There is some serious world-building mindfuckery on display in this book. The writing is spare and stunning, drawing up images, emotions, and philosophical questions with apparent ease. The narration style confused me at first, not because it is poorly done but because it intends to obscure. We have a seemingly invisible observer as a first-person narrator popping in and out of third-person narration surrounding interconnected but distinct people and plots. I found this an intriguing approach, especially because each person was magnetic even as they were enigmatic. My favorite character was Ridley, an anarchist and worker-owner of a co-op bookstore, who also happens to be an ace trans man. The different characters lead us through the moments where they are pivotal actors or key witnesses in a historic shift for humanity. There is something more natural about this multifaceted approach than following in the wake of a single hero who sees and does everything herself.

I'll keep the discussion of plot brief because I don't want to ruin the experience of seeing the mysteries unfold as the author intends. The gist is this: in the near future, humanity fractures open at the revelation of monsters among us, leading to violence, hatred, and the unveiling of long-pursued secret agendas. The conflicts among many factions will sow chaos on a massive scale.

This eerie fantasy has elements of physics and monster lore spread across a vast landscape, only the first tentative venture in what will require greater exploration. It covers harsh and relevant topics of structural violence, capitalism, abuse, and drug addiction while also peering into philosophical debate about choice and meaning that will take significant time and thought to percolate.

Thanks to Blackstone and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this cleverly woven tapestry of a book, out 9/7.

God damn, this book is beautiful and brilliant.
At first I thought I was maybe too dumb (or too white) to understand what Turnbull was getting at. But the story ends up weaving together so beautifully and perfectly. The only issue I really had was keeping up with all the characters and how they connect. Will probably reread soon but keep a list of all the characters so I can better connect the dots.

DNF at page 65.

So… the premise of this book sounded fascinating. The execution, however, left a lot to be desired for me. I still don’t know who the narrator even is, or if the narrator is different for each section, as the narrator sometimes changes mid-chapter between omniscient and first-person point of view. The multiple characters and time jumps were jarring and confusing. I like books that are mysterious throughout (such as Piranesi by Susanna Clarke) but this was too much and made everything one giant jumble in my head, one that wasn’t getting any clearer the more I read. Just not for me.

I generally love a good fantasy/sci-fi book, especially one that kicks off a trilogy. Unfortunately, this was not one of those for me.

While I found the writing and storytelling good for the first half of the book, it waned for me quite quickly. Even knowing that it the first in a series didn't make the ending any clearer.

This book may appeal to others, but it just didn't do it for me.

Wow! I comprehended maybe 10% of this book and I weirdly mean that in a very good way???? This is quite the setup for whatever comes next- I am totally in, and I realllllly look forward to reading this book again before the next in the series comes out. I am sure that I will find lots of genius details that I missed the first read through, and I’m truly excited about it.

The writing really is flawless and propulsive- no clunkiness here. There is some great representation, new creatures, creatures from folklore, cults…..everything.

Will absolutely recommend!

"I'm not meant to be a thing that makes sense." So says the lone, first-person 'I' character, Calvin, in *No Gods, No Monsters.* Cal shows up at odd times throughout the narrative. He confuses the narrative. But as with all the many (so many) characters and arcs in Cadwell Turnbull's genre-defying book, confusion is the price you pay for reading it. It's 100 percent worth it. And I am 100 percent invested in the world in which Turnbull sets this first book in The Convergence Saga. NGNM's world is a lot like the one we're in. Confusing -- with monstrous people living among us. Except in NGNM, the monstrous people are literal monsters (werewolves, shape-shifters, all the mythical beings) who have always lived among us. Anyone who knew this kept it to themselves. Until now. This is the overarching question posed. Why now? Monsters have come out of the shadows and they're afraid for their survival. They're willing to march with humans side-by-side, but they're not the only secret cloaking world order. Secret societies threaten both monster- and humankind. So why now? What has happened that has flushed monsters into the open, vulnerable and afraid, yet ready to rise up and raise their voices? Be patient, trust the author, and hang in there for book 2 in The Convergence Saga. 
[Thanks to Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an e-ARC of this book in exchange for my opinion.]

This was an odd book. I went into it thinking that it was going to be this cool book that explored what it would be like if monsters were real and were pushed out of hiding. Instead, I found myself reading this interwoven narrative filled with too many characters that never really made sense. There were so many characters, timelines, and other dimensions? that it became really convoluted and hard to read. There was a lack of cohesion that made all these levels of the book feel like separate stories instead of one novel.

After reading, I was left with questions and a distinct lack of answers. I am honestly not sure what I read. I know it wasn't what the summary made it out to be, because it was both more and somehow less at the same time. I think the author did a great job exploring different themes; however, I can't say that I enjoyed the book.

When I first saw this one, I was excited. Perfect Spooktober read right? (I tend to start a little early 😂) Sadly, this one just wasn't for me.

Overall disappoinment.

It isn't the writing, because the writing is beautiful. For me, it's the flow.

It's also that this isn't a fluid story. It's more like a lot of little stories put together that sometimes have the same characters and sometimes have more .. a lot more. I'm just not a reader who enjoys this type of format.

I think those that enjoy short stories with characters that aren't fully recognized or explored, may enjoy this one. I, however, love well developed characters and a fully flowing storyline. One reason I don't usually read short stories. Had I known this one follows that guideline, I would have passed.

I sincerely appreciate the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a review copy. All opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone.

This book is lovely. It's written so beautifully -- It's like what THE STARLESS SEA wanted to do, but actually done well. The social commentary and allegorical storyline is strong, and I'm always here for a outsiders = monsters story. The perspective felt fresh. `

But the writing style is what really drew me in. NO GODS, NO MONSTERS isn't always easy to follow, but what a ride!

I dont know if I was just disappointed by this because I had high expectations but I found this to be a bit lackluster in some areas. It's not a bad book and I think a lot of people are going to like but I just didn't. I'm not sure why I didn't like it, but I didn't.

I too wanted to like this but I got lost in the varying voices. Laina has no idea of the extent of the monsters that exist in our world until her beloved brother is shot by a police officer and she's sent a video where he's transforming from a werewolf. This leads her into a new understanding and exploration. Turnnall offers a a wide-ranging look at the monster community, as it were, through characters such as Rebecca, Calvin, and Harry. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I'm sure others will enjoy it and I put this down, unfinished. with great regret.

No Gods No Monsters is a scifi/fantasy novel by author Cadwell Turnbell, and the first novel in a longer series listed online as the Convergence Saga. The novel is really short - Amazon lists it as 330 pages, but digitally the length is equivalent to what I tend to think of as around 200 pages - but it is absolutely filled with ideas and characters. In a similar setup to quite a few other books, Turnbull creates a world (and more than one world) that is like ours, except that monsters/supernatural beings (werewolves/seers/witches, etc) have lived in the shadows for generations....until a sudden event brings the out into the open.

But Turnbull does especially well in No Gods No Monsters, and what makes this book something special, is that he uses this world to deal with issues of race, of family, of police and gun violence, and of solidarity between peoples who may not be similar except in how they are in danger from the larger world. The novel is told in a very nonlinear and sometimes disorienting fashion, jumping from character to character in various places and subplots that feel disconnected for large stretches, but the characters are all done so really well that it mostly comes together in the end to something that hits hard. It still is unfortunately only book 1 in a series though, and the book feels like it, with so many plot threads not coming together here, but the characters and themes have me eagerly anticipating book 2.
-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
When Laina gets the word that her brother was shot and killed by the cops, she doesn't know what to think, having not seen her brother in years after he spiraled into addiction. Laina has an urge to know what really happened, an urge answered by a mysterious voice coming from nowhere, which leaves her with a strange video that is soon leaked to police - of her brother being a wolf when he was shot, before transforming back into his human form. Soon it becomes apparent that werewolves like her brother, and the girl who follows him to Laina, are only the tip of the iceberg of what is out there: "monsters" are real, and have always been.

But it soon becomes clear that there are secret societies out there made up with or dealing with the monsters, at least one of which seems determined to put the genie back in the bottle by magically erasing the video evidence....and by taking more drastic measures. But the reveal of the reality of monsters can't be easily forgotten, and sprouts prejudice and hate, and soon those monsters and monster-adjacent people living in secret solidarity find themselves in the crosshairs of these societies and their mysterious goals.

And for these people, for a man who can see it all happening through their minds, nothing will ever be the same.
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No Gods No Monsters is a hard book to explain or talk about, because the story is told in a fashion that is extremely uninterested in making it clear to the reader what's going necessarily going on, or what the overarching plot is. The book is written with a framing device as being told by a man returning to St. Thomas some time after the death of his brother, and occasionally returns to the story of this man (Cal) as he interacts with his brother's daughter. But the framing device is not isolated from the rest of the story, and so Cal's first person view occasionally pops up within the stories he is telling, with him clearly having more of a role - and a presence - somewhere within these stories, a presence that a few characters can seemingly see and interact with, which just adds to the mystery of it all.

But most of this book takes place in these stories, which follow one of several really well developed and interesting (and largely LGBTQ and PoC) characters in a world turned upside down by the appearance of "monsters". It starts with Laina, the girl I mentioned in the summary above, whose brother Lincoln's turns out to have been a werewolf before he was shot and killed by police. Then there's Rebecca, another werewolf and member of Lincoln's pack, who gets into a relationship with Laina and struggles to deal with several members of her pack getting scared away by threats. Then there's Ridley, Laina's husband (who's trans male and ace), who runs a cooperative bookstore and focuses on more socialist organizing, to the disappointment of his parents.

And then there are the other characters who are affiliated with one of the two cults/secret societies that deal with monsters, such as Dragon, a young boy raised by the splinter Cult of the Zsouvox for some clearly terrible purpose, who is rescued by the other organization, and just wants to do good and be himself. There's Sondra, a young senator in St. Thomas who is from a family of woo-woos, dog shifters with the ability to smell other monsters/beings of the supernatural, who cares for her invisible adopted sister, the blood-drinking Sonya and helps Sonya's faction, the Order of Asha, reluctantly, and wonders what happened to her missing parents. And all of the named characters above are just the point of view characters - there a whole bunch of supernatural and non-supernatural other characters who are well built and really interesting parts of this book that I don't really have time to mention here.

These characters are all really well developed despite the short page length of this novel, and it allows the plot, which is sprawling all over the place until the end, when the major characters all converge on a rally in support of the monsters, to hit some really interesting themes - themes of prejudice, of police brutality, of horrifying lethal mistakes, of solidarity between peoples with different interests, of love and blood relation, etc. It's about the cost of obsession, the impacts of choices that one regrets, and issues of free will vs destiny and more. Like I mentioned above, the book is far more interested in exploring these themes and its characters that forming a single cohesive plot, although it starts to make moves towards that end in the final few chapters.

Really that's the one weakness of this book - while it drew me in and kept me reading eagerly throughout, it isn't long enough to really pay off all of its plot threads, most of which it keeps open and mysterious for the next book in this series. It isn't a dealbreaker here, because the characters and themes explored here are so interesting, with a lot happening in the climax, that I'm not left feeling wholly unsatisfied by the result....but at the same time, it feels kind of like we missed out on a lot of what was being built towards.

So it's got first book problems, but other than that, it's really good, and well well worth your time - it won't take you long to read, but it will stick with you quite a lot.

I'm very disappointed to say that I genuinely struggled to get through this book because I was so excited from the blurb and from the reviews. No Gods, No Monsters follows multiple perspectives, from different characters, from different times, jumping back and forth. I usually don't mind multiple narrators, but I just felt like it was badly done here. Because of this, it has many storylines thrown together and it becomes a bit difficult to untangle each of these storyline threads─the “cult,” the pack of werewolves, the “dragon” child, and Laina and her relationships. It felt like the author was solely trying to be mysterious.

I adored this book. It's the first book I've read by Cadwell Turnbull but it certainly won't be my last.

Turnbull is incredibaly talented and has an empathetic and inclusive voice that is so welcome in the genre of urban fantasy. I am impressed that he was able to effortlessly weave a Black Lives Matter and civil rights plotline into a horror-adjacent contemporary fantasy that really belied his love of some of my favorite authors like Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, Nalo Hopkinson and Nnedi Okorafor (this book especially reminded me of Okorafor's LaGuardia series).

The characters were so diverse and fleshed out. There were a lot of them, but his writing made them feel very real and I cared about the fates of each of them.

Ostensibly this is a novel about what happens when people find out that monsters are real and are living among us. What it really is, is an insightful story about what it means to be human through the lens of understanding monstrosity. In this way, this book geniously hearkens back to that foundational Science Fiction work: Mary shelley's Frankenstein.

My favorite part of all was how Turnbull was able to blend quantum physics, Caribbean cosmology and social commentary into a weird, original, fun, scary and all around excellent read.

I read this book while also listening to the audiobook and what a fantastic story. At first, it was hard to follow, especially when listening to the audiobook because there are so many interwoven stories and characters that it was difficult to keep them all straight. However, once I got about a quarter of the way in I was hooked. I had a better understanding of who all the characters were and it was a wonderful journey to see how everyone was connected in the end. Turnbull did an excellent job creating the characters and the storylines, I couldn't put the book down. The audiobook was also done very well, especially considering it was just one narrator as opposed to a cast of narrators with this many characters expected to be narrated. Highly recommended!

Give NO GODS, NO MONSTERS time and it will thoroughly reward you with a rich story, fascinating characters, and a world that is just begging to be explored and savored in equal measure. I've never read an urban fantasy novel quite like this one, and I was surprised that I felt myself going along with the ride through every character POV change (which I often struggle with as I like to fall into character's heads and readjusting can take me out of the story) which just speaks to the talent and skill of Turnbull's characters and worldbuilding.

Not to be missed for fans of urban fantasy, though this is definitely a heavy read at times.

Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone publishing for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This is a absolutely incredible story with literally every paranormal monster you could think of and even some that you never did. There is a lot of time and place hopping between sections which got a little confusing at time, as well as a lot of characters to keep track of. There’s time travel and multiverses and quantum physics. There were times I felt like I wasn’t smart enough for this book. The representation in the book is top notch with trans, queer, and poly characters and a diverse cast of characters. As the stories between to unfold and intertwine it just got even more incredible. I’m excited to see where this series goes because it was definitely an incredibly original world and story.

This will be one of those reviews where I'm not sure that I can do the book justice to express how good it is.

There are creatures among us, but they make sure that their existence is a secret. This changes when Laina is sent a video of her brother transforming into a werewolf before being shot to death by police. She uploads this to the internet, sparking a domino effect that has far reaches.

This book reminds me of The Bone Clocks and The Glass Hotel. Beautifully written books will never get the love they deserve because there are elements of sci-fi/fantasy in the stories.

Each chapter follows a character who is a fully nuanced person. Everyone is connected in ways that are either immediately figured out or understood later. Characters that are introduced earlier become fully dimensional people during their chapter.

The only problem I had was that it ended and I have to wait for the next book. I wanted to keep reading about what happens next. There is more to their world than the main characters or the reader knows. There are more connections to be made.

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

Definitely towards the more literary end of the urban fantasy genre. It’s a series of interconnected vignettes of different people as the world becomes aware of the supernatural. Be sure to pay attention at the starts of chapters when it tells you when it is and which Earth it is. That’ll help keep track of the connections. It won’t be the book for everyone but this is a good choice for someone wanting a book to make them stop and think.

This is a wildly ambitious fantasy novel. I appreciated it's allegorical resonance and cultural relevancy (honestly one of the most inclusive books I've read in a while, regardless of genre). It's sprawling in its scope and at times it's tough to keep track of all of the character relationships, but for the most part it succeeds with its epic approach.