#Titanuary ‘No Gods No Monsters’ by Cadwell Turnbull

About the book…

One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother was shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it.

As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence. A professor follows a missing friend’s trail of bread crumbs to a mysterious secret society. And a young boy with unique abilities seeks refuge in a pro-monster organization with secrets of its own. Meanwhile, more people start disappearing, suicides and hate crimes increase, and protests erupt globally, both for and against the monsters.

At the center is a mystery no one thinks to ask: Why now? What has frightened the monsters out of the dark?

The world will soon find out

‘No Gods No Monsters’ the first entry in the Convergence trilogy by Cadwell Turnbull was published by Titan Books in 2022.

I am not sure where to begin…as always, this an honest and heartfelt reaction to a novel, I have no skills other than unbridled enthusiasm for what I regard as a magician’s craft. That people are talented enough to drag my cold black heart away from the insanity of daily life is always a blessing that I am thankful for on a daily basis.

This book though,,, I had to resort to an unheard of behaviour in that I looked yup Goodreads reviews because I wasn’t really sure what I was reading, if I was reading it right and such, and when I read the author’s kindhearted comments and almost review on Goodreads I immediately felt better. It was ok not to ‘get’ it, in fact that’s kind of the point so I returned to ‘No Gods..‘ and dived back in…

This is a book about monsters (othered individuals) bringing themselves out of the shadows and what happens afterwards, Laina’s brother might be the catalyst for the movement known as The Fracture, but his brutal beating at the hands of the cops is much much more monstrous and dangerous than anything they could do to us.

There is a secret society of monsters, a child dragon, werewolves, sentient beings we cannot begin to imagine and they are beginning to mobilise. This is a story we are all a part of and that we are all telling, If we only hand ourselves over the be held by the creator , put aside our unconscious bias and let ourselves be carried away by the splendour of the narrative…

For if you accept that there is such a thing as an omnipotent creator, you must therefore being willing to accept his/hers/their opposite half.  One thing cannot exist without the other and in order to believe in monsters around you you must believe in the act of their creation and existence. As well as to look within yourself and examine what is meant by being monstrous. This could be in the nature of those saying they stand for justice whilst using that blue shield to protect their acts of evil. This could be those in a white society deliberately failing to acknowledge the inherent bias in daily life. Or the acts of  a heteronormative world that ‘others’ and , to an extent, fetishizes those who do not as well as marginalising, persecuting and killing them for their lack of perceived normality and threat to the status quo.

The horror in this novel exists both within and without its pages in the way we other, subjugate and bend people to the point of destruction in order to maintain a reality that is based on lies. It  , to me, is reminiscent of early Clive Barker, in his novel ‘Cabal’. And, much the same as when I read Barker for the first time, as a teen, I felt both welcomed, tense, horrified and slightly sickened by all the huge feelings that are too big to articulate. If that sounds like a reason not to read Barker or Turnbull, believe me , it is not. It is an endorsement to turn yourself over to the skills of someone who knows very well what he is doing and is leading you somewhere that is worth going to.

Trust me.

About the author…

”Hello, I’m Cadwell Turnbull, author of the science fiction novel ‘The Lesson’and No Gods, No Monsters (Book One of The Convergence Saga).

My short fiction has appeared in The Verge, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. My short story “Loneliness is in Your Blood” was selected for The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018. My short story “Jump” was selected for the Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019.

The Lesson was the recipient of the 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Award in the debut category. It has also been optioned by AMC for a television series in collaboration with The Mission Entertainment.”

Links-https://cadwellturnbull.com/

Twitter @CadwellTurnbull @TitanBooks