Poll

Mystery Mod Fantasy poll

In the time-honored tradition of surprising and engaging our beloved members, this month's selection has an extra twist. Someone new is coming aboard the mod team. But rather than announce our new mod in the normal way, we want you to guess their identity. (We know it's not time for mod-madness yet, but this is way it goes sometimes.)

Need Hints? Our new mod joined SFFBC in 2020. Some of their favorite club picks are The Spear Cuts Through Water, the Broken Earth trilogy and the Hainish cycle. And of course, this poll is both tribute to and clues for them. We'll confirm their ascension after you correctly guess their identity. Game. On.

The Collected Toppi Vol. 1: The Enchanted World by Sergio Toppi: If you're not familiar with maestro Sergio Toppi, you're grievously missing out. His gorgeous, oniric style, all towering spaces and hyperdetailed lines, has won over generations of fans, inspired (and intimidated) the best of his peers, yet remains inimitable. This first volume of the collected edition includes his high fantasy stand-alone stories.

Djeliya: A West African Fantasy Epic by Juni Ba: Senegalese author Juni Ba weaves seamlessly African folklore and the hip-hop arts of DJing and graffiti in this debut. The last heir of a fallen royal house and his reluctantly loyal storyteller, or djeli, embark on an epic quest to restore order and peace in a world corrupted by magic and money.

A Guest in the House by E.M. Carroll: Non-binary Canadian author E.M. Carroll has been giving a deliciously dark, contemporary spin to folklore and Gothic tropes for some years now, from menacing woods to a lesbian vampire temptress. A Guest in the House is her most mature and ambitious work to date, bringing her stylistic experiments to fruition in a tale inspired by Du Maurier's classic Rebecca.

The Night Eaters by Marjorie M. Liu and Sana Takeda: The all-female, all-Asian team behind Monstress came back with a project that hit closer to home and brought them further awards. Balancing a failing restaurant with a visit from their overbearing parents isn't easy for young Asian-American twins; yet nothing could have prepared them for the discovery of unspoken, otherwordly horrors in their family history... Marjorie M. Liu and Sana Takeda add an unexpected, hilarious layer of humour to their now usual Lovecraftian nightmares.

Discuss your book preferences and guess the mystery mod's identity in these comments :)

All of these books except for The Night Eaters, Vol. 1: She Eats the Night are only available to me by purchasing them.
Djeliya has a US Amazon link but no purchase options or prices. The Amazon AI doesn't know why.

Going to have to think about the mystery mod.

All but the Toppi are available from my library. I definitely lean more toward the horror-y ones though, and The Night Eaters is the one I leeeeeaaaan toward…

FYI: We *do* check availability before selecting books. All of them on the list are available through some libraries and by digital download from paid sources. There is no way we can check everyone's personal library. (That's an unreasonable expectation.)

Like Becky, all but the Toppi are available @ my library. I previewed all of the picks and found Djeliya the most compelling, but I'll be happy to read whichever wins.

But also....
Any guesses as to the mystery mod's identity??

Melanie wrote: " There is no way we can check everyone's personal library. (That's an unreasonable expectation."

I understand and don't expect that but I didn't know if it was just me without asking.
I also appreciate the work you guys go through putting this stuff together.

I also discovered that when you click the shop this series link on Djeliya: A West African Fantasy Epic it takes you to a page on Amazon with no options for different formats or prices but if you search for it in the Amazon search bar it takes you to the page with the options. The kindle edition is currently $4.00

Ellen wrote: "All of these books except for The Night Eaters, Vol. 1: She Eats the Night are only available to me by purchasing them.
Djeliya has a US Amazon link but no purchase options or pric..."

All but Toppi are available to me through my library.

My guess is Alistair: did some sleuthing and looked at members with most comments and looked at who joined in 2020. So could be completely wrong. Alistair also likes Spear & Broken Earth trilogy.

... and you're right! Congratulations.

I told the other mods it would take half a minute before somebody would pick me out.
Full reveal: the selection consists entirely of graphic novels, which the mods felt would represent me. We also included one Italian author; I was afraid that he would be the hardest to source for y'all, but I highly recommend him whenever you have the chance.

I like to think that I have extensive knowledge of comics, yet I must admit that it was good work finding titles to match our very exacting standards.

I will not cast my preference for the time being, in the totally vain belief that my vote might influence others.

Let's move the celebrations here!

I am looking forward to reading a comic, since I have all but Toppi available I will probably read the other 3!

Sounds like a plan.

To learn about another new mod on our team, check out BLC thread".

Shenanigans galore

I'd post the link to the $4 Djeliya but it's not permitted

the graphics look amazing in the sample

Haha, yeah, any of my picks are going to have great art.
I like Juni Ba's mix of ancient and contemporary.

I keep flip-flopping between the two seasonally appropriate (spooky/horrory) options, The Night Eaters and A Guest in the House.

I'm currently leaning toward the latter, but if Night Eaters looks likely to need a vote to win... I'm your girl. :)

It keeps being tied with Djeliya, but this is just the first day of voting.

Can anyone point me to where I can get a download of Djeliya from in the UK please? Can only get physical copy in another language on Amazon.

It's unusual that the publisher, TKO Studios, doesn't have digital options. I see paperback and hardback editions available at the big UK retailers, and I suppose the same goes for independent bookshops.

I voted for Djeliya since my library has it and it's not too long. Another GR group I'm in selected The Night Eaters for their BotM recently and I just could not get into it.

For the same reason, I'd love to get back to it! I didn't finish the series this past summer, before moving on to other things.

Curiously, page count was an issue as I was looking at candidates for the poll: most volumes nowadays collect four to six monthly issues, whixch amount to no more than 120 pages: far too little for our requirements.

Thanks Alistair. I just thought it was worth asking as was under the impression they were all meant to be available for download. I'll assume that doesn't cover the UK.

Again, I think that's down to TKO, not one market in particular. There is a Kindle version vailable on the retailer named after the continental forest...

A Guest in the House has been leading for several days now.

I can see it's on Amazon now :) thanks. Like you said though, it's not in the lead... I really thought it would be.

Alistair wrote: "A Guest in the House has been leading for several days now."

At this time in the combined polls with TSG Djeliya has 34 points and A Guest in the House has 33.
Night Eaters is 25, Toppi is 19

A Guest in the House has gorgeous artwork (E.M./Emily Carroll) & colors. And an unsettling story.
Usually I don't vote for books I've read already, but in this case I did -- it's so intriguing and good and... captivating?, I am sure other SFFBC people will enjoy Carroll's work.

This is actually their only work I could find that I haven't read yet. Good to know it doesn't disappoint!