Such a unique novel! I was extremely impressed by the poignant conversation about marginalization and prejudice. I was loved how this novel provided such an excellent conversation about such complex issues.

Wonderful representation for queer and nonwhite people. All of the people in this book felt flawed in a realistic way. They are what kept me coming back for more.

The novel is very slow, focusing on characters over plot. This can be considered urban fantasy with mild horror, but it honestly read more like a literary piece of social commentary. I would have liked to learn more about the fantastical elements, but that is because I am strongly attracted to fantasy elements in novels.

I would recommend this one to readers looking for an insightful exploration of the challenges that affect marginalized people in America today.

This is, without a doubt, one of the best urban fantasy novels I have ever read. (TLDR: You should read this)
'No Gods, No Monsters' has all the elements you would expect of an urban fantasy novel - magic, monsters, gods, and a situation gone terribly awry - but it contains something that can only be described as quintessentially more.

The beauty of this novel is in the unfolding of events; it reads like a delicate origami piece that you undo carefully, trying to understand how it came to be. (You must understand that in telling more of the plot, I would give the game away, which was half the joy of this novel; I apologise if that makes this review somewhat confusing to read). The story is told from one of the most interesting perspectives that I have read outside of a short stories. In that, itself, the mysteries begin to coil upon themselves; there are so many intricacies in this tale, and yet, the entire duration of reading this, I found myself simply pleased to be along for the ride.

The social commentary in 'No Gods, No Monsters' was immaculate. The representation was beyond the usual tokenistic diversity: there were characters from all walks of life, and because of that, the world created is immersive and realistic. Beyond that, big issues were raised and outlined in the most concise way possible, bringing in a glorious array of ideas that made me think, from social justice, to critical reading, to metaphysics. This alone makes this a novel I will no doubt read again, and again.

If you like big ideas, and well crafted stories, this is for you. If you like writing that is beautiful, and flows in the most beautiful way, this is for you. If you like stories that make you think, where reading it feels like assembling a puzzle, piece by piece, then this is for you.

CW: Violence, Suicide Mention, Gore.
ARC Provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

A beautifully written book. Interesting use of monstrosity as a way of investigating racial injustices.

Wow. This was so much more than I expected. A great read, and I can't wait to read the next book in the series. For fans of N.K. Jemisin's The City We Became.

I really liked Turnbull's debut work. So, this piece had a bit of cognitive hype to live up to--if nowhere else than in my mind, and mine alone.

Consider it done. Hype in check.

If I'm being honest, I was confused at first. Several aspects of the story seemed either convoluted or just flat out missing. A few chapters in, however, I decided to just let the story unfold. Once I got out of my own head and simply allowed Turnbull to do his thing--which he does very well--the process of reading was enhanced. He tells his story masterfully.

I really liked the overall arc this story takes. I also appreciate his "scholastic eye." He's an academic, that's easy to tell. Yet, he weaves some philosophical and/or ideological elements into this web of entertainment in an enjoyable and wortwhile way. Color me impressed.

DM

Urban fantasy is not my go-to subgenre, but the plot summary of No Gods, No Monsters caught my eye with “what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger: monsters are real,” and I’d seen good things about Cadwell Turnbull’s writing, so I requested and was approved for my first ARC.

What I got was a book that broke sharply from my stereotypes about urban fantasy, an audacious tapestry of a novel teeming with different perspectives and switching rapidly—often within a chapter—between first and third-person and past and present tense. No Gods, No Monsters is, as promised, a story about a world suddenly discovering that monsters are real. But it is not at all a straightforward one, with perspective shifting back and forth between monsters themselves, family members of monsters, conspiracy theorists hunting for secret societies, and more, with every perspective having its own backstory, such that each section feels like a novelette of its own as much as it feels like a piece of a greater whole.

No Gods, No Monsters is a tough book to review, and it definitely won’t be to everyone’s tastes. If you aren’t comfortable enjoying small-scale pieces of story while being in the dark about where the overarching plot is going, this won’t be for you. There is plot convergence, but it takes a long time to become apparent, and even when it does, there isn’t that moment where everything clicks into place and we see exactly why we’ve been learning about so many small stories.

But the small stories are almost universally wonderful. Turnbull’s prose is ambitious and engaging, and he makes every point-of-view character come to life, even if they only get a chapter of page time. There’s a remarkable diversity of characters, all with different aims and different struggles, but every one of them has a poignant story of loss that anchors their narrative and makes them come alive as individuals.

As I said, No Gods, No Monsters is a tough book to review, and it’s a tough book to rate as well. I imagine that those who enjoy literary-leaning fantasy may find a new favorite here, and those who want clear plot progression will be disappointed. But I’m in the middle, and I’m trying to weigh my disappointment at an ending that pulled the pieces together but didn’t fit them seamlessly against my adoration of so many individual subplots and more than a few individual passages. Ultimately, I find myself somewhere in the middle, and No Gods, No Monsters joins Rosewater and The Vanished Birds as books I’ve read this year where I enjoyed the set pieces more than the cohesive whole. If anything, it’s an even more stark division—the stories that make up No Gods, No Monsters are individually better than those other two, while the overarching narrative is less clear. But there is plenty of room for further story in the world Turnbull has created, and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for the sequel.

Recommended if you like: literary fantasy, excellent prose, myriad fully-developed characters.

No Gods, No Monsters is a pretty interesting book. Obviously the first part of a series, No Gods, No Monsters introduces a world where monsters exist and are on the verge of coming out. The story opens with a woman learning that her brother has been killed. Video of the killing shows that her brother was a member of a pack of werewolves.

From there things twist and turn. Many characters are introduced and their overlapping stories end up combining into a larger narrative. The writing is agile and the world-building is interesting. I really enjoyed the language the author uses. And the characters are refreshingly diverse.

I am really looking forward to future volumes of this series.

This was gripping and full of great diversity. I've always said that authors who incorporate diversity into their fantasy stories are very strong authors, and Cadwell Turnbull did just that. I fell in love with these characters and cannot wait to see what comes next. Thank you for the e-arc!

Turnbull is a smooth writer. Whatever tale he is telling just flows so easily from page to page, even when the subject matter is heavy. He ensures that his readers will have an easy time of it, while remaining interested and engaged.

He did it with The Lesson and he has brought this same style to No Gods, No Monsters. As he builds the reveal that monsters are among us, Turnbull is also raising questions around community and family: how they grow and change, what brings them together, what drives them apart, and how the shadowy areas overlap.

The story of No Gods, No Monsters is one of those stories that has moving parts which requires attention and which rewards a reader that sticks it out. With storylines that move forwards and backwards through time and place, expanding the cast of characters, introducing new magics and monsters, and then looping everyone together in some way was just a great reading experience.

I love a book that keeps me puzzled here, clues me in there, and that has heart. Because at the heart of this story is family and finding a place to be safe and to belong. Isn't that what we all want?

This book is incredibly well-written. I really enjoyed the monster aspects of it, and it provides a creepy-thriller vibe throughout. The format of this book felt like a snapshot of different stories; some narratives the reader returns to while others are just passing by in a section. The large cast works well and helps provide scope of the changing landscape of a speculative-fiction near-future world where humanity has to grapple with magic and science and monsters in various ways. While some of the science parts felt a little over my head, I was able to follow along and remain engaged till the very end. Thank you so much Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing for a digital copy in exchange for an honest review!

This would be a good book, if it weren’t for the writing.

It’s an urban fantasy that starts off with a kid being shot by the cops and we come to learn he’s actually a monster (a weredog, of you really want to know). I’m not spoiling anything because it happens in the first few pages of the novel.

We are then immersed in a world of humans and gods and monsters. The underlying theme is the battle for cultural acceptance - will the humans accept monsters as part of society. Yes, the book can easily be talking about any marginalized people.

There are a lot of cool stories and characters in the book that got me hooked and wanting to hear more. Fantasy fans will love that.

Here are my challenges with this book.
- there are so many darn characters it’s ridiculously hard to keep them straight.
- each chapter is about a different character, some new, some already introduced earlier in the novel, some interacting with others that you didn’t realize interact
- because of the above, it’s incredibly hard to keep track of the story and understand the nuances of the characters.

I’m amazed I finished it.
I’m also amazed the editors didn’t force the writer to create more clarity on the story.

Storywise this was a 3-3.5, but I couldn't put it down, so it has to get 4 stars for that.
This story shows our world very much like our own, where the supernatural has come out, for the most part. As just like our world, some claim they are fake, some are supportive, while others grow hateful, and some grow cults that hunger for the power they can use with or by taking from the supernatural.

Loved, Loved, LOVED, the lgbtq+ representation: we had transgender representation, asexual, open & safe queer relationships and bisexual/pansexual relationships.
Plus, we saw a lot of the hate that the LGBTQ+ community, the black community and the immigrant community goes through in both human and monster society for this world.

The story was prolonged, and the bigger picture of the overall plot is very vague. At times I had no idea what would happen, in both a good and bad way.
Another thing I didn't like was how the Latino representation ended up with drug addiction, as I see it far too much, and I really dislike that stereotype. I know addiction is a disease that affects all, but it seems always to be portrayed by Latino people, and I'm not too fond of that.
Another side thing is that there were a few too many characters, and I had to backtrack to remember some of them as they interconnected.

This was such a unique read. Turnbull's novel is beautifully written; the prose is stunning. I found the plot to be riveting, though a little bit confusing at times (there are some flashbacks and some events seem to be told out of order). The author writes about sorrow and loss in a way that feels authentic. "No Gods, No Monsters" discusses topics such as police brutality and race-based oppression, while simultaneously weaving supernatural themes into the narrative.
I would recommend this to people who enjoy literary fiction and urban fantasy.

I reviewed this book on behalf of the magazine Booklist. My review will appear there, in the magazine.

A fascinating take on the idea of the supernatural hiding in plain sight. The characters were relatable and the novel is relevant to the current political context.

Where on earth to start with this book??

In the M. Night Shyamalan movie "Signs", there is a scene that creeped out a generation. The footage is a shaky, handheld style rendering of a kids' birthday party. Everyone is running to the window. The footage looks out the window and you're looking at an ordinary yard and then BOOM a weird grey alien appears in an alleyway, looks directly at you, then runs away, and everyone starts screaming. It's not big flashy Hollywood CGI - we're talking a 2002 film here. But that's precisely what makes it so creepy - it feels REAL. It feels like it could really be some dad's handycam footage from an average lounge room. It makes you think - omg imagine if that were real?? - in a way that smooth shiny footage wouldn't.

That's what reading this book felt like to me. I would not consider this fantasy, not even urban fantasy. It's more like a kind of speculative near-future realist dystopia that just happens to feature werewolves and a dragon. It's not fantastical. It's CREEPY. I admit I almost put it down fairly early on - the disembodied voice, a child eating hands... it was almost too creepy for me to handle. And yet there was a curiosity I couldn't shake, so I kept going.

The way the book is told feels more like a series of somewhat interconnected vignettes than a truly cohesive narrative. Just as you're getting to know one character, it switches drastically to a different person and story. It requires quite a lot of patience. It's... fractured.

It's so fractured that it's hard to even pin down a short synopsis. Essentially, a video emerges one day in the near future of werewolves shifting back into humans. Suddenly the world is alerted to the existence of things that have lived in the shadows. But then the end of that video disappears from every copy of it worldwide. All evidence of the shifting is gone. Those who didn't see it on live TV think that people let their imaginations run wild. Those who did see it start to question their own memory. But there are shifts happening beneath the surface of things, monsters are being pushed into the light. By whom? And why?

The emergence of that video is known as - The Fracture.

There is a strong thread of social commentary that runs through this novel. Because I'm woefully uneducated on such things, I had no idea that the title was a play on an anarchist slogan - "no gods, no masters", meaning that no human should be held above another. Once you realise that, you see how incredibly clever the title of this book is - "no gods, no monsters", a call to equality, that no one should be held either above or below another. There is an open relationship, characters of varying gender identities and sexualities and races, a few discussions and representations of cooperatives and socialist-anarchist type communities. This book is the very antithesis of a heteronormative, default-white novel and it feels very authentic.

This is a novel that pushes the boundaries of the way things have always been done, and so the structure of it is only fitting, in my opinion. It's not a standard novel because it doesn't WANT to be a standard novel - that, in fact, is the whole point. It's subversive - it wants to challenge you and the way you think things "should" be done, just because they've always been done that way.

There is an omniscient third person narrator who increasingly becomes part of the story. It is quite disconcerting at first. Imagine you're just reading along a seemly standard third person narration, when suddenly one of the characters starts addressing the narrator, a non-physical presence. It's jarring, although it does come together a bit more towards the end.

Speaking of the end, it finishes somewhat abruptly. The whole book is a very slow build up, to a kind of climactic scene, but then it finishes in a way that is still very unresolved. Goodreads suggests this is part one of a "Saga", so I guess there's more to come. Still, it was an unsatisfying ending after such a long, slow book - especially if you're unsure if you can stomach another whole book of this weirdness.

I saw a review that invoked Gaiman's American Gods and that definitely feels like an apt comparison to me, in vibe if not content. There's an eerieness to it all, a sense of mild horror. Have you ever looked up into the night sky and imagined what it would be like if suddenly gravity stopped working and everyone fell off the earth and was burned up in the stratosphere?? The absolute horror of it, the helplessness, the vastness of a universe that doesn't really give a crap? It probably is a little weird that I have, but that's exactly the feeling this book gave me.

I would not recommend you pick this up if you're expecting standard fantasy. This is not it. If you want to read absolutely different from anything you've ever read before, something a little weird and experimental, give it a try. And don't say I didn't warn you :-P.

Trigger warnings include sexual abuse of a minor, domestic abuse, mild body horror, drug addiction, police shooting of a Black man, an active shooter scene.

This book was really hard for me to read. There were no trigger warnings despite it being a very heavy book with extremely triggering topics. With that put of the way, the book was really good. It was solid with really good development of plot and characters.

I started reading this book and nothing was connecting, so I stopped. I decided to go back and try it again, and it’s just not for me. The storyline is not clear and doesn’t flow, so it’s difficult to understand what’s going on and who’s who. DNF for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced eARC

Full disclosure the 2 star rating means nothing because the book defies rating, I based the rating on how I felt at the end of the book. This book may be pure genius as its undertones reflect the state of society right now or it could be a word salad of epic confused proportions. The synopsis does not reflect the book at all and you need a pad of paper to take notes on just to keep everything straight. There was very little character development which made it hard to connect with one character to follow through the story. I also think the book should end where it does, I don’t see how this can keep going as a series. Kudos to the author for creating a thinker, if anything else this book did make me think.

Overall this is a great book, but it is written in a way that I found really difficult to follow. There are some fantastic ideas in this and it's quite genre-bending... but it was a bit too convoluted for me. I had some trouble keeping up with such a non-linear plot. That being said, it's extremely well written and I'm sure that many people will love it.

Thanks for the ARC.