Dwellers

June 13, 2022
Philippine National Book Award winner Victoria (Lambana) mixes magic and mystery in this addictive but uneven urban fantasy. In contemporary Manila, two unnamed “dwellers,” entities that can possess bodies at will, take over the corpses—and lives—of brothers Jonah and Louis, both professors, following a fatal car crash. Then they find a woman’s rotting body in a basement freezer of the brothers’ house, and worry they may have chosen wrong. As neither retains any of the original Jonah or Louis’s memories, they have no leads on the murder—until a chance encounter with their neighbor, Ivy, helps them piece together what might have happened, and how their new identities may have been involved. This mystery propels the plot as the new Jonah and Louis investigate, with the help of former students who know them as favorite professors, but the tight focus on the whodunit leaves little room for much else, including any significant character development or worldbuilding. Still, readers who don’t mind the hazily constructed world will find this a fast-paced page-turner.

July 15, 2022
Jonah and Louis are not truly Jonah and Louis. They are two cousins who have taken over the lives of Jonah and Louis, thanks to a family ability to inhabit others' bodies. At first glance, Jonah and Louis seem like two respectable brothers to inhabit, but when they discover a dead body in the basement freezer, the two cousins realize they are perhaps in an even grimmer situation than the one they left. Award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Victoria crafts a fascinating example of weird fiction and a mystery within a mystery. Told through the sharp yet vulnerable perspective of Jonah (who is not Jonah), the story of both the cousins and the brothers unfolds at a brisk pace and is supplemented by expertly creepy drawings from illustrator Aldy Aguirre. At its heart, Dwellers presents an unflinching and morally gray examination of cold realities, justice, and the long-term effects of trauma. Readers should anticipate mentions of murder, suicide, sexual abuse and assault, ableism, and fatphobia.

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