Someone You Can Build a Nest In

Nebula Award–winning short story writer Wiswell makes his novel debut with a monster horror-fantasy that has the story beats of a romantic comedy. Shape-shifter Shesheshen is known and feared throughout the land as “the Wyrm of Underlook,” who makes a meal of any monster hunter foolish enough to engage her. Having constructed a human form for herself from old bones and a bear trap, she is soon pursued and driven off a cliff. A young woman named Homily finds and nurses Shesheshen, in her human form, back to health. Sheshenen begins to think she might be falling in love with Homily, even as she realizes that the kindhearted woman would make an excellent receptacle for her eggs. This is after Homily, who doesn’t know Shesheshen’s secret, confesses that she must kill the Wyrm (that is, Shesheshen) to break her family’s curse. Wiswell puts a lot of genre conventions in the blender and pours readers an oddly satisfying concoction of body horror, fantasy adventure, and humorous misunderstandings. Narrator Carmen Rose adds the right balance of gravitas and emotion as Shesheshen painfully learns to love and be human.