"We Are the Crisis" by Cadwell Turnbull, the second installment in The Convergence Saga, is a captivating journey into a world grappling with the aftermath of the Monster Massacre. Turnbull skillfully weaves a narrative filled with intrigue, suspense, and the complexities of a society on the brink of transformation.

The exploration of the post-Monster Massacre world is both thought-provoking and immersive. Turnbull delves into the consequences of that pivotal event, presenting a society wrestling with the shadows of its past. The emergence of the Black Hand and the rise of pro-monster organizations add layers of tension, providing a vivid backdrop to the narrative. The thematic exploration of discrimination, fear, and the potential for conflict between humans and monsters resonates with contemporary societal issues, adding a relevant and thought-provoking element to the story.

The characters, particularly Rebecca and her old wolf pack, are richly developed, and their personal struggles mirror the larger societal shifts. The mysterious conflict between the ancient orders introduces a compelling layer of depth to the narrative, keeping readers engaged and eager to uncover the secrets of the gods and the origins of magic.

Turnbull's prose is both evocative and atmospheric, painting a vivid picture of a world in flux. The pacing is well-balanced, with moments of tension and quiet introspection seamlessly woven together. The narrative unfolds in a way that keeps readers guessing, building anticipation for the inevitable clash between opposing forces.

"We Are the Crisis" not only serves as an enthralling continuation of The Convergence Saga but also as a poignant commentary on the fragility of peace and the potential consequences of prejudice. Turnbull's ability to blend fantasy with real-world themes makes this book a compelling and thought-provoking read, leaving readers eagerly anticipating the next chapter in this captivating saga.

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT

OTHER WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS BOOK UNLESS YOU HAVE READ ITS PREDECESSOR, NO GODS, NO MONSTERS

I REALLY liked the first book in what is now a series (at least a trilogy), No Gods, No Monsters. I honestly didn't realize there would be a second book, but I was excited to read it. I don't want to say I was disappointed, but it was a lot slower and more politically centered than I usually can get my teeth into (no pun intended). There are a few great scenes and the last few chapters are amazing, but a good portion of the book was easily skimmable.

Having said this, I look forward to the 3rd book and hope i get the chance to review it as well. Cadwell Turnbull is a fantastic, imaginative author.

Thanks to Netgalley, Black Stone Publishing and of course, Cadwell Turnbull for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. All opinions are my own.

WE ARE THE CRISIS, sequel to NO GODS, NO MONSTERS, eerily takes readers deeper into Turnbull’s world of magic, monsters and mystery. He doesn’t hold back as he introduces new characters, unravels conspiracies, and imagines the consequences of power.

In NO GODS, NO MONSTERS, monsters reveal themselves to the world. WE ARE THE CRISIS picks up three years later and follows several familiar faces. The world has changed but not for the better: hate crimes are on the rise, monsters are disappearing, and secret societies are making moves toward their endgame. The main characters are trying to survive in an increasingly hostile and paranoid world, and this book emphasizes the importance of collective action and solidarity as the only way through this nightmare.

The pursuit of solidarity is one of the main themes in this book. This book also explores the price of knowledge, the cost of power, and the meaning of family. But the main aspect that drives the plot forward is the overarching mystery. None of the characters have all the answers, and as a reader, I found it exciting to try and put this puzzle together. It feels complicated at times but it’s my favourite aspect of these books—the mystery and the questioning of why things are happening the way they are. NO GODS, NO MONSTERS asks a lot of questions about existence, reality and purpose. WE ARE THE CRISIS provides answers and builds on these questions in fascinating ways. Turnbull’s writing is clever and the use of the book’s narrator to ponder these questions is compelling.

WE ARE THE CRISIS features changing relationship dynamics and great character development. The plot progresses well as magic is further explored and secrets are revealed. I’m still so captivated by this world and the mysteries within it. WE ARE THE CRISIS asks just as many questions as it answers, and I can’t wait to see how it all comes together in the next book. Thank you Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC to review.

Rating: 4.5/5

The title of book two of The Convergence Saga trilogy tells you exactly where the narrative is headed. Book one: No Gods, No Monsters (which I encourage you to read or re-read first) introduced us to a world underneath our own, of battling supernatural forces, and allegorical references to otherness. It's absolutely a social commentary about power and marginalization, and left us asking ourselves who in our society are the real monsters? Turnbull further complicates the monster metaphor by introducing members of marginalized communities who are capable of transformation.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for this e-arc.*

Book 2 in the Convergence series.

So this is set two years after the first book. Making it 2025 so super near future speculative fiction. The first book is all about marginalization and power balance and this book continues those themes with the monsters and the powers fighting them whilst adding shifters to take a look at what is it is not a monster.

If you are headed into book two and it’s been a minute since book one. I would highly encourage a reread. I was confused and trying to remember who I already knew for a lot of it. Which made the experience a little less fun.

The book reads like what seems disjointed short stories that come together in a really powerful way. But probably would have been better for my brain in an audio format…

I absolutely want the final book and don’t really want to wait. Lol.

Thanks to NetGalley and Blackstone Pub for an eARC.

Definitely a book that would have benefited from a quick summary of the events of the first book at the beginning. I had read No Gods No Monsters in 2021 and enjoyed it enough to want to read the sequel, but I had forgotten all but the most basic plot points from it, and given the disjointed storytelling in We Are the Crisis, by the time I had remembered how the various characters related to each other, it was off to a different set of characters and powers that I barely remembered.

It's also very much the middle book of a trilogy, lots of setup, little payoff. I'll finish out the trilogy, but I don't have high hopes that the final book will have the payoff that I want.

There were also a number of typos and typographical issues, especially towards the back half of the book, but I'm going to assume those were fixed before final publication.

Genre: speculative fiction, horror
Boston, MA, 2025

Three years after the Boston Massacre, when Monsters first came into the public eye, there is a calm before another storm. Prejudice against monsters is strong, but there’s support building, too. Activist groups have sprung up, in support of and against monsters. Even those with ties to the wolves, vampires, and creatures from other cultures aren’t sure how public they should go, knowing their lives are at risk. From Somerville to the Virgin Islands, there’s also a call for the rise in cooperatives, which fits with the Pack Magic mentality of the werewolves and other monsters, knowing that they’re stronger together than apart.

There is nothing scarier than a near-future speculative fiction/horror book that takes place on the streets of your own city, especially when there are components that feel so real. We are the Crisis is deeply Boston - set in Somerville, JP, Medford, Watertown, as well as downtown - and Turnbull writes an easy-to-imagine underbelly of the streets I know so well.

There are a lot of layers to this book, and I look forward to diving deeper into them on a future reread. I didn’t reread No Gods No Monsters first, so I spent more time that I’d like to admit reorienting myself to the characters and their perils. That’s not to say Turnbull doesn’t do a good job of re-introducing those characters, because he does! The first half of the book sets the stage like the building storm, positioning characters before the crisis itself.

We are the Crisis was an excellent followup to No Gods No Monsters, from queer normativity and collective politics to a monstrous multiverse and interdimensional gods. I can’t recommend this series enough.

Not the book for me. The POV is disjointed and confusing. The chapters do not seem connected to one another; and I was not able to follow a storyline. If you enjoy more experimental fiction, this may be the book for you.

We Are the Crisis is the second book in the Convergence Saga by Cadwell Turnbull.
I’ve been patiently waiting for this title because I loved No Gods, No Monsters.
And Cadwell Turnbull didn’t disappoint here either.
This was a captivating and entertaining read.
I finished this book in two days I was that hooked.
This story was utterly fascinating and the characters so entertaining.
And the writing is very clever.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the opportunity to read this ahead of its publication date in return for my honest review.

I continuously felt like I was missing something while reading this novel. While I specifically read the first book in the series so I would know what was going on in the second, I never felt like I was confidently following the plot. The format of these books does not lend itself to continuity since it is comprised of several different vignettes featuring different characters who may appear often or seldom and may or may not intersect at any point. The premise is fabulous and I really wished the books delivered.

I'm honestly just so confused. It might've helped if I'd reread the first book, but it also might not have? The writing was great and I could follow each thread, I just couldn't remember how any of the characters related to each other or who was which monster. I really enjoyed the Dragon and the co-op storyline. But between all of the storylines and multiverse timelines, it is a LOT.

*Thank you to Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review*

I was so, so excited to get my grubby little hands on an eARC of <em>We Are the Crisis</em> this month because of how much I loved <em>No Gods No Monsters</em>. I’ve spent the past two years trying to get everyone I know who is even vaguely interested in fantasy to pick up <em>No Gods No Monsters,</em> which I keep unsuccessfully pitching as “<em>Succubus Blues</em> by way of <em>Riot Baby</em>” and Amal el-Mohtar once described as “like listening to a symphony that’s trying to eat you.”

<em>No Gods No Monsters</em> has a queer werewolf poly triad running a bookstore, a deeply dysfunctional mutual aid co-op, secret societies, dark conspiracies, incredibly awkward dinner parties, and monsters just trying to get on with things. It’s told from the perspective of a deeply involved narrator whose motives are opaque, who head-hops with wild abandon and stops the whole story to have conversations with dead academics. It’s weird, and wild, and wonderful, and I can’t recommend it enough.

I really wish I could tell you that <em>We Are the Crisis</em> is just as good, but it left me feeling a little flat. I still had a great time, but it didn’t do anything <em>new.</em> All of the elements that made me fall in love with <em>No Gods</em> remained present, but the number of plot threads was a little overwhelming, and the overarching narrative showed these threads crossing each other but never quite tying together, which I found frustrating.

<em>We Are the Crisis</em> is, structurally speaking, just plain weird. We flip through characters of interest with very little pattern, with flashbacks woven in to the present throughout. Critical plot points are relayed third- or even fourth-hand, the narrator’s level of involvement varies wildly from section to section, and the prose is sparse and distant. I loved this style in <em>No Gods</em> and continued to really enjoy it here, and if anything I would appreciated Turnbull leaning even harder into that weirdness.

I think <em>We Are the Crisis</em> is ultimately suffering a little bit from middle-book syndrome, leaving the reader with too little new information and too few conclusions to feel satisfied. <em>No Gods No Monsters</em> was always going to be a hard act to follow, so even though I was a little disappointed I’m still <em>very much</em> looking forward to the next one.

Disjointed scenes. Kept wondering how they were all going to fit together. That doesn’t happen until the end, and I mean the very end. Middle book of a trilogy and I feel it’s definitely one of those where it is best to read the first volume before cracking this one open. Interesting characters although to me they were mostly one dimensional. Some graphic violence. Unusual plot set in the near future in a world of multi-verses. Wonder if the story’s theme of humans vs monsters is allegorical of the world’s cultural and political divisions. I sure see the similarities. I know a lot of people love this series of books, but for me it was just okay. 3.75 stars

This is a solid second book in a trilogy. While it didn't wow me the same way No Gods, No Monsters did (and I deeply wish that Turnbull wasn't writing in present tense), I look forward to the last book.

WE ARE THE CRISIS is the second book of Cadwell Turnbull's "Convergence Saga" (presumably a trilogy). In the first book in the series, it is revealed to the public that "monsters" exist. Monsters are human beings who have powers of metamorphosis into other forms; werewolves being the most obvious example. Though there also seem to be people who can convert into other animal forms, as well as witches, sorcerers, and vampires, whose metamorphoses do not turn them into entirely different species of animals, but give them special nonhuman (or superhuman) powers. Apparently monsters have long existed among humankind, but have mostly hidden themselves due to (justified) fears of persecution. (Think of witch trials and witch burnings in medieval and early modern Europe). Some monster varieties are inherited, while others are the result of contact or contagion (a vampire bites another person, making them into a vampire too)

The existence of monsters only becomes generally known in the first volume of the series, when human-to-wolf metamorphoses are captured on video. The current volume takes place a few years later, more or less in an extension of our present, and explores the consequences of the revelation of monsters' actual existence. The novel does not have a linear plot, but moves back and forth among various individuals, both monsters and the people who love them. Most monsters remain circumspect, not revealing their powers publicly, and not moving out of their small circles of support. They often wish to meet others of their own kind, but they are unable to because of this very circumspection. Some of them have fraught relationships with non-monster parents and siblings.

There are also organized hate groups, composed of human beings who express fear of the monsters and their powers, and want both to contain and restrict them, and ultimately to destroy them. To some extent, monsterphobia works like an allegory of racism and homophobia -- people who take their (relatively) normative status for granted, and both loathe and fear anybody who is different from them. The bigots have political organizations that oppose any changes in the laws that might give monsters recognition or protection; they have ties with the police, letting them get away with various forms of harassment and threats; they kill individual monsters and "monster-lovers" pretty much with impunity; and they sometimes form lynch mobs that go out and murder monsters en masse, and burn down businesses or homes associated with them.

But as is so often the case in speculative fiction, monsterphobia is not just an allegory for racism and homophobia; it is also something literal, in itself. The novel works by describing both the lives of monsters, and the hatred of which they are the victims, in very specific terms. What do you do when you are a werewolf, but your sibling is not? How do people come out to their parents, and vice versa? How do monsters negotiate their everyday lives, within human society but also apart from it, and pontentially endangered by it?

The novel moves among different groups of characters, as it explores what for the most part are everyday lives and activities? People work, have family responsibilities, and so on -- even if these people are monsters. Turnbull's delicate prose maintains a careful balance between the quotidian and the extraordinary; and it emphasizes how things that are extraordinary to readers of the book might well be banal and ordinary to people who happen to be monsters (as presumably we the readers are not).

There are also a number of passages that invoke the multiverse, suggesting somewhat different outcomes on parallel, but not identical Earths. (I can only repeat here what I have said before: that the multiverse is nonsense from a physics or hard science perspective, but it is an incredible gift to speculative fiction). And some of these passages also involve the narrator (or narrative voice) of the novel as a character within it. The speaking "I" often seems to be hovering over, or observing the action, invisibly -- at the end, he emerges (as a male human being) and says something like he accesses the other parallel worlds in dreams. (It is not entirely clear). This goes along with suggestions that there are groups of monsters fighting against one another (aside from their being turned into enemies by straight people). A lot of this is left suggestive but unresolved, partly I presume because there will be another novel, but partly also because Turnbull is constructing and narrative a world (or pluriverse of world) that are intrinsically vague in certain of their aspects.

In any case, WE ARE THE CRISIS is a powerful and compelling novel, which leaves lingering traces of uncertainty in your mind after you have finished reading it, both because there is more to come but also (and more importantly) because the author insists on this wavering quality, which inhabits even his description of the most mundane activities (like playing pool in a bar).

An incredibly solid sequel that deftly dodges the ever too common "middle book" problem that series can run into, especially ones as promising as the Convergence Saga. With incredible characters, interesting politics, and increasingly stressful stakes, We Are The Crisis continues to tell one of the most engrossing stories in the urban fantasy genre.

3.75. The second of three in the Convergence Saga and sequel to No Gods, No Monsters, We Are The Crisis is set a few years after the first book. In the first, the world comes to know that monsters exist. In this installment, the world is processing what that means, and the reactions vary from extrajudicial violence to solidarity movements to debates on legislating equal protections; Turnbull weaves in conversations about monsters and their place in society happening on the streets, in governance, and in families. Like it’s predecessor, We Are The Crisis has a large ensemble cast of characters and multiple plot lines (some of which eventually intersect), together constructing a large-scale narrative of a world reckoning with a new reality; some of the characters are familiar from book one, while others are new. This will not be a book for everyone — it in some ways reads more like literary fiction than anything, and it is entirely non-linear; at times it reads more like a series of vignettes than a single novel. As someone who enjoys novels like this (and television like this, really — the kind of narratives where the setting is akin to a character whose struggles are revealed through those of disparate characters) I really love this series. The only reason I’d rate this lower than the first book is because it does feel very ‘middle book’ — some threads come together but it doesn’t end in a conclusive way, so it has left me eagerly awaiting book three.

*Content warnings:* violence, murder, blood, hate crime

*Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for providing an ARC in exchange for this review*.

I enjoyed this sequel more than the first book. There are still a lot of concepts, storylines, and timelines addressed in one book, and it is overall a lot.

I absolutely loved No Gods No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull and I was so excited to see a sequel to this world.

We Are The Crisis was just as amazing as the first book. The multiple characters, storylines, and universes are easier to separate in this book than in the first book and we (the reader) gets to really get to know these characters. There’s mystery, intrigue, and terror in each storyline and I couldn’t put the book down (I finished it in less than 48 hours).

These multiple storylines conclude in an epic finale. We Are The Crisis is a fantastic page-turner and I can’t recommend it enough.

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.