Someone You Can Build a Nest In feels like a Murderbot novel through a fantasy lens

polygon.com:

John Wiswell’s debut novel Someone You Can Build a Nest In was one of Polygon’s most anticipated SFF novels of 2024, and it lived up to that title. It’s an energetic, deeply strange, surprising book whose protagonist, a monster named Shesheshen, strongly reminded me of one of the decade’s most popular SFF protagonists, Martha Wells’ Murderbot. Like Murderbot, Shesheshen is a nonhuman character who struggles to understand human emotion and behavior, and is frustrated and even repelled when she starts experiencing it herself. They share a certain outlook — a loneliness they can’t acknowledge, and an attachment to one human in particular.

Unlike Murderbot, though, Shesheshen is a boneless, shape-shifting, human-eating monster who’s just looking to settle down with a nice partner and lay her eggs in them, so her young can hatch and devour their host from the inside.

And yet this gruesome body-horror novel, packed with detail about the mechanics of life as a carnivorous predator, is more or less a cozy romance. After a particularly damaging monster hunt, Shesheshen connects with a human woman, Homily, and starts to dream about egg-laying. At the same time, their connection starts to change them both, pushing them to confront their assumptions about their families and about each other.

Polygon talked to John Wiswell about what went into the novel, how it reflects his experience with disability and the queer community, and what he learned from Murderbot. And you can also read an excerpt from Someone You Can Build a Nest In on Polygon, as Shesheshen navigates the local town of Underlook in disguise, and finds out they’re celebrating her death.

Polygon: You’ve said this was a book you’ve been working toward writing for your entire life. How so?

John Wiswell: I’ve been publishing short fiction for 15 years, and a lot of it has been about seeing humanity in the inhuman, and using speculative fiction as a way to reflect largely marginalized experiences. Like how you feel