Searching for clues about her best friend’s mysterious suicide, Danielle ventures to the squatter, utopian town of Freedom, Iowa, and witnesses a protector spirit ― in the form of a blood-red, three-antlered deer ― begin to turn on its summoners. She and her new friends have to act fast if they’re going to save the town ― or get out alive.
I feel right at home in the story amongst the punks, anarchists and squatters. It's both relatable in those ways and also inspiring in some other ways. The story is straight to the point in both development of the plot and complexity of it, which makes it a light read and easy to digest read, though I wish it was just a bit longer. I feel like the story would do great in a novel format. Still, I'm super excited to read more.
Review of "The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion" by Margaret Killjoy
5 stars
Content warning
Spoilers for "The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion" and "The Sapling Cage", both by Margaret Killjoy
Just finished "The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion" by Margaret Killjoy and that no seven hours after having started it (it's pretty short, around 70 pages in my version; it's nice to have finished a book again after so much time)! As expected with that author, the book is great, queer, and very anarchist.
The other book by Margeret Killjoy that I so far read ("The Sapling Cage": bookwyrm.social/user/zvavybir/comment/7295724#anchor-7295724) had more an emphasis on the queer part, while this has a very strong emphasis on the anarchist one. It basically lays out the authors approach to anarchism and how it can fail if you're only superficially anarchist.
It's set in a magical version of the modern US, using the magic to explore what "anarchism" really means. I honestly don't really want to spoil it any further though, so just go read it! If you can stomach the rather gruesome/gore-y aspects of it, I highly recommend it!
Very quick and engaging read, I did not mean to read it in one setting but did. It's tense and you want to find out what happens next - it's funny that this is the protagonist's motivation for being involved, in part. It feels very much like a mystery story. A lot happens in a very small amount of pages
Picked it up from the library because I recognized the name from the Internet. I don't really have high expectations of novels which are about politics first, since often what makes a good essay makes a bad novel (and vice versa) but this surpassed my expectations. It is kind of leftist infighting: the novella. It is definitely not escapist literature.
I didn't love that the narrator immediately knew who the "bad guy" was. The point that charismatic people who put people at ease can be bad people did not need to be stated explicitly. But that's my only complaint in terms of characterization. All the characters feel very real.
If you don't at least know some anarchists irl I don't think this story will make a lot of sense to you
Review of 'The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I do enjoy a book that gets right to the point. This is a very barebones novella that doesn't really have a wasted scene and gets into the meat of the story that it wants to tell right away. I just wish the story was a little more interesting.
Danielle (and she's quick to correct people whenever they call her something otherwise) is kind of a professional vagrant who's trying to figure out why a close friend committed suicide after leaving an anarchist commune that they thought was the best thing since sliced bread. Danielle manages to find the place, just as a supernatural event splits the town into two factions at each others' throats. She kind of incidentally gets wrapped up with one side, but then starts to wonder if she made a mistake.
This is my second time reading Margaret Killjoy; I didn't even register that it was …
I do enjoy a book that gets right to the point. This is a very barebones novella that doesn't really have a wasted scene and gets into the meat of the story that it wants to tell right away. I just wish the story was a little more interesting.
Danielle (and she's quick to correct people whenever they call her something otherwise) is kind of a professional vagrant who's trying to figure out why a close friend committed suicide after leaving an anarchist commune that they thought was the best thing since sliced bread. Danielle manages to find the place, just as a supernatural event splits the town into two factions at each others' throats. She kind of incidentally gets wrapped up with one side, but then starts to wonder if she made a mistake.
This is my second time reading Margaret Killjoy; I didn't even register that it was the same author as Country of Ghosts until I was a third of the way through and thought, "this scene really reminds me of a similar scene in... oh, that's why." Again we get to see what an anarchist society looks like, albeit on a much smaller and believable scale this time. And it's not perfect, but I think that's the point and the characters in-fiction even say so. It's another exercise in "at least it's not capitalism," but wasn't exactly appetizing to me personally.
There's nothing necessarily bad about this book, it just kinda felt on-rails and predictable to me, as if the author just wanted to write about some cool punk lifestyle characters first and came up with a plot second. Which is fine (and I'm certainly not cool enough to hang out with anyone described in this book), but I felt like the "we summoned a demon and now we don't know what to do because we didn't think it would actually work" storyline was kind of wasted here.
Review of 'The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
First in a [b:Tor.com collection of 4 queer-authored novellas published for Pride 2018|39724296|In Our Own Worlds Four LGBTQ+ Tor.com Novellas|Margaret Killjoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1522942282l/39724296.SY75.jpg|61405231], The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion is a punk fantasy. Alex Brown summarises the tone well in their Tor.com piece Anti-Doorstoppers: 10 Great SFF Novellas and Novelettes: “The story is part rural fantasy, part dark fantasy, and part horror. Think Supernatural but darker and queerer.”
Travelling to the anarchist utopian squatter-community of Freedom, Iowa, to find out why her old friend ran away from his found-family and the home that made him settle down from the road in order to to kill himself in a motel room, squatter/nomad Danielle discovers an “eternal spirit” in the form of a blood-red, three-antlered deer is… “protecting”… the community.
With an author who is herself a transfeminine nomad, a queer protagonist and prominent trans secondary characters and characters of colour …
First in a [b:Tor.com collection of 4 queer-authored novellas published for Pride 2018|39724296|In Our Own Worlds Four LGBTQ+ Tor.com Novellas|Margaret Killjoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1522942282l/39724296.SY75.jpg|61405231], The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion is a punk fantasy. Alex Brown summarises the tone well in their Tor.com piece Anti-Doorstoppers: 10 Great SFF Novellas and Novelettes: “The story is part rural fantasy, part dark fantasy, and part horror. Think Supernatural but darker and queerer.”
Travelling to the anarchist utopian squatter-community of Freedom, Iowa, to find out why her old friend ran away from his found-family and the home that made him settle down from the road in order to to kill himself in a motel room, squatter/nomad Danielle discovers an “eternal spirit” in the form of a blood-red, three-antlered deer is… “protecting”… the community.
With an author who is herself a transfeminine nomad, a queer protagonist and prominent trans secondary characters and characters of colour in the found-family, the story is effortlessly diverse and the setting itself is really interesting: the ancom utopia sounds lovely — but broken, inevitably, otherwise the community wouldn't have needed to summon their protector, and with it the cost. But this isn’t just a what-happened-next; as KJ Charles puts it:
This is on one level a tense horror novel, where forces of the State and society and male violence are as much a sinister and pervasive threat as the heart-eating magic deer. But, as that suggests, it’s also a meditation on things like society, what anarchism means, how societies enforce rules and what it means to do so and who takes enforcement roles on themselves. How do we keep ourselves decent without a prospect of punishment for those who transgress? Who makes those calls?
And, as Killjoy put it in the book, “the revolution is about taking power away from the oppressors, not becoming them ourselves”.
CN: mention of suicide, mention of rape, animal death, death of a loved one, abuse, violence, gore, state violence
Review of 'The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
For a short novelette, it was okay. I was a bit bothered by how the narration sometimes felt like it was from two different writers; one that felt like the inner monologue of Danielle, and one that felt like Neal Stephenson.
Review of 'The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Killjoy is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. I haven't finished a book in one sitting in ages, but I did this one. Granted, it is short. But it is delightful, in a horrifying kinda way.
Conflict is hard But you can't abdicate your responsibility to another person (or being), even when faced with bullies/sociopaths/bad actors. We all just have to muddle through and try not to be a shitbag. It's a good message.
