see if there was more. I am assuming a sequel is planned otherwise this was a waste of time. I loved the premise of this book -- monsters coming out of the shadows and the world changing because of it, -- but this left me very disappointed.

This book had a really interesting premise, but it was really hard to read because the author kept switching up the point of view and it made it hard to follow. It might really work for some people, unfortunately I am not one of them.

My only complaint would be pacing. I really enjoyed the ride of the story but had to motivate myself to pick the book up between reads. I wish that the meandering was less. Thanks to the publishers!

"No Gods, No Monsters" by Cadwell Turnbull is an incredibly riveting novel that blurs multiple genres into one or successfully creates a unique genre of its own. Therefore, it's no surprise the story is written in a jarring, razor-edged cadence that creates an original narrative voice unlike anything else.

In this page-turning novel, multiple characters are witness to a world-changing event in which monsters are real and they want to be known. This causes a chain reaction of events that results in a growing tension of whether humans are ready to accept monsters exist and the dangerous consequences that may have.

On the surface, this novel seems like a simplistic fantasy novel that delves into secret underground societies, fantastical creatures, and government conspiracies. Instead, Turnbull draws upon a variety of themes that speak to a lot of issues society faces in the present time. Through the use of monsters, Turnbull creates a conversation about the ways in which humankind deals with oppression, fear, trauma, violence, family, identity, among many others. The story even refuses to focus on a single character as it becomes clear as the story unfolds that the events that take place are about community and society and how, as a collective, people are responsible for how they shape the world they live in.

This is going to be a novel people either love or struggle with. Certain readers have difficulty getting into a story that doesn't have a clear timeline, a well-rounded plot, or a specific character(s) to focus on. Even still, there is no doubt "No Gods, No Monsters" is a stunningly original novel that will spark a wide range of interest and create an important conversation.

Thank you to Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing (Own Voices) for providing me with a free e-arc of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Look for "No Gods, No Monsters" by Cadwell Turnbull on its expected publication date September 07, 2021.

Thank you Netgalley and publisher for the ARC.
I can honestly say I’ve never read a book like this. The idea was great. Monsters are real. There are parallel universes. The writing style is gorgeous, I’ve never read anything like it.
Unfortunately, this book, for some, will be difficult to get through. It was for me. I truly wanted to love this book, and the diversity in it is great. What was such a let down was it was hard to follow.
The point of view shifts often from first to third. Because of this, it made it hard to keep track of who was telling the story and what was going on. I had to re-read a few parts over just to get my bearings.
There are also quite a few characters. Due to the large cast, it’s not easy to get attached to some of them and others suffer from not being able to be developed much. The messages and themes that were in the book were interesting and there is a lot for readers to enjoy in it if they don’t mind possibly having to play catchup once the pov shifts again.
There’s also gore and for some people that’s a turn off. There isn’t a warning about it.