Read an excerpt from Someone You Can Build a Nest In, 2024’s squelchiest cozy fantasy

polygon.com:

“Creepy, scary, sad, and squelchy” aren’t words that seem to go well with “cozy fantasy,” “sapphic romance,” or “dark comedy.” But Nebula and Locus award-winner John Wiswell blends all those elements into his debut novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In. One of Polygon’s most anticipated science fiction/fantasy novels of 2024, the book, now on shelves, centers on a shape-shifting monster. Shesheshen haunts her local town, Underlook, until she connects with a human woman whose gentleness surprises her. Smitten, Shesheshen plans to show her love by implanting parasitic eggs in her crush object.

Polygon recently spoke to Wiswell about what went into the book — about writing neurodivergent characters, how his own disabilities helped inspire and enliven Shesheshen, and what he learned from Martha Wells’ Murderbot.

But he also shared a chapter of the book with us. Read on for an excerpt of Someone You Can Build a Nest In, as Shesheshen, freshly wounded from a fight with a new batch of monster-hunters, heads to town to claim a few human victims and recover.

The citizens of Underlook were vultures. All trade routes from east and west had to cross the isthmus — that one little land bridge. With so few wild animals to eat, Shesheshen had to attack caravans that crossed the isthmus, seizing their meat and leaving behind useless lamp oil and pink salts and high-thread-count undergarments. Underlook then descended and divvied up the spoils, such that even the most mediocre of their children wore britches and capes meant for monarchs. People had trouble proposing marriage for all the gemmed rings clogging up their fingers.

And they never once thanked her for it.

In her optimistic youth, Shesheshen had prowled these streets and selected the right person for her meal. Using different bones for each visit to the town meant she never looked identifiable, and was seldom suspected by the locals. If she acted like she had money, vendors went out of their way to normalize her presence.