Viscera

August 29, 2016
Squailia litters the landscape of their grim fantasy standalone with the dead and the undead, as well as unspeakable, dark beauty. The title isn’t metaphorical: the city of Eth and its surroundings, inhabited by entities both human and not, have their basis in the organs of dead gods. After addict and cult member Rafe Davin murders Ashlan Ley to harvest her organs, the immortal Ashlan literally comes back to haunt him. When a cranky, oddly charming “mannikin” named Hollis Runt enlists Ashlan’s help to find and kill his maker, the Puppeteer, she unexpectedly finds herself face-to-face with the dying Rafe and decides to use him to help complete Hollis’s mission. The world is seething with the grotesque and fantastic, and gender fluidity is explored to heartbreaking effect. However, the world seems to have sprung up fully realized in its present moment; Squailia (Dead Boys) never delves much into the history that shapes the story, and toward the end, when Ashlan and Rafe must face some devastating truths, the plot unravels a bit, keeping the conclusion from being completely satisfying.

September 15, 2016
In the woods outside of Eth, a city built upon the calcified organs of long-gone gods, a strange group comes together through a series of seemingly disconnected and sometimes gruesome events. Once assembled, the groupAshlan Ley, a woman with amazing healing abilities; Hollis Runt, an enchanted construct with button eyes and sociopathic tendencies; Jassa Lowroller, a street-hardened and drug-addicted cultist of the goddess, Fortune; Rafe Davin, Jassa's young, transgender acolyte, who lives under a cloud of loss and pain; and Tanka Equinox, a powerful enchanter who has removed herself from societysets out on an ambitious quest to stop a madman with a plan to take over the world. By hook or by crook, Hollis pushes the group into the depths of a war-torn and intolerant city, perpetually on the brink of its own destruction. With prose that is both lovely and grisly, Squailia's sophomore effort leads the reader through an ambitious and gritty fantasy world filled with cannibals, blood thirsty rulers, and animated dead. Fans of fantasy with finely textured worlds will enjoy this book, provided they have strong stomachs for gore and profanity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)