"Daughter from the Dark" by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko (published 2020)
There is a possibility that Daughter from the Dark by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko (2020) lost some of its stylistic panach because of its translation into English from Russian. If so, it's a big loss for the novel because its structure is so well conceived as a warpy fairy-tale and contemporary fantasy about a young girl-child from another world and the male stranger who, upon once saving her life, acts in loco parentis. The child herself, Alyona, cannot fully explain who she is, where she is from, and why she has no where else to go. Grimalsky, a.k.a. DJ Aspirin, her caretaker (though he treats her with less care than he probably should), teeters between awe, respect, and selfless love on one hand, and on the other, hatred, absolute annoyance, and obligation: not a good sign when the person who is supposed to be your father has no idea how to act except passive-aggressively. This mix of the two brings up a very strange Beauty and the Beast tale, where two...