I was first introduced to Margaret Killjoy on the "Behind the Bastards" podcast, but I hadn't read any of her books until now. This is fantastic! It's a really quick read, it took me maybe 3 hours. There's communism, body horror and shitty men! Ms. Killjoy excels in painting the scene with words; I really felt like I could see Freedom, Iowa.

First in a Tor.com collection of 4 queer-authored novellas published for Pride 2018, The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion is a punk fantasy. Alex Brown summarises the tone well in their Tor.com piece Anti-Doorstoppers: 10 Great SFF Novellas and Novelettes: “The story is part rural fantasy, part dark fantasy, and part horror. Think Supernatural but darker and queerer.”

Travelling to the anarchist utopian squatter-community of Freedom, Iowa, to find out why her old friend ran away from his found-family and the home that made him settle down from the road in order to kill himself in a motel room, squatter/nomad Danielle discovers an “eternal spirit” in the form of a blood-red, three-antlered deer is… “protecting”… the community.

With an author who is herself a transfeminine nomad, a queer protagonist and prominent trans secondary characters and characters of colour in the found-family, the story is effortlessly diverse and the setting itself is really interesting: the ancom utopia sounds lovely — but broken, inevitably, otherwise the community wouldn’t have needed to summon their protector, and with it the cost. But this isn’t just a what-happened-next; as KJ Charles puts it:

And, as Killjoy put it in the book, “the revolution is about taking power away from the oppressors, not becoming them ourselves”.

The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion is a short read with a plot that moves quickly: I read it pretty much in a single sitting.  I will absolutely read the next book in the series.  
I am always going to appreciate really explicitly anarchist fiction; some of the punk references felt a little forced here and a little cliché there, but mostly I found them more enjoyable than not.  For anarchists there are many dynamics that will feel familiar here -- the attempts to mediate disputes and make decisions by consensus, really really free markets, etc.  The cast of characters is diverse, and the points of conflict -- which are really a sort of discussion on strategy and tactics -- are for the most part well developed despite the novella's short length.  Inevitably with the constraints of a novella some elements that could've been developed further are left vague; here, it's the general sociopolitical context outside the main setting that the reader learns very little about, as well as most of the characters' backstories.  I really appreciate Danielle as a protagonist, though, and look forward to following her - and hopefully learning more about some of the other characters - in the second book.

This book is about a commune haunted by a demon. It fucks.