Book Review: No Gods, No Monsters

   By L.A. Hunt Monsters hide in plain sight in Cadwell Turnbull’s second novel, No Gods, No Monsters. At the midpoint, when crowds take to the streets to advocate for the rights of the newly discovered monsters, Turnbull writes, “Even in a cause that is stacked against them, no one is alone.” Turnbull deftly examines what it means to live life hiding secrets and the implications in deciding to reveal them. Turnbull allows one of the characters to explain the title of the novel as being “an evolution of an anarchist slogan: ‘No gods, no masters,’ the original version meaning…

Book Review: Daughters of Smoke and Fire

by L.A. Hunt Author and activist Ava Homa sets out in her powerful debut novel Daughters of Smoke and Fire to describe for the reader what statelessness feels like. She does so with visceral prose and a narrative that never flinches from the harsh reality of living in a country that does not recognize one’s ethnicity, and in fact punishes an ethnic minority for their native regional roots. Homa writes in her Afterword, Kurds are often the majority among political prisoners and suffer the most vicious torture. Kurdish regions have been intentionally kept underdeveloped, resulting in entrenched poverty and all…