Welcome to David Behavior, a horror book review podcast. I'm Marie.

And I'm Beth.

And today's David Behavior is being a semi omniscient, voyeuristic first person narrator.

That's a mouthful.

It really is, but it's. It's definitely some behavior. Before we get started, I just want to give a reminder to support your local bookstore. You can do that by purchasing a physical copy or by using Libro FM to pick up an audiobook, or it's also available on Libby or at your local library. And today it's available. I was just about to say that. Thank you, Beth. It is no Gods, no Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull. And this book is about the. It's about a lot, let me just tell you that. But the very. The very back of the book, just the tiny, itty bitty second give, is. After an event called the fracture, the existence of monsters becomes an open secret. Although powerful forces are attempting to force a return to secrecy, we learn of a handful of individuals who are fighting for visibility and the potential safety that visibility could bring. We follow a seemingly disconnected group of characters and storylines until they finally begin to converge and we get an idea of the wider story at hand.

Mm. And this is the first book in a series.

Yes.

Which might explain some of the, I'll say, the issues that I have with it.

Yeah, I'd agree there. Who, who do you think this book is for, Beth?

This book, I think people who like fantasy, to be honest, like fantasy and science fiction. Because I think while it's kind of horror, I think it's more science fiction fantasy. I think there are like horror elements, but honestly, it didn't feel like horror while I was listening to it.

Yeah, I would agree there. If this is genre, it's very genre adjacent versus being purely horror genre. And I would agree that there are some interesting, like fantasy and sci fi elements that become more clear as the book goes on. But like you mentioned, this is the beginning of a series. So I would say that this book is for people who are wanting to dive into a new world and get that set up and are ready and willing to then move to a second book for more. Because there is like a main storyline in this that does get paid off. A lot of it is set up seemingly for the rest of the trilogy.

Yeah, for sure, I think so. I haven't read the second one as a disclaimer, so hard to say about the payoff, but yeah, that's the problem that I have with a lot of first books and like intentional first books as well.

Yeah.

Is that setup tends to eat up a lot of the page.

Correct. There's a lot of world building in this. And while I appreciate that in a series, when I'm reading a series, it can be rough when you're only reading the first book. And I imagine, especially if you didn't know that this was part of a series. But I do think that this was announced as a trilogy originally when it came out.

There's only two out now, right?

Correct.

Yeah.

All right. Do you have any similar media that you would recommend based on this book?

Well, this book is. And I think we talked about this before, but this book and a lot of books about outsiders and alienation and, like, monsters are kind of inherently gay books. So my recommendation is going to be a gay book, which I think yours is as well. But I'm going to recommend Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper. It's not for the faint of heart. I think this one is a horror book, but I think. I think it's good by the end. And I think when you hear the premise is vagina dentata, it might turn you off, and they think that's fair. But also it's a good book.

And it is. I agree. It is a good book. This is one I've actually read before, and I absolutely agree that it is a good book. And it is a more horror.

Yeah.

Like, gay story than the book that we just read.

Yes. So that's. That's my recommendation. Don't read it, mom and dad.

Don't do it. You won't like it. And then, as you rightfully pointed out, my suggestion is also gay. I will admit it has been a while since I read my suggestion, which is Weave World by Clive Barker, but Clive Barker being Clive Barker, it's gonna be pretty psychosexual and gay. Probably just, like, looking at his body of work, you're gonna get a lot of that. Your mileage might vary in terms of, like, how similar it actually is to no Gods, no Monsters. But as I was reading no Gods, no Monsters, I did keep, like, thinking back to reading Weave World and about the intersecting storylines and the themes of, like, otherness and monstrosity. And so I think I'm going to read it again. And it is also definitely a little bit more. More horror than no Gods, no Monsters, but it is still in that fantasy realm if you do like a good fantasy read. And then I also have a suggestion that is not a book. Well, it is a book, but it's not this kind of book. It is the tabletop RPG Here There Be Monsters by Wendy Yu. It engages with themes of intersectionality between queer, bipoc and disabled identities through the lens of monsters and it feels very similar to the world of no Gods, no Monsters. Actually, as I was reading through it, a lot of the characters, especially the like more quote unquote side story that I'm not going to be covering as much, almost felt like a Here There Be Monsters campaign that was like getting played on the side of the more like interpersonal main story that was going on. I'll leave a link in the show notes for where you can pick this up on itch IO I did have the privilege to playtest this game before it came out and it rules. I love it a lot. It's just a cute little D6, very simple dice light.

Looking forward to playing it. I have the physical copy and I just bought PDF as well.

Very nice, very nice. Let's get into your what's your experience with this book with with with Cadwell Turnbull in general, etc.

So I my only experience with Cadwell Turnbull was the story and Out There Screaming, which is Jordan Peele's anthology of short stories, which I think is on your list, I believe, for like potentially yes it is.

I have read it before and obviously you've read it now, but it is a great short story collection, so yeah, it is.

Yeah, they're all hits in my opinion. Even this one, which I didn't quite vibe with. The storytelling in it wasn't really my my like style and it was really hard to connect with the characters and I think it's because it's told sort of like a song or like a folk tale. The main character in it is a musician, so I can see why it's told that way and I think it matches really well. And it seems like that kind of matches with Cadwell Turnbull's style because because this book was also very stylistic and very like the cadence I felt was very unique and the way that he wrote was very unique and I I'll admit I got about 30% through this one the book, the no Gods, no Monsters and I kind of it was. I was finding it hard to follow to be honest. And I wasn't going to DNF it because I think I wanted to know what was gonna what was happening and what was going to happen, but it was becoming very hard to get back into at that point. So for me it was a bit of a challenging read and I listened to it on audiobook. I do recommend the Audiobook. The audiobook reader is really good. And I found. I feel like he had a good voice for the story and the characters and things like that. I thought it was really good, but, yeah, it was just kind of hard to, like, follow with all the names and all the characters. They felt very similar to me in a lot of ways. And without knowing the background, the initial mystery, I didn't know what was going on. And it did the same thing that the Hacienda did, where there's an opening part. And then I completely forgot about that opening part because I didn't have any context for it. And then they mentioned some names later and I was like, oh, right, yeah, we've talked about them before. Okay, got it.

100%. We were talking about this, actually, and that. The same thing happened to me. I. I completely forgot about the opening because the opening will. We'll get into it. Is that. Is that your. Your preamble?

That's my preamble. That's my. Sort of. My impression of the story is just. Yeah. And of Cadwell Turnbull. The other impression that I was going to say is just I looked up the book and he had written On Goodreads a, like, guide on how to read the book. And I didn't read it fully because I didn't really want it to, like, influence my reading of the book, but it kind of. I felt strange about an author writing about his own book on Goodreads. I don't. I felt weird about it.

Yeah. So I don't know how much you've seen of it, Beth, but there is a lot of discourse within, like, the book review sphere about how much an author should engage with the book review sphere, because reviews are theoretically for the reader, therefore, someone who might be interested in the work. They are not, you know, an advanced copy where they are giving feedback on the work. They're not, like, someone who has been asked to edit or something. And while there is a lot of respectful discourse between authors and reviewers, I feel like it can be an easy place where some authors can overstep and it can feel a little weird because that brings a certain amount of pressure to the reviewers of, like, well, they're. They're watching me. So I don't want to be mean, I don't want to be whatever in regards to a book. So I. It also felt a little weird to me when you, like, sent me that, and I realized that that had been posted on Goodreads originally just because, I don't know, it just. It felt like a weird engagement he's.

Kind of placing himself in that space. And yeah, I can see people not wanting. People seeing him in that space and not wanting to necessarily continue to review as honestly knowing that he's going to see it.

Yeah. And I did read through most of the. The guide and I will. I will say I. I don't feel like it was a very guideful guide. I don't feel like it helped answer any of the questions that I had reading. So my, my experience with both this book and with Cadwell Turnbull's story, which I believe is called Wandering Devil, his short story in Out There Screaming, the the Short Story compilation by Jordan Peele. I had that same like, kind of disconnect with the, with the writing. It felt more like a. Like almost like a Paul Bunyan story. Like a piece of like folklore versus like a. A horror short story. Which is. When I'm reading a horror anthology, I am looking for more horror than other genre. And I understand that a lot of people like you can mix genres. That's fine. That's great. We've had genre mixes that we enjoyed in the past as well. But I think I just had a hard time connecting to it because I was going in with an expectation of it being less folklore and more horror.

If I read the story on its own, I think I might feel differently about it. Like if I just came across it, let's say, on the Internet, if somebody sent it to me in a link and I just read that story, I think I would like it a lot more than reading it within this anthology. I think plopped in the middle of this anthology, it felt a bit out of place. And I think that's maybe part of it.

I agree with that because there's also another. I forget the name of it off the top of my head, but there's another short in that same anthology that's much more sci fi. And while I don't mind sci fi, I don't. I don't read as much sci fi as I do fantasy and horror. But it just felt so out of place for me that it kind of threw me off when I was reading. And so I think it's that same thing where I do enjoy Caldwell's writing style and like, I like his characters a lot. I think he writes very engaging, very realistic characters. But something about the writing style when going in with a certain expectation doesn't really stick for me. And that might be on me more than anything else. Like, it's very obvious from the reviews that a lot of people really did like connect immediately with this story and the way it was written. Honestly, the. The main thing for me that really kind of threw me off while I was reading is the fact that we have a strange narration style. And by that I mean that we do have technically a first person narration here in no Gods, no Monsters, but they regularly speak in a third person narrative because they have like a semi omniscient view of all the characters. So every time I would get reminded that we had a first person narrator, it threw me off.

Like, it was like a jump scare.

It really did. I literally. One of my notes in like the first non narrator chapter, at the end of it, he pops back up and I was like, I just got jump scared by the first person narration.

Yeah. And I think I normally. I feel like I like a first person and I like that kind of weird, you know, unreliable narrator thing. I think he was too reliable.

Yeah.

In my opinion, I feel like I wanted more editorializing almost.

I almost feel like if you're going to have an outside perspective, like an act, like an actual outside perspective, looking in on these people's lives in a very voyeuristic way, that there should be more of that viewer's personality infused into the story telling. Overall. Yeah.

Give us more Calvin.

Get more Calvin, please. There was plenty of Calvin. Let's be real. Anyway. So I think overall though, like, my. My preamble for this is I did end up enjoying this story. Like the story of it. I enjoy the story. I might actually go out and read the second one because I'm interested in this world and I am interested in these characters. I just. I'm really hoping that the second one has. Now that I may be used to the narration style. Now that I'm like used to how this book is going to be laid out, maybe I'll enjoy it more when I go into it.

I'll say when I got to. I think I was at the 30%, I wanted to like stop and it was difficult to get through. Once I got through that, I got to about the 70% mark and I like flew through the rest of it because it was. It was really picking up pace and it. It was much more interesting. And I think I got like. Like you said, I got used to that style, if that's worth anything.

Yeah. So I think that is worth something. I'm so in our spoiler roll plot points that are coming up, I am going to be focusing mostly on what I perceive as the main storyline that follows a certain subset of characters. I will touch on the other groups here and there, especially when stuff in their chapters intersects more with the main storyline and has an impact on it. But I'm not going to be super focusing on them. So if you like what you hear from the main storyline of this, I do recommend reading the book for yourself because you're not going to get really the full story in this. And then before we start, I do want to give the trigger warnings. We're not going to be going any over anything in explicit detail. And I would not call this book explicit really in any way. However, it does touch on themes of sexual abuse and specifically csa, domestic abuse, drug use, gun violence and police brutality. So take care if any of those are triggers for you. You want to get into the spoilers, Beth?

Let's spoil this book.

Spoil this book. Woo.

The main plot is not Kelvin's story.

No. You'd think that the narrator would have the main plot, but he does not. So we open at a parting of ways. We don't know yet, but this is Calvin, our narrator for the remainder of the story. He is going back home to Saint Tommien and he is going to tell us a story. And that's kind of how we lead into this. And then we now move to Laena. We are with Laena as she stands over her brother's body in a morgue. He has been shot.

And I'll note the Calvin part I completely forgot for the rest of the book. I didn't remember that that happened at all. That's also why I was jump scared by the first person because I was like, wait, what?

A hundred percent. I think when we talked about it, you were like, oh. Because we were looking up the audio again to try to get some of the. The names are a little different than I would have expected coming from reading the ebook. Which is why we were looking it up and Beth was like, I think this is a scene with Ridley. And then like listen a little more and is like, who's Tanya? And I was like, oh no, this is. This is the pre. Like this is the prologue with the narrator before he becomes the like background narrator.

I forgot it's.

Yeah, it's a lot, but yeah. So we move to a scene with Lena as she stands over her brother's body in a morgue. He has been shot by a police officer and she's in shock, obviously and having a really hard time processing his death. We do learn of childhood trauma in Lincoln's life and that Lena feels very guilty over never having said anything about that. That abuse that she witnessed. And so she partially blames herself for Lincoln's downward spiral. And then we get jump scared by Calvin because he pipes up in first person again after a whole chapter of third person narration. And this I put in the notes. This will throw me off literally every time it happens. We do end up spending more time with Laina. We learn about her relationship with Ripley and that they work at a bookstore that they own as part of a co op. Their relationship seems very sweet and they seem to have a lot of open communication. Time kind of moves weirdly in this section. And there's. It literally calls it out in the text. It talks about how grief causes time to move differently. And as someone who has, you know, dealt with some grief in my life, I absolutely agree. Time can blur. Time can feel funny. And so we kind of like move dreamily through this section of Lena's life. She has her brother's funeral. The cousin who abused Lincoln is at the funeral and ends up saying something that causes Laena to kind of pop off. And she punches her right in the ear, which I was like, yes, girl, do it again. Punch her again.

Yeah, she deserves it.

She absolutely deserves it. Obviously, you know, people pull her back and manage to stop her from completely decimating her cousin. And this is when we find out that, like, nobody really knows what happened to Lincoln other than Lena. She's the only one that really knows what was going on. Time kind of blurs again. And we flashback and we learned that Lincoln disappeared when he was 17 and that Lena was the only one who was able to track him down. She found him at a friend's house named Thomas. And this is probably where Lincoln's addiction struggle started. As he was. He was using to kind of cope with the abuse that he had gone through. And he confronts Lena when she comes to see him. He says, you knew, didn't you? And that's on page 27. And she's. Even now, she's unable to answer. Freezing again, like she froze as a child after witnessing what happened. And eventually she leaves because Lincoln makes it clear that if she doesn't admit what happened, that he doesn't want her help as well.

I just want to mention that with these flashbacks, I thought so it's unclear to me, and maybe I'm overthinking it because of the omniscient narrator. But it's unclear to me if this is just Laena remembering things or if this is actually Calvin going into that time and actually, like telling us what's happening because he can go through Time and space. Yeah, so. And other dimensions and things like that. So it's like. I think it's probably just simply Laena remembering, but it's worth also saying, you know, it's possible that Calvin actually went there and witnessed this.

Yeah. And I kind of interpret it, this specific one, the one when he was 17 and ran away, I kind of interpreted that as maybe her starting to think about it and him kind of slipping back into the time stream to witness the event. Whereas the following flashback that we're gonna get to in a bit, I interpret that as a dream that she is having.

Yeah, yeah.

That happened before.

Yes, that one definitely. I just mean this one specifically.

No, yeah, I kind of. I kind of got the idea that like she is remembering because this is obviously bringing up a lot like her. The death is bringing up a lot of this trauma. But I did get the impression, once I understood Kelvin a little bit more, that this was him like literally going back and like witnessing, well, what led to this basically.

Exactly. And I think again, like in this part in the book that wasn't clear, but I think looking back, it does make a lot of sense if he is doing that for sure.

Absolutely.

I feel like it could be clearer that he is doing that or it could be clearer that he is. Not that I want him to insert himself into what's going on, but he just gives the facts in a third person way without. And even saying what Lena's thinking. So that's a bit hard for me, I guess, to like, square. I just.

Yeah, yeah, it's weird. At a point later on he literally gets like disconnected from somebody that he is currently observing. And so it's clear that it is like a. He latches onto one person at a time, it seems like, and is able to like witness everything in their head. So I guess this could just be her remembering. But earlier in the morgue when he pops up again, he says, I ask her, do you still feel guilty about that? And like, obviously Laena can't hear him. But I guess my interpretation is that he's either been with Laena this whole time, taking an interest in her story for whatever reason, or since learning of like that, the fallout from all this, he has gone back and learned about Laina's story.

Yeah. And we learn as well that he can kind of pluck people out of the time that they're in when he talks to Harry and they won't remember talking to him. So I think the problem I have is that it doesn't feel like Calvin's voice when he's doing the third person. Like it feels like it's two different voices. The third person is one voice. Because it is, it's, it's prose, like it is descriptive language. It doesn't feel like a person is saying it as they're telling a story. Like, I'm thinking of the Fisherman by John Langan and that's in first person. And it kind of like delves into a person telling a story about a person telling a story. And I think it goes one deeper, I believe. And it's very clear who is telling the story. Like there is a voice and it just doesn't feel like Calvin has a voice, in my opinion.

I do agree because it very much feels like Kelvin does have a voice. It's just only in his first person narration that he has a voice. Exactly. And his voice doesn't carry over into him telling us about these other people. And that feels a little weird. And I, I'm trying to think about. Because I don't know how I would handle that as an author if this was the approach that I wanted to take, was having that kind of switch back and forth between the two narration styles. I just know that for me it was very disarming every time it happened for a long time into the book. And there were points where I completely forgot about Calvin because it would be so long between his. His inserts. And then I feel like you have to kind of go all or nothing maybe with it. And it felt like, yeah, it was leaning towards nothing instead.

Exactly, exactly. That's. Yeah, those are my thoughts as well. And it's hard to say. Again, I kind of want to read the second book because I want to sort of see if we get more of that, if it's the same or. Or what. Yeah, I'm interested for sure.

Ooh, first time, second book on. On David behavior.

Maybe.

Question mark. Maybe whole series. No, I'm kidding.

Bonus episode.

Bonus episode Marginalia all right. A few days after the funeral, we find out that Ripley, who, once again Lena's partner, is a member of something called the Sun Collective. And it's a group of co ops that are co oping together. It's a co op of co ops, which I think is very fun. And that he is planning a team building trip and he's worried about leaving Laina alone. It's a while out, though. He still has a while before the trip actually happens. Laina then dreams of the last time that she saw her brother, which was on a subway train three years after her previous flashback, she begs him to let her take him home, but he wants her to admit that she knew what was happening. And she finally does, telling him that she knew something but that she was scared. But then the dream begins to shift. And this part, honestly, was. Was this was one of the horror moments in it that really worked for me and is very emotional too. It shifts and she realizes that he's been shot. Like, she. She remembers that he's been shot and that he's actually dead. And it, like, affects the dream and it's really sad and. But then she wakes up and she hears a voice, a voice from nowhere. And it asks her if she wants the body cam footage. And she doesn't know the voice, but Calvin recognizes the accent, which is apparently a Saint Tommy, an accent from his area. He doesn't recognize the voice, but he recognizes the accent. And Lena is just like, yeah, I want the tape. Which I'm like, I don't know. That's. I'm like, girl, you talking to, like, voices in the darkness, like, what's going on? And the voice promises that she'll have it in a day. But when Lena, like, turns on the light mid sentence, nobody's there. So she kind of thinks she might have been dreaming maybe. And then the next day, she gets a visit from a woman named Rebecca. Rebecca, it ends up, knew her brother. They knew. Knew a lot about her brother. She was a close friend of Lincoln. She was helping him get clean. They were working on making amends with, like, his different family members and stuff. He had been planning to come see Laina, but he died, unfortunately, before he had a chance, which this new information is a little like. It kind of throws Lena off because Lincoln was found nude after he had been shot by the police officer. So the assumption is that he was, like, running around kind of high, out of his mind, naked, and that's why the cops shot him. And now she knows, though, that he had been getting clean, that he had not been using. And so she starts to question a little bit more about what happened. And then she also finds out, and this really throws her off, is that Rebecca knows about the trauma that Lincoln had as a child and also knows about Laena being unable to intercede with what was going on. And she tells her that she was just a kid, that it's like she's not her fault. And Lena's not able to really accept that at that moment from this stranger. But it does, I think it does reassure her a little that, like, her brother wanted to say these Things to her, he just wasn't able to.

Yeah, for sure. And I'll say, just another confusing part for me. I confused the voice with Rebecca, to be honest.

Oh.

I was like, that was a bit. I don't know, maybe it was just the way, like, when I was listening to it, but I thought, oh, it's like Rebecca tied to this voice. Does she know about the body cam footage? And then later on she works at the bookstore. And I was like, wait, is this the same Rebecca? And I got a bit confused at that point. That's fair.

I didn't interpret Rebecca as the voice because in this scene, Rebecca invites Laina to a protest that they're planning and, like, writes her number down on a piece of paper in case she wants to get in contact with her. And after she walks through the door and comes back, there is an additional note in new handwriting on that paper that's like, as promised. And, like, the USB drive is there. So I guess that part, to me, I was just like, oh, okay, this is. The invisible voice person is a different person than then Rebecca.

Right.

Did the narrator kind of like, narrate them a little the same, the two voices or something?

No, no, because they have different accents. He definitely gave Sonia an accent, so.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. That was Sonia, right?

It's probably Sonia. I. That's one of the things where I'm not sure I have who it is.

It was definitely Sonia for sure. I know this. I do know this because she, like, when we get to Malku later, they talk about that and how they orchestrated it and orchestrated by giving the drive to Lena. So you can infer that it is Sonia. Yeah.

And also the fact that Sonia is the only invisible woman running around so far in this story. So far.

Yeah. Well, it's. It's weird too, because Lena calls her a voice and I'm like, wait, is she hearing voices or is this actually, like, a person? And then, yeah, later when we learn about an invisible woman, that's. Yeah.

And like, I still remained confused for a while. I think I maybe missed that part that you're talking about when Melku and Sonia were talking, because I still thought that maybe it was Melku because of the ants talking to Dragon later. And I wasn't sure what voice the ants were using, if it was Melka's because they're his, because they're. They're ants, or if it was Sonia because she was talking through the portal. Or, like, I don't. I don't know, it gets confusing. But no, with the accent. I believe it's Sonia.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The narrator gave her the accent. So I, like I said at the time, I was like, oh, is this just like a voice? Like, and I think that's where I got confused about Rebecca and the usb, because I was like, wait, so did Rebecca leave the usb? Because I was thinking of the voice as a voice and not like a person.

Yeah, 100. Also, I think it's a little freakier that it's a person.

Yeah.

And not just like a weird long distance spell or something. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, this flash drive shows up as promised and late that night by herself because we're starting our Secrets and lies. Like I said at the beginning, Laina and Ridley seem to have a very open, communicative relationship. And this, I feel like, is where the secrets and lies starts on both their parts, kind of. So Laina waits until later that evening, watches the video on the drive, and what she sees is the police officer running from something and then turning around and shooting what appears to be a large wolf or dog. The officer then turns to speak to, like, a person that came out of their house to see what was going on and horribly says, don't worry, we'll have someone come pick it up. And the woman is, like, looking at him, horrified, and he turns back and it has become a man's body, specifically Lincoln's body. And so now Lena knows Brother was a wolf. A wolf guy. Lena takes it remarkably well.

A wolf guy.

A wolf guy. Not a wolf man.

That's what they're called, a wolf guy.

I can't call them a werewolf. Later on we learn, like, I feel like that might be a slur.

Wolf guy. Wolf guy.

But yeah, no, she. She takes it remarkably well after watching this video. And the voice talks to her again and is like, so what are you gonna do about it? And even though she's still a little bit in shock, she decides that she is going to, quote, make amends and posts it all over the Internet. Basically, Calvin at this point shows us the power that you were talking about, where he pauses time and speaks directly to the voice. And they tell him that they can't talk to him because they have a contract not to talk to him. And I don't think we ever get back to this.

No, no, we don't at all. No, I actually forgot about this. Maybe that's part of the second book because we don't get a lot of the information about the two organizations. The Zoo Vox and. And Asha. But that feels like part of it because there are elements of that to. Is it Cassandra?

Yeah.

As well.

Yeah.

Where she's like, I can't.

I've never answered.

Spoken of.

Yeah.

Yeah. So. But the soundtrack thing is interesting.

I do have a quote here from it.

Okay.

And it is. It is here that I stop time. The world around us slows. All matter falls silent and all sound stops. There is only the voice and me. I reach out to the formless thing, trying to access its mind, but finding nothing. In all my time traveling the fractal sea, this has never happened. Minds are always open to me. What are you? I asked directly. What is this? For a terrible moment, the voice doesn't answer. And for the first time, I feel a sense of danger I've never thought to feel. I've signed a contract. It finally says, I am bound not to speak to you. By whom? The universe, it says. And the voice answers no more of my questions.

Yeah. Okay.

So, yeah, I do think that this is probably something we're going to get more into. In the second book from the how to read that you had linked to me. Cadwell did mention that the first book is like, for the humans and the second book is for the monsters. So maybe we're going to get more into that perspective in the second book. Because also later on, I don't have this in my notes because I kind of skimmed over a few of the parts. But, like, Melku also confronts Calvin.

That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they make it clear that, like, they know when he's watching and stuff.

Yeah.

So I feel like maybe the whole order of Asha has something going on where they, as like a collective, for whatever reason, can sense this interloper.

Well, because Kelvin, I think, is. Is also a monster.

Yeah, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He just has a different. I don't think they ever really name what his power is. But yeah, he. Like Cassandra is a monster, but she's here.

Like, she's omniscient.

He's just a semi omniscient guy. He's just.

He can see into minds, he can travel.

Like, I feel like he has one of the craziest power sets of anyone so far. Although I guess he can't really impact anything.

No, I think it's more of like astral projection.

Yeah.

Kind of thing.

But yeah. So we don't really get an answer to that. It was weird. It threw me off a little bit. But anyway, like I said, Laina chooses to release the body cam footage she uploads it to a bunch of sites and, like, sends it to a bunch of news agencies. She tells Ridley about it, and he's worried about what might happen to Laina and to him, thinking that they might come for her. He doesn't really, like, have a they in mind, but he's like, hey, if this is. If this is a real thing that's happening, there's probably people trying to cover this up.

Well, it was covered up because the footage that was released initially by the police didn't include the transformation.

Correct. The voice then returns and tells Lena to watch the news. And she sees a group of seven large wolves or dogs blocking the interstate. And when they are approached by the police, they shift into people. And right before it cuts out, she recognizes Rebecca. And so now she knows that the reason that Rebecca knew her brother and was close to him is because they were all part of a wolf pack together. And she's like. Once again, Laina handles things very interestingly. She, like, is happy about it after she watches it, and I think it's because it confirms that, like, she's not crazy that she didn't get, like, doctored footage or something. But it just. It feels like she takes things way too easy compared to, like, everyone else in this book, kind of.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right, so at this point, we jump forward four months and we meet one of the characters whose storyline I'm not going to focus on very much. His name is Harry. He is a recently divorced professor who has fallen down the rabbit hole of conspiracy. And I don't like him very much.

Sucks. He sucks so much.

He's so weird. He's so creepy about women, like, all the time. It's very bizarre all the time.

Yeah.

But we find out that a book has come out called the Fracture Effect, which is about this moment in time where people saw on the news a dead body turn into a wolf, as well as several wolves turn into people. But then all footage of it has since been edited, seemingly, and no one can find the full footage of anything anymore. So a lot of people have been like, you know, that didn't really. It was a prank or, oh, people are misremembering. And then there's people who are like, no, it's very clear that monsters are real. Like, what are you talking about? So.

Right.

It's like a moment of divide in the community, in the.

In the world.

In the. In the. In the world. And at least the United States, probably the world. And then one of Harry's message board friends goes Missing for a while before coming back and posting a bunch of, like, cryptic clues that lead Harry on a weird scavenger hunt and to a secret meeting at a huge mansion that has a second underground mansion underneath it.

Like, once again, the house from Jurassic World.

Yeah.

Has, like, the dinosaurs in the basement.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great visualization of it. He meets several other people there who have also followed these clues, including, like, some guy from his message board. But more importantly, Corona Flood. I. My instinct is a call her Corona, but, you know, pronunciations. I do like Corona a lot. She seems super cool. The guests kind of talk amongst themselves and they consider that either they're about to get, you know, inducted into a secret society or they're about to be sacrificed. Which one happens, Beth?

I mean, they do continue to exist. So it is sacrifice, but it's like they still have bodies. Minus an arm.

Minus an arm. Yeah.

There is a sacrifice which gets eaten, which is dragon.

A cute little dragon. Yeah. They get placed under a weird compulsion spell, seemingly like they can't move or fight against it. And a young child comes out and just chomps down on the fingies of everyone's hand, breeds fire on it, and then just nom, nom, nom, hand gone. Yeah.

I don't think we learn why. I think that's maybe part of the monster plot.

It's some sort of ritual that what we come to learn is called the Order of Zoovox. Yeah. I'm going to get into this a little bit right here. And then we're going to kind of skim over Zoo Vox for the rest of the book.

We simply can't.

Yeah, we simply cannot. But we then shift to Dragon's point of view, and we find out that he is essentially a prisoner of the Order of Zuvox. He's sick to. It's so sad. Like, instantly sad. He's feeling sick because he had to participate in this ritual. And he ate arm. He ate. He didn't eat a arm.

He ate, like, 10 arms.

Like, he ate this poor baby.

He just wants pancakes.

He just wants pancakes. He has a creepy caretaker named Smoke who I think is an evil wizard of some sort. And some glowing ants show up, and they're like, hey, Dragon, you want to escape? And he's like, yeah. And he goes through a portal, and it leads to, like, a cabin out in the woods. And he meets Malku and Sandra and Sonia, and he. They tell him, hey, we're monsters, just like you're a monster. And he's like, I'm a dragon. And they're like, that's cool, kid. And we help other monsters. If you want to help us, we'd love that. But you don't have to. Your freedom is not contingent on you helping us. And we kind of vaguely learn that Malku and the rest of them are part of something called the Order of Asha and that they are opposing the Order of Zuvox, which itself is a splinter cell of another order. And I have so many question marks in this point in my plot summary. It, it brush, it brushes lightly over all this. It does not give us a lot of information.

And I can't tell if that's good or bad at this point. It's like, it's so much. Yeah, it's so much to like, remember. And you're like, is this going to come up later? Should I store this in my brain or should I just let it go?

Eventually I came to realize that this is stuff probably leading into the second book. I think that the second book will deal more with these orders. So like I said at the top of this, I'm just going to lightly brush over the rest of anything with this storyline, only if it has to do with the main story or intersects with the main story. But just know that these guys are running around. They're running around, they're doing stuff. I'm losing my mind.

Everyone's doing stuff.

Everyone's doing stuff. We also briefly touch back in with our semi omniscient narrator, Calvin, as he arrives in Saint Tommien and he meets with his deceased brother's wife and child. It's very clear that he has a lot of trauma related to the death of his brother as well as like everyone else does. And it seems like his niece might also have some powers. We don't get too into it. And that's kind of all we learn about Calvin for now is that he has a niece and he's home. And then finally we jump over to Rebecca and we, we jump over to Rebecca and we learn about her past. So Rebecca, as a reminder because there's a lot of characters in this, is the woman who came to see Laena about her brother.

I kind of at this point don't really like Rebecca very much. Sorry to her, but like, I don't know, she seems, I don't know, she seems very selfish.

And there is a part later on in this, in this section that I kind of skim over, but I do want to touch on it a bit more in our discussion about her mother.

Yeah, so.

But we Find out that Rebecca has a strained relationship, or had a strained relationship rather, with her father as a child. He struck her out of anger, which obviously always wrong. It never happened again. And although it really did seem like he felt guilty about what happened, the trauma had a very deep impact on Rebecca and she is unable to repair her relationship with him before he dies, which, once again, understandable. Physical abuse is physical abuse, even if it only happens once. Like, it kind of breaks that trust that you have that it won't happen again. And then we kind of zip. And we're eight months after the fracture. So it's been four months now since the last part of the story and we find out that Laina and Rebecca are dating. And when I first read this part, I was extremely confused because I was like, oh, no. I thought that maybe the events and like, the death of her brother and like the events of the tape and everything had, like, broken Ridley and Laina's relationship up and that she had moved on. But we find out later that they're just poly. They're just polyamorous and they have an open relationship.

It's so funny that that's what that was what your thought was. I was like, did I miss something? Are these different characters? Because I'm like, is this the Rebecca that we know or is this some other person because she's working at the bookstore? And I'm like, did I just get confused? Was Lena the original person? Are these new people?

That's so valid, I will say, because, like, there's a chapter where it's like, mostly a flashback. And then, like, Rebecca briefly mentions Laina and I didn't even clock that it was Laina. And then in the next chapter, it's like, I woke up next to Laina and I was like, wait, wait a minute.

Yeah. And then this is where we learned about Sarah as well. It's like, okay, Sarah is here now.

Yeah. So we find out that Laena and Rebecca are dating. We find out that of the seven wolves caught on film at the fracture, Rebecca and Sarah are the only ones that remain in the pack. The rest drifted away because strange policemen with, like, glazed eyes and seemingly under some sort of mind control came to them with, like, lists of their family members and friends, making, like, a very obvious threat of, like, hey, if you say anything, we're going to kill your friends and family. And so three of them, I think, left at once together, and then the other one kind of drifted away as well. And so it's just Rebecca and Sarah at this point. Plus Laina visiting every now and then. And this is also where we learn more specifically that every copy of the protest video, regardless of where it was stored, has been edited to have the last few seconds that show the wolves turning back into humans gone. So something very powerful has edited these things. And we do get confirmation later what that is. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's. And this is the part of the book where I started being wizard, Techno wizard. This is the part of the book where I. This is where I was like, oh, man. Like, I'm gonna try to push through, but this is hard. I did get more into it again as we went further, but, like, as everything kept stacking up, I was just like, oh, my God, now I have to know who Harry is and who Dragon is and who. Like, I was just like, so many.

Characters for me, it was all the, like, female names. I was like, wait, is this the same Lena? What are we doing here? Rebecca, Sarah, who are these women? We all know I hate women.

Do be hating women, but they're just like.

I don't know. Sarah just felt very. Like she didn't have her own personality. Like, she felt very generic to me. Like, Rebecca and Sarah, I don't know.

I disagree there. I did like Sarah. I liked them going out to. Like, I'm obviously, I'm brushing over a lot of this, but, like, I like them going out to the woods so that Sarah could run around and shift because she's obviously processing things and I don't know, I liked her. I thought she was sweet. But regardless, at the bookstore, like you said, Rebecca works there now. I don't know when that happened. We don't. We're not sure what happened. But Rebecca works at the bookstore now, and Laina, very subtly in public in a bookstore, kind of sidles up to Rebecca and is like, have you ever considered churning anyone? And Rebecca kind of realizes that Laina wants to understand her brother better and that's why she's asking about it. And Rebecca takes her to meet her mom. And this is not a romantic gesture. Gesture. It's pretty weird. We get some flashbacks of Rebecca's relationship with her mother, and it was obviously very strained, but she was also obviously very worried about her mother dying. And so it becomes clear that she changed her mother at some point.

Yeah.

And after they leave, Laina is pretty upset because it. It seems very apparent that Rebecca didn't ask before she did it. She didn't, like, get consent to her mom. And as Rebecca puts it into A monster. And, like, that is a word that seems to be reclaimed by some of the characters in this book. But for others, it's obvious that they're, like, the historical, like, connotation of monster, which Rebecca is not happy with what she is a lot of the time. And Rebecca admits that she needs to have a conversation with her mom. But this is the part where, like, I kind of skimmed over it, but I felt like Rebecca's attitude was a little weird and a little selfish in all of this. And I didn't feel like she was being upfront with Laina and that instead of engaging with Laina and explaining her worries about potentially turning her, she tried to scare her instead.

Yeah, it was so indirect. It was so weird. It was such a weird thing to do.

It was.

I can also see it as a very vulnerable thing to do because I can see feeling some guilt and maybe wanting some, like, external validation about this thing that you did. And, like, that's also very selfish because it's bringing somebody that you care about and being like, look at this thing I did. I think maybe it was good, but maybe it was bad. Oh, yeah. It's like, okay, it's.

It's weird. And the main thing I did appreciate from that conversation is Rebecca admitting that she did need to have, like, an honest conversation with her mom. And so I'm glad she got there. And, like, there is some acknowledgment in her internal monologue about how, like, 10 years ago she wouldn't have been able to take that criticism from Lena.

Right.

So there's potential progress. But right now, Rebecca just seems kind of not like a great girlfriend. But they do say I love you to each other. Aw, cool. Cool, cool, cool. We jump over to Ridley. It's still in the same time period. He's on his way to that co op meeting, that co op co op meeting that he was going to.

And I forgot about this meeting.

Oh, this meeting was crazy. How did you forget about the meeting?

Like, before, it was like, oh, he's going to this to his hometown. And I was like, oh, okay, great. I don't remember why he's doing this. And, yeah, they mentioned the meeting. I was like, oh, right, yeah, that's fair.

That's fair.

It's not like, so long ago.

It was so long ago. It was a hundred narrators. So we jump over to him. He's on his way. He's driving while he is traveling, he's listening to a podcast about the disappearance of Corona Flood. And I literally highlighted that in my book. And I was like, it's her. So it kind of loosely connects, like, what's happening with the order over to the main story. Ridley is on his way to the collective meeting, but first he stops in his old hometown. He visits a barber shop while he's there. And this is where we find out that he is trans. One of the barbers is a. A dick to him and is like, oh, I think you're looking for the salon down the street.

Like, oh, it's so weird. I didn't even, like, clock. I was like, what? Why would he ask that? Yeah. And then. Yeah, I, like, I. I did get it, but I was like, I don't understand no 100%.

Well, because up to this point, I don't think that. I don't think. I don't think Ridley's identity had been really mentioned at all.

Or is, like, description really, like, we didn't get, like, a very clear picture.

Yeah, yeah. But. So, yeah, the barber is a dick and asks if he's looking for the slum. But the other barber, Marcus, speaks up and makes it clear that Ridley is welcome here and calls him Riddle. And so we can kind of assume that they have a relationship. And as Marcus cuts Ridley's hair, it does become clear that there is a history there. At least friendship, if not something more. And Marcus does ask Ridley to go out for dinner, which I thought was very sweet. But Ridley has to go home because he promised his parents that he'd come for dinner. We meet his parents and I. I did not like them at all. They were pretty insufferable. They don't like his job, they don't like his wife. They don't like. They're just like. They're very condescending to him. We find out that they are, like, doctors. And so they have issues with. Of him owning a co op instead of doing a good job that pays lots of money. And they are.

They don't see it as, like, a real job. Like.

Yeah.

Because nobody owns the bookstore. So it would almost. It would be more legitimate.

Yeah. If it was just his. And he had employees or something. Yeah. And then they seem accepting of him being trans. But he at least feels that his father, Les, like, really accepts him for who he is and more wants to appear to accept it. And I've met people like that, so I totally get, like, where he's coming from with that vibe. And that is the vibe that I got off his dad was like. He seemed very smug and, like, the.

Relationship here in this conversation Made me so uncomfortable. And it was written so well to, like, make me feel uncomfortable because I was like, I would want to get out of there. This feels so bad to be in and exist in.

Absolutely.

Like, very realistic and very, like, awful. I wanted to crawl out of my skin 100%.

I agree. It was a very uncomfortable scene for me. Eventually, he goes up to his childhood room and, like, it's bringing up a lot of mixed emotions. And we kind of learn about how he had difficulty growing up because he was like, not only mixed race, not only asexual, but also trans. And, like, also his parents were, like, overachieving people who, like, like, forced him to participate in a million different, like, after school things. Like, it was just a lot, a lot of pressure on this child.

Yeah, they had vis a vision for him and it wasn't what he is or was.

Exactly. But we also find out that Ridley is a Le Guin fan, so hell yeah.

There you go.

Hell yeah. Good taste. He decides, like, I'm leaving at like 5 in the morning. I'm not. I'm not gonna deal with breakfast with these. And so he continues his drive. And we do learn more about Corona through the podcast he's listening to. And I just, I literally, what I put is, honestly, she seems awesome. And I was hoping this was a clue she wasn't actually dead. And then in parentheses, spoiler, she isn't. And then Ridley knew about her originally because she wrote a lot about cooperative co ops and that's kind of like his whole shtick is, like, he's super into cooperative co ops and, you know, unity between communities and helping each other. And also, importantly for the main storyline, we find out that Corona was a believer in secret societies and that she suggested in a blog that the leaked footage and subsequent cover up were the actions of two different factions. And on page 141 it says perhaps it was the terms of a truce. She wrote in her blog a cover up that served multiple factions. And we later find out that Corona is big brain genius lady. And she was exactly right. That is exactly what happened.

Yeah.

So he finally gets to the co op, they have their meeting. It's like business as normal. And then who do we see here? Melku Malku shows up and they're like, hey, I'm part of this Sen collective. And also, guys, I think that we should stand in solidarity with monsters and no ulterior motive. No ulterior motives.

Don't worry about it whatsoever.

And I'm laughing, I'm laughing because, like, he. They Bring it up. And, like, one of them, Nick, is like, yeah, monsters don't exist. What are you talking about? And Melaku's like, I'm a monster. So is my friend Cassandra. We should stand. Guess what? I'm here. So Malku is basically suggesting that considering that the collective offers support to marginalized groups, and considering the fact that a lot of monsters are part of those marginalized groups, that they should make it clear that they extend that solidarity out to monsters. It is really funny because, like, besides Nick, who is losing his mind, all of them are kind of trying to, like, continue on with business as normal. One of them goes back to keeping the minutes. It's so funny.

It's very good. It's very good. But, yeah, it's very, like, intersectional allyship. Making the argument for, you know, protection for everyone and including monsters into that intersectionality.

Exactly. The group ignores Nick, which I love. Nick is, like, losing his mind this entire time. Nick is just a random member of the collective. Like, we'll get back to him. They keep asking, you know, questions of Malku. They find out, like I mentioned, that both Malku and their friend Cassandra are monsters, and they discuss what that solidarity would look like. Malku specifies support, protest, and protection. And then finally, Nick completely loses his cool and goes outside for a smoke. We also find out. This is where I was saying I think that shifter is the preferred term over werewolf. I think werewolf might be considered derogatory amongst the shifter community because of the way that, like, male Belku gently corrected someone when they asked about werewolves.

Yeah, and I think it's also, we learn that it's not just wolves, it's, like, other animals as well. So shifter is more accurate, maybe in a more precise term.

Exactly. And we find out that Cassandra is a seer of some sort and that Melku is something called a tech mage. And then.

And.

And that. So everything is normal. Like, Nick is losing his cool, but leaves everyone's, like, matter of fact, discussing meeting stuff. And then out of nowhere, a dude just shows up and throws Nick's arm at the group after threatening Malco. Everyone panics. Malka, like I said, we just found out they're a tech mage. They create some kind of cannon that, like, fires at the spooky guy. And then at the same time, they put everyone into, like, a circle. And the exact, like, timing of everything is really hard for me, even though I did reread this scene a few times. But basically, as they are getting ready to teleport the group or whatever, everyone sees And I quote, the universe itself stalking across the barn on two legs from page 152. And it's such a wild occurrence that is happening. This is the time when Calvin gets temporarily detached from Ridley's point of view. Like, everything goes crazy.

Well, and. And Ridley gets detached from his own point of view. Yeah, he completely starts to, like, dissociate.

Well, yeah, because he's seeing the universe.

It feels like for the rest of the book, he's like. He detaches until the protest. And then he kind of, like, realizes he needs to connect back with Elena.

100. They end up in a warehouse of some sort. They did teleport. And really, like, has figured out kind of how Cassandra's whole thing works. Cassandra's not able to answer every single question. Sometimes she answers with, like, that has never been answered before or something like that. And he is able to ask her what that thing was. And apparently it was a lesser God that was curious about what they were up to in the barn. And everyone's upset. Like, everyone. You know, everyone just went through some trauma. Teleporting didn't sound like the funnest event that they all just experience either. It sounded a little painful. And Malku decides that it's best if they leave the collective and teleports everyone back. And I understand the point of this scene, but it did end up feeling a little pointless at this. Like, when Melku's just like, never mind.

Well, I think it's to strategically plant the seeds of allyship within a, like, human community. And I think that's maybe what the whole point was. And they didn't expect to be interrupted by smoke. And I think that was smoke.

Okay, Was that. Is that. Is that what you think? Was that okay?

I believe that was smoke.

I didn't know who the f. That guy was. I. Like, when they mentioned a demigod, I was like, wait, are they talking about the guy that threw the arm? I'm like, no, they're talking about the universe walking across. Across the room.

Right. Who apparently Sonia has a contract with.

Right, Exactly. So, yeah.

Anyway, we cannot get into that.

We can't get into it anyway. Sorry.

We cannot even get into, like, Sandra and Sonya because, like, that's a whole other kettle of fish.

So all that happens. Melku decides it's best if they leave the collective and teleports everyone back. Which, once again, not a. Ridley, understandably shaken up from everything that happened, seeks comfort with his friend Marcus. He spills the beans kind of immediately about his wife's girlfriend being a shifter. And from Marcus's reaction and from the flashbacks that we get to their college days to me it became pretty clear that Ridley and Marcus loved each other a lot. But it didn't work out between them because they wanted different things out of the relationship. And it really seemed like Marcus didn't really understand Ridley's asexuality slash polyamory. Like, that type of affection and love didn't make sense to him, which is fair. But he. He still is there for his friend and he lets Ridley stay the night and they end up falling asleep together. And then the next day, Ridley carves a bird of happiness for Marcus which has been like a reoccurring thing that Ridley has done for those that he cares about. Out. And they get IHOP before Ridley heads home completely skipping seeing his parents again, which I don't blame him after everything that's gone down.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Within terms of, like, I do. Like how sort of casually things like polyamory and asexuality and trans identity and that sort of thing is just. It's not like a point. Like, it's just a thing that exists.

Yeah.

It's not highlighted in any special way. It's just like.

I don't even think I've mentioned it yet. But, like, Melku is non binary. Like, it's like it's just part of some people's identity. And I appreciate that there is a variety of people in this. Like.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's a variety. And people just exist that way. It doesn't have to be like a point of contention. It's. It's a realistic part of life in society.

Exactly. It's. It. They're not like putting a hat on on it.

Exactly.

In the book, it's not the main focus. Although, you know, the intersectionality of identities is a big focus of the book. But it's not like everything is about the fact that Ridley is trans. And I appreciate that. That it's just an aspect of his character.

Well, I liked seeing a relationship where. Where Ridley is Polly and that's not compatible with somebody who is monogamous.

Yeah.

And that's just.

Just a real thing. Yeah.

And it's. It's sad, but it's mature to accept that.

100. And then we do. You just brought them up. It's them. It's the sisters. We flash over to Sandra. We learn about her relationship with her adopted sister Sonia. Not getting too much into it. There is a part that touches the main storyline in that we learn that Sandra And Sonya's parents disappeared while they were on a trip to the mainland. And now years later, Sonya has managed to find their mother, but they find out that she has seemingly been kidnapped and brainwashed by parties unknown. Which I believe connects to the whole brainwashing plot that takes place at the. At the protest later. We're probably going to get more into that in the next book. But we also get confirmation of Crona's theory that there was a cover up by multiple factions. Like Sonya just straight up says, like we were killing together with the order of Zoobox to cover this up. And like Melku deleted all the files or whatever. We then also spend a little time with Kelvin. And this is. I don't know how you felt about this part of the book. I don't know if you knew that Hugh Everett was a real person.

No.

Okay, so Hugh Everett is a real life person, the real physicist who proposed relative state interpretation of quantum mechanics. And it felt really weird to me that he was a character in this, especially considering the context of his chapters which were about his death over and over and over again in different realities.

Yeah, it's a little strange. I'm not a huge fan of using real life events like that, especially of a real person's life to further the plot of your book.

Yeah.

Implying some. I mean, not implying something supernatural. I don't think think that it's really implying that he's involved in anything supernatural. But it is kind of weird to write a conversation with a real person. I don't know. It feels very strange to me.

It felt a little strange to me. And I don't know, I. I'm still kind of unpacking how I feel about it. Like I said, mostly just because it was a lot to do with his.

A bit personal.

Yeah. It was not only about his death, but it was about like his mental state at the time of his death and an interpretation from the outside of that, basically. And it just felt a little strange other than that. The other thing that we find out is that Calvin spends so much time quantum hopping because of the loss of his brother. And he specifically visits realities where his brother did not die so that he can kind of see what a happy life could have been for his brother. Which I felt was. It was very sad and it was very sweet. And it did invest me a little bit more into Calvin's story there than anything else really that we've seen from him.

Which is why I wanted more from his. His voice, his perspective.

Yeah.

Because I think with his power, maybe that's part of it, is that he gets lost. He gets lost in the thoughts and feelings of the people that he latches onto. And maybe that's part of it.

It's an escapism for him.

That's what I was gonna say. Maybe part of the latching onto people is to escape from his own circumstance. He wants to sort of experience other people's lives. But I still feel like I wanted more from his voice, even if it wasn't his perspective. Like, his, like, feeling his narration. So it didn't feel like we were getting narration necessarily. We were getting a third person. A third person.

Like a regular third person omniscient view when we were in reality dealing with a set, semi omniscient, like, person. Like a person. Not. Not just that generic over the shoulder look that we usually get.

Yeah.

All right. So we finally, finally get back to Lena. It's been a while. It's been a minute. And now it is just shy of a year since the fracture. It is actually Halloween, and Lena is getting ready to throw a birthday party for Ridley. We find out that his birthday being on Halloween sometimes. Sometimes means that people are too busy, like, going to Halloween events to really attend any of his parties, which I was. I thought was very sa. Dad was like, oh, he seems. He seems pretty at peace with it. But Lena is, like, really determined to, like, make sure that this year he has a good party. She orders pizza. We have a very long aside about her ordering to the pizza place. I don't know why we needed that, but she orders to the wrong place and has to drive all the way over there and then all the way back. Okay.

It was so much. It was so much. It was so long.

I don't know why that was there. I legitimately don't know what that added to anything.

I think it maybe added to, like. Like, her mental state. Like, we're trying to get an idea of why she's so stressed, but I'm like, I don't need that whole thing.

No.

Like, it does. We don't need to describe the whole thing.

Like, it.

I don't know.

You could have told me that she accidentally ordered to the wrong place and had to take time to go drive there. I didn't need to have a blow by blow of the traffic.

It's giving, like, little kid telling you a story. Yesterday I went to the store. Okay, okay. And then, yeah, I was gonna get pizza. And then it's like, okay, what do we. Why 100?

But yeah, she. She orders pizza. She Makes him a cake. And it's all very sweet. And it's very clear that she is trying to bridge this gap that has formed between them. Like, there is. There is a.

A.

A wall in between their relationship at this point, besides Ridley and Laina, only Rebecca and Sarah and two other randos from the bookstore attend. And as a reminder, once again, Rebecca and Sarah are shifters. Lena is dating Rebecca and Rebecca's dating Sarah. Is Rebecca dating Sarah? I got the impression that they were platonic and that Sarah was a little. A little jealous at one point.

Yeah, I think maybe. Maybe I'm wrong because I know Sarah.

But Sarah used to date Lincoln. Yeah. But, yeah, it seems like Ridley's having a good time. Everything's pretty chill. And then Sarah asks who's going to the monster march next week? And it kills the vibe. Nobody responds, which obviously hurtful for her. She's reaching out for support from her, like, friend group. And then. So this part, it's obviously not on purpose. And Ridley is very clearly struggling with what happened at the collective. He has not spoken to anyone about it. He has been, like, keeping everything in. And he's very afraid for himself and for his loved ones. And as a result of that fear, he ends up othering monsters in this conversation that they have, eventually saying people need to be protected too, on page 233, kind of implying, without really meaning to, that monsters aren't people. And this obviously hurts Sarah very badly because Ridley knows that she is a shifter. He knows that Rebecca is a shifter, and the party ends very awkwardly.

And it felt like a very All Lives matter moment.

Yeah, 100%. And obviously, like, I believe that this book is. Is. Is giving us a message of unity across these different, like, spectrums of identity. And I think that Ridley is wrong, but I also think that the book is giving the grace for him to learn and grow from this. And I appreciate that. Yeah, you don't often see that in narratives.

I felt very hit over the head by it, though.

Yeah.

I'm not gonna lie. Maybe it's because it's already a perspective I share. Yeah, but it was like, I'm not. Maybe I'm not the one that needs to be convinced. Well, that's what the thing is.

I feel like maybe it going back to the final girl support group, you kind of felt that way too, about, like, the narration of how women always have to be, like, looking out for themselves. And it's. When you already have a perspective, it's very easy to be, like, it has a big, shiny Bow on it, guys. Like, it's right there. Versus maybe the people that haven't heard that sort of message before.

True. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. So party ends. Ridley and Laena argue about keeping secrets from each other. But don't say, like, it's very awkward. They go to bed separately. She goes to a swim meet that Sarah is participating in. And she finds out that Sarah purposely holds back during competitions because she wants to be able to participate without outing herself as a shifter. And she also finds out that Sarah and Lincoln were romantically involved before he died.

Died.

There's just this distance between Lena and Ridley. There's a few days that go by, and then she makes the very, very, very smart decision that the only solution is to take his phone and look through it.

It's always a good idea to look through your partner's phone.

It establishes trust.

Especially if you are having problems communicating.

Yeah, it's great. It's. It's a great way to open that door for communication. It's very healthy. If the sarcasm wasn't obvious. Don't go through people's phones. That's weird.

Yeah. But she finds messages from Nick's sister.

Yeah.

Being like, what happened?

What happened tonight?

She texts back.

Well, she starts to. That's the craziest part, is, like, Nick's sister is like, you know, having a breakdown about, like, Nick disappearing and is like, the cop said, you know, this happened, but, like, I don't believe them. And. And then she's gonna respond. She starts typing a response, which is crazy sauce. And then the phone resets, and when it turns back on the conversation and all evidence of, like, Nick's existence is gone from it. Like, there's no contact information, and the voice is here, so obviously it was Melku doing this. The voice returns and it tells Laena that if she stops prying, that the voice will make sure that Nick's family is okay. Okay. And eventually, because Laina's being kind of loud, Ridley wakes up, comes out to the living room, stares at his phone on the couch, and asks Laina if she's seen his phone. And she's like, nope. No. Because what we need now is more secrets and lies.

Absolutely perfect time.

Perfect time. The next morning, this, like, continual lack of communication ends up causing Ridley to burn his hand because she doesn't warn him that the pan on the stove is hot. And then they kind of cutely make up. Lena has to help him knead the dough for making bread, and they start talking. He lets her know that he knows that she had her. That she had his phone. Like, he's like, you had my phone. And she's like, I. I didn't want these secrets and lies between us. And he was like. Like, he chooses very kindly to be like, all right, well, here's the thing. I'm scared all the time now because of what happened, but I don't want to let that fear rule my life. So they together decide to go to this march for monster rights.

The Monster March.

The Monster March. The fact that they keep calling it the Monster March did make me hear that song in my head over and over somehow.

The narrator of the audiobook did a good job of not making it sound cheesy. Okay. So that's good. I will give. I will give huge kudos to that narrator, to the audiobook narrator. I think he did a really good job.

Hell, yeah.

I really enjoyed it.

So this final section of the book is where all the storylines start coming together, which is, like I said, kind of why we skipped over a lot of them, because they don't start kicking off until right now. Like, it's.

Yeah.

So it's one year after the fracture. It's the one year anniversary from the fracture, and a bunch of people are coming to this march, the Monster March. They have signs that say, like, monsters, we are with you. Stop the hate crimes. Monsters are people too. It all seems to be going really well for a while. We kind of get a view of Rebecca and Sarah. They are towards the front of the crowd, making their way up to the commons, I believe, or from the commons to the governor's office, one of those things. But whatever, whatever. Ridley and Lena. Yeah, they're in the streets, they're protesting. Ridley and Laina arrive a little late. So they're kind of at the tail end of the march march. And they're making their way forward because they want to meet up with the others. Ridley really wants to apologize to Sarah for his words. And it starts building up. Oh, this is. We get the name drop, the title card. We get no gods, no monsters being chanted, which, for those of you who don't know, is a play on the anarchist slogan no gods, no masters, which is about equality between all people, not putting anyone up on a pedestal, basically. And then the shootings start.

Right. So Harry and Corona.

Yeah.

Are like, shooting into the crowd because they're being controlled.

Yeah.

It's like so much. There's, like, so much happening.

I will say, looking at this as the writing of, like, a crazy event going down, the writing style matches really well, with, like, for sure. The feeling of being in this. This. It's really difficult to, like, process the whole thing, though, while reading it. So everyone is intersecting at this point. Dragon recognizes, like, dragons there too. Of course. Dragon recognizes Corona and realizes that these are the people that he burned. And it's not just Corona and Harry. It's like a bunch of them. Like.

Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. We don't care about those, but we.

Don'T care about them. We're kind of focusing in on the people that are intersecting. And so it seems that their goal. So the goal of this order of Zoovox is to sow hatred against monsters.

Because at one point, I mean, it seems like general discord. Right?

Like general discord. But, like, it's very interesting to me that up to this point, they've seemed like they wanted to cover up the existence, like, keep everything secret.

Well, Melkor was covering things up.

Up.

Melkor.

Melkor. Melkor. Sorry, it's like Falkor Mel.

But not. No, Melkor is from Silmarillion.

Oh, that's even funnier.

Melku was covering it up because I think they wanted to sort of control the narrative.

That's. Yeah, that's fair.

How things were gonna go. And it seems like the order of Zoobox, like. Like smoke. And everyone wants, like, a movie power.

Almost like a power play.

Yeah. Of fear.

Of wanting fear from, like, the humans towards monsters, so.

Exactly.

Obviously, like, these shootings are happening. Sarah ends up shifting in order to try to stop the shooters. They are shooting indiscriminately into the crowd as well as at police officers. Like, they are. They're having time. Time. And she ends up kind of being tricked into attacking the police. The shooter that she is going after shoots the police while Sarah is in between them, so that then the police, firing back, accidentally hit Sarah in her wolf form. And she, at this point, is like, on adrenaline purely and in wolf mode. So she ends up attacking the police. Police.

And so she kills several. She kills officers.

Several police officers. It's very descriptive because Rebecca witnesses the whole thing.

Right.

So it becomes clear that, like, obviously Zoobox, they. They want there to be, like, a fear of these monsters. Because fear lets you control people, I feel like is kind of what they're going for. At the same time, though, Harry finds Dragon and is going to kill him. But then Corona seemingly isn't as under the mind control as the others, and she manages to stop him and instead asks Dragon for help escaping from the situation. And so Dragon transforms. We don't know really what he looks like. It kind of fades to black. I want to know what he looks like.

Well, I think that Dragon also sort of saw. Saw Harry as he was because it seems like Harry kind of not switches back and forth but he kind of becomes a bit more cogent.

Yeah.

At a certain point. And I think that Dragon sees that and maybe does want to help.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah. Corona asks them for help and he tells her to turn around while he transforms because I don't know, he's embarrassed. And then he flies them out of there. Harry, Crone and Dragon have left the building. Building. We get back over to Ridley and Laina and they are in the path of one of the gunmen. They are trying to run away. And Ridley eventually tries to tackle the gunman to the ground in an effort to save Lena and he ends up getting shot. The gunman gets stopped by Sonja who shows up invisibly and like. Like cuz he does manage to tackle the gunman, but then the gunman gets back up and he's about to kill Ridley and then Sonja intervenes and kill like snaps. This guy's neck just snaps like itself because Sonia's invisible.

Rebecca was like, it's the voice. Yeah, yeah girl.

Yeah girl.

Yeah.

It's more than a voice. It got a body. And so like, everything is very chaotic. There's more stuff going on with Melku and the others. But we're gonna focus in on Laina and Ridley at this point. Laena passes out and we kind of come to again in the hospital and we are there with Rebecca. We are there with Rebecca's mother is visiting her, which I felt like was showing them kind of getting that communication going. After this tragic event. Lena has found out that Sarah was killed during the protest. And Ridley is also in the hospital from his injuries. And it kind of ends with, I. I don't know, how did you feel about this kind of reunification of the group at the end?

I think it. I mean, at this point I was aware that there was a second book. I think when I started this book I wasn't aware. And then by this point I was so. I'm like, okay, well this is clearly a setup for the next book. So I guess I didn't feel. I didn't feel too strongly about it, to be honest. I think I'm like, okay, yeah, this was the obvious ending. The march happened, blah, blah, blah. Okay, great, like set up for the next. Next. Yeah, that kind of made sense to me, I guess.

Okay, yeah, yeah. I think you're right. So. So at this point, Ridley apologizes to Rebecca now because he can no longer apologize to Sarah about what happened. Yeah. I mean, we just kind of. We just kind of end there with, like, an implication of, like, we're gonna continue to.

We have the community now.

Yeah.

Like, this is.

We're gonna. Yeah, we're gonna push forward now despite the events that have happened.

Happened, exactly. Yeah. I think was satisfying to me in that way. I mean, obviously it's a tragedy and. But it was satisfying in that there was a. A. A sense of hope.

Yeah.

For going forward. And I think that's where I'm like, yeah, we're setting up for the next book with a positive message, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. And Rebecca, I think, specifically points out, like, I don't have a pack anymore. Like, I don't have a family anymore. And I really appreciated that Laena and Ridley, like, made it clear, like, no, you're part of our family now. Like, you're. We are here with you no matter what. And then at this point, I think it's at this point that Lena reveals that she does have an unedited copy of the body cam footage still.

She still has the USB be.

And yeah, we do, like, flashback to the others, like, the other groups. And they're also, like, making moves to, like, continue moving forward into the next book. And that's kind of where we end is, like, with this implication of more to come.

Yeah. Yeah. So how did you feel about. What was your overall impression? What would you rate this book?

That's difficult. I think for me, this is like a three out of five.

Life. Yeah.

And most of that is due to the writing style. I think once I got used to it, it was a little easier to, like, keep up with the flow and the constant character shifts and everything. And, like, I feel like I don't want to come.

God.

I read a very condescending review of the book that basically referred to people who didn't like the shifting narrative as simple minded. And I was like, all right, buddy. And here's, here's my. Like, not clap back against that. But to be clear, I have read a lot of books with shifting narratives and a lot of books that, like, juggle a lot of characters. There was something specifically about the style of this one that made it very difficult for me to, like, keep everyone in mind. And it might have been, like, an uneven amount of chapters. Maybe, like, it was just. It felt. Felt like there wasn't enough focus on some characters for me to like, instantly remember? Oh, yeah, that's so and so.

Yeah, I would agree with that.

So I think other than that, though, other than my personal issue with, like, being able to really hold on to the writing style, I really enjoyed the story and I am very curious about, like, where it goes from here. So I would recommend this overall to someone to read. I just. Just. You gotta go in with the knowledge that it's gonna be like a pretty complex, almost interconnecting short stories rather than.

Almost anthology kind of. Yeah, yeah, it's that, like. What's it. What's it called? Oh, yeah. Like an ensemble piece instead of like a single. Yeah, I. I agree with you. I was gonna say three as well. And by the end of it, I think my perspective was that it's the same as what I was saying through the whole thing is that I like a first person narrative. It just didn't feel like a first person narrative. And I kind of just wanted more of that. I think when you're talking about the shifting and complex narrative of it, I was thinking of the Fisherman by John Langan, where there is an initial narrator and then he's telling a story and then he's like, all right, this is the story I heard from this person. And then we shift into this perspective and I think it goes one more deep and it's never confusing. It's really good. It's. It's very, like, elegant. And you get the voice of everyone. Like, it's very clear who is speaking and it's very, like. I find. I don't know, I just. It's a very well written book and that's kind of, to me, the like. Like ideal first person narrative is where you have that very clear voice and perspective of who is speaking and why. And I feel like I didn't get that first person narrative here. It wasn't. Kelvin didn't have a clear voice to me. And I guess I understand it's the same thing with the short story by Cadwell Turnbull, where I understand that it's kind of a folk tale because it's about a musician and it's told like a song because. Because of that. And it's a very creative choice. I just don't know how well it worked for me. And it kind of feels like the same thing here where Calvin doesn't quite have that voice. And maybe it's because of the escapism and because he sort of loses himself in the thoughts and time and mind of the people that he's latched onto. And so Maybe that's deliberate, but I still think. Think he could still have, you know, some editorializing as he's going through this.

Yeah, and I agree. And I. I do feel like. Because I tend to, like, I'll read a book and I'll form an opinion on it, and then sometimes if I'll. If I read the next in the series and it kind of goes back and answers some of those, like, lingering questions or the lingering issues that I had with the first one, it will change how I feel about it. So I do think that I want to read the second one because, like, maybe we get more stuff about Calvin in the second one and it explains more why he is the way he is. And if we do get that, I think that it would make me appreciate the first one more. But as of right now, just as a standalone story. I agree with you about that. About just the narrative. Not really feeling like Calvin's the whole time, even though it is Kelvin's the whole time.

Yeah, for sure. Worth a read, though. Worth a read. I agree.

Worth a read. You might want to have a list of characters written down the whole time while you're there. Yeah.

Is it time we just said that's simultaneous impressive. Do I get to. I get to spin.

Don't you get to spin the wheel? Gay.

Wait a second. What does that mean?

Oh, I remember this. It means that our buddy Ka gets to come and make us read another gay book.

Oh, okay. Yeah, Great. Great. Let's read Camp Damascus.

Hell yeah. Sounds great. All right, thanks for listening. If you want more from us, our social media is in the show notes, as well as a link to our discord, where you can join the conversation and maybe even suggest even more gay books for us.

Let's get out there and commit some David behavior.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye. And then God bless America.