One of my goals this year was to spend less time mindlessly scrolling and more time engaging with culture that has a bit more "heft” - great movies, inventive TV shows, and my first love, books. I deleted most of the socials off my phone a few months back, and it’s given me a lot more time to put towards reading, especially during my commute. In the month of March I took on 2 books: Nicked by MJ Anderson and I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones.

I hate to say it, but neither of these really hit with me. I started both of them because they were recommended on NPR’s Top Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of 2024 list, but they proved to be a bit of a slog, although for very different reasons.

Nicked by MJ Anderson

“From the award-winning and bestselling author of Feed comes a raucous and slyly funny adult fiction debut. Based on a bizarre but true quest to steal the mystical corpse of a long-dead saint, Nicked is a fantastical, genre-defying, and delightfully queer historical romp. ”

— Goodreads

I really wanted to like this. It’s got a lot of stuff that I’m usually pretty into - a well-researched historical setting, a knowingly arch and modern tone, plus a gay romance - but it never managed to pull me in, and I had to push to finish it.

Nicephorus is a retiring monk living in the Italian city of Bari in 1087. With plague ripping through the city, Nic is sent on a mission to steal the bones of St. Nicholas from a rival city with the help of the saint hunter Tyun and his crew, which includes men and women from across the medieval world, and, in a bit of magical realism, the dog-headed Reprobus, his second-in-command. As Tyun and Nic work together with both allies and enemies to steal the bones of the saint, something develops between them.

I minored in medieval studies in college and I’ve always found the time period interesting, especially when looked at from an alternative perspective. The setting was approached with interesting nuance, showcasing how many different factions were vying for power in the medieval period and how modern in thought people of the period could be, which I appreciated. We all think of ourselves as living in a modern age, after all, and bringing that sense of modernity reminded me a bit of how well A Knight’s Tale used pop music to illustrate how people of the time would have perceived the events of their lives. Making the character a devout believer, a monk, and a gay man is a reminder that queer people have always existed, and they have always had a place in society.

While I loved the idea of Nic and his relationship with Tyun, the book never quite managed to sell me on it. Maybe my gaydar is broken, but it felt like I was being told that they were falling in love rather than feeling their relationship develop myself, and it ended up feeling rather forced. I must also admit that I struggle to relate to male characters if there aren’t also interestingly written female characters as well (there were some, but they played very small roles), and I have similar issues with characters who are religious, especially if they’re Christian. Give me a devoutly Christian male protagonist and I find my eyes glazing over.

Final thoughts - while Nicked is an interesting and well-written standalone novel that I would recommend highly to certain friends, I personally struggled to connect with it. I may seek out other works from the author, though - Feed in particular seems like it might be more my speed.

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

“1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.”

— Goodreads

Spoiler alert - I hated this one. It seemed like it would be fantastic - it’s a meta twist on the slasher narrative from the POV of the slasher, with the Scream-like touch of the protagonist and his best friend being extremely aware of the genre they’re in. While the premise is fun, the execution, sadly, is not.

I Was a Teenage Slasher is written like an autobiography, with Tolly Driver, the slaher in question, looking back on his murderous high school rampage with regret and trying hard not to revert to his killer ways. Tolly, unfortunately, is a total drip. His stream of consciousness narration is incredibly repetitive, full of regrets, recriminations, and reminiscence, mostly about his high school bestie Amber. Huge chunks of the book go by with no discernible action, just pages and pages of Tolly musing about how things might have all been different if he’d done [X] instead of [Y], or how much he misses Amber, or how hard it is to keep from killing again.

I’m usually a completeist, so typically once I start a book I have to know how it ends. About halfway through this one, though, I started aggressively skimming to try and just get through it, but I called it quits with a quarter of the book left. It just didn’t care anymore who he killed, or how, or why, or whatever else the book was going to try and give me, and life is too short and too filled with books I’ll enjoy more to keep slogging through one this boring.

Final thoughts - though the premise was intriguing, the book lacked energy and forward momentum, leaving me waiting for the violent action promised by the title.

They can’t all be winners, and that’s ok! I’m planning to make this an ongoing feature, so next month I’ll be checking back in with reviews of my newest acquisitions for the library - The City In Glass by Nghi Vo and Cameraman by Dana Stevens.