What I’ve Been Reading This Week<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A novel and a book of poems that ended up pairing well together, without me doing that intentionally. Love when that happens. Two books influenced by island living\u2014no, not Margaritaville or Punta Cana\u2014more like, the way living on an island forces you to understand both the ocean and colonialism all too well. Two books that problematize the concept of \u201cwhat IS a monster, dude?\u201d in ways that, I\u2019m just gonna say it, Guillermo Del Toro could only dream of. I\u2019m talking, of course, about Weird Fishes<\/em> by Rae Mariz and God\u2019s Will For Monsters<\/em> by Rachel Cruz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Weird Fishes by<\/em> Rae Mariz: <\/strong>hang with me on the setup here, because there aren\u2019t really any human characters in this book. I\u2019ll confess to, having read this book in the mad dash of getting ready for my daughter\u2019s arrival, I didn\u2019t sit with the imagery as carefully as I could have. So picturing what Ceph, a squid-like ocean floor-dweller, looks like, was difficult. Iliokai, our other main character, is a whale-rider\u2014what you or I might call a mermaid or selkie.\u00a0Interestingly, “whale rider” is established as a slur, or at least a less-than-preferred term, but the text continuously refers to Iliokai as such. It recalls how Indigenous Americans will call themselves “Indians,” but I don’t really feel comfortable doing so as a white person. Real-world allegories continue, because when the bottom-dwelling Ancient Intelligence gains awareness of the human-driven climate apocalypse, their solution is to open deep sea vents that will boil the ocean. All life on Earth will disappear except for them, and what do they care about the rest of life on Earth? It’s up to Ceph and Iliokai to stop the apocalypse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s an unlikely friendship story that features some nice \u201cthe world is bigger than you previously imagined\u201d moments for Ceph. After some delightful “quest for knowledge” stuff, some fish-out-of-(well not quite)-water hijinks, the story then effortlessly shifts into a \u201cand that world is going to end\u201d story. Once our friends meet and figure each other out, the quest is waiting for them right away. I really appreciated the way the botton-dwelling cephalopods\u2014who refer to themselves as the Ancient Intelligence\u2014are basically as ignorant and arrogant as humans, they just happen to dwell at the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes a to-the-point 1:1 metaphor is just what you need. The ending is exciting. I won\u2019t spoil anything, but some Hawaiian mythology comes into play. It might be tempting to call the ending a deus ex machina, but I think the ending builds on themes already established in the rest of the novel. The world is bigger than you think, and sometimes you can\u2019t control what happens. Then the last chapter is kinda like B roll over end credits, which is fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n God\u2019s Will For Monsters<\/em> by Rachel Cruz:<\/strong> ooooh baby, this is monster poetry. Well. It\u2019s a lot of things\u2014family poems, Filipino diaspora poems, coming of age poems, womanhood poems, postcolonial poems. They\u2019re tightly constructed prose blocks or just-right enjambed lyrics, imagistic and specific. A standout long poem is \u201cMAXIMUM 25 WORDS,\u201d which is almost entirely made up of remittance forms for money sent from the U.S. to the Philippines. But monsters organize the book: there are addresses to Aswangs (a Filipino legend that rips itself in half and licks unborn babies out of mothers\u2019 wombs). The section breaks are erasures of encyclopedia-like entries on vampira, weredogs, manananggal, carrion-eating ghouls, and witches. The poems interrogate monstrousness as a way of othering people, and also use monstrousness as a way of reclaiming agency\/power. But also, there are lot of blood and guts. This book absolutely goes in my October poetry rotation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Something to listen to while you browse? Hey, Rae brought up this comparison in the acknowledgments page, not me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"two](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-19.png\")