No Gods, No Monsters by Caldwell Turnbull was totally an impulse purchase based on the title. Who could resist a book titled with an anarchism pun? The story did more than enough to live up to that promise and exceed my early assumptions. The story starts out with Laina finding out that her brother is dead, shot dead by the police after a lifetime of mental health issues. The truth this is more than just another police shooting interrupts the bureaucratic motions. The body cam footage shows a werewolf running toward the camera. The footage leaks leading to a massive protest on the freeway as a group of werewolves blocks traffic and transform in front of the camera.

Upon witnessing the complete lack of fucks given by the quantum world, physicists collectively lose their minds. How can they reconcile reality with what they are seeing? In desperation, many of them entertain solipsistic ideas. If the world of tiny objects can disregard Newtonian physics, then how can we tell for sure that reality isn’t just a product of our imagination?

You can see where the elevator pitch of "monsters are real" tied in with current events could have drifted into Twilight Zone/White Wolf territory, leaning hard on the "monsters as racism metaphor". Yet, Turnbull is a more subtle writer. Twisting the current political moment into an evocative image leaves many writers satisfied having putting a bit of medicine into their fantasy story and move on. Turnbull starts to play with the malleable nature of reality, mixing in the conspiracy of secret societies, internet sleuths, and the politics of co-ops and solidarity to add detail and depth.

Like ants, perhaps enough human bodies can form a critical mass, becoming a marvel capable of great things, even against obstacles calcified through years of accumulated resources and power. Maybe. More often than not, Ridley has seen this fail to provide any change. But the effort has value for those fleeting moments when success can be snatched for the side of good.

The narrative bounces between different perspectives throughout the novel, and there are many characters to keep track of. However, every one is well-developed and given adequate space to express unique points of view. The book is never slow, but it's not a potboiler either. Characters explore their thoughts and motivations. It's impressive how Turnbull gives each of them a distinctive voice, the book feels different through the eyes of each narrator.

There's a massive cliffhanger at the end, with a few major plot points ready to pick up in the next book. Yet, it doesn't feel like a cheap stop off to sell the next book. The story has a beginning, middle, and ending. Like the characters, you're left with the sense there is a lot more going on than you're able to understand. Turnbull threads the needle between world building and human level storytelling. It's not a light read, but I couldn't put it down once it got going.