Silver and Lead, by Seanan McGuire

Silver and Lead is the novel I wanted The Innocent Sleep to be, which is to say that after a book spent in Tybalt’s head in a parallel novel we are pushing forward narratively and back with Toby as the protagonist / viewpoint character. *Now* we can begin to deal with the fallout of Sleep No More and Titania’s world altering spell on that region of Faerie. This is honestly what I’ve been waiting for since Be the Serpent, which seems weird to say because it’s only been two books and three years, but McGuire is so prolific that the wait has felt longer. That’s a “me” problem.

Toby is 8 months pregnant at the start at of the novel, and we can reasonably expect that nothing will go smoothly because this is Toby, Faerie, and well, this is Seanan McGuire telling the story. The Luidaeg wants to be the baby’s fairy godmother (apparently this is a thing) and says there will be other requests for this, but someone should be designated to protect the child if something should happen to Toby and Tybalt given that former Kings of Cats often do not live long, nor do Heroes such as Toby.

Meanwhile, the Royal Vault of the Mists has been raided during the Titania Spell Interregnum and rare / dangerous magical artifacts have been taken, including a Hope Chest (which, if we remember, can change the blood quotient of anyone without their permission). Since then there have been attacks in the Mists suggesting the usage of some of those artifacts.

Toby has been asked, despite her advanced pregnancy and the expected objections of her family, to investigate. She’s a Hero, y’all. We know where this is going.

The sentencing of the False Queen of the Mists (still no name given) takes place, damn near the entire realm is able to speak against her and Arden passes sentence (two consecutive hundred year terms of elf shot, then we’ll see) BUT GASP at the very end the False Queen has disappeared, someone previously attacked was magicked to take her place and that person when freed points the finger at Simon.

We know what comes next: the call comes in to the bullpen, bring in the right hander and Toby’s on the mound to provide some long relief. Actually, I have no idea whether Toby is a rightie or a lefty, I’ve just been watching a lot of baseball lately and since it’s taken me a surprising amount of time to get around to writing about Silver and Lead.

Silver and Lead is the 19th October Daye Novel, which is to say that it’s built on a LOT of history, absolutely does not stand on its own, and will not convince a non-reader that this is a good place to start with the series or with Seanan McGuire. There may be a few entrance points to the series, but this is not it. 

Long term readers, however, will have plenty to appreciate with the lore and continued world building that McGuire employs. One of the more interesting bits is that Titania’s world altering spell wasn’t just a perfect casting, it was just the latest of numerous attempts that was run and rerun and rerun over and over again because even the mighty Titania just couldn’t get it right for what she wanted. That’s *interesting* because it shows a limitation.

What I’m perpetually most interested in is the potential true identity of Marcia, the changeling, and whether she is Maeve. I speculated about this most recently in my re-read of the fourteenth book, A Killing Frost, and it seems even more possible now. There are so many little bits of things to question - Toby not being able to tell Marcia’s heritage, a blood spell being done with Marcia’s blood but weirdly not actually including her blood, Marcia not wanting to be included in the Luidaeg’s protection spell, the once again presence of Maeve’s magic near the end of the novel, not to mention a conversation between Simon and Marcia in the “Seas and Shores” novella about Marcia’s children and lack of discussion about them - it’s all circumstantial and probably speculation better left to a re-read than a first reader but it’s a big deal and we *have* to be close to Maeve’s return. Obviously, we don’t actually have to be that close but it feels like we’re slow walking to an end game.

There’s also a weird moment where I wondered if Toby’s baby is going to be Maeve reborn, but I don’t know what to do with that thought.

The negative is that I didn’t love the pregnant Toby questing - not that a pregnant Toby shouldn’t quest, but something about the storytelling of that and how it was all described didn’t fully jive with me. Of course, I’m a dude who’s approaching 50 years old and even though I have kids with an incredibly capable woman, I haven’t actually carried or birthed those kids so take a vague sense of not loving a more limited Toby storyline with a grain of whichever your preferred type of salt happens to be. Part of that is how Tybalt responds to Toby’s pregnancy and his perception of her being in danger and how out of line he acts on the regular. It’s tiresome.

I expect I’ll have more specific criticisms the time I get to a re-read essay, but I’m also baffled by the choice of Miranda for Toby’s baby name given all of the issues she’s had with Janet / Miranda. 

As a reader who was fairly frustrated with Sleep No More and The Innocent Sleep for, in some ways, pausing the forward motion of the narrative; Silver and Lead is significantly more satisfying. Stuff happens! Toby’s baby is born! There’s questing with action and drama! It’s all generally fun! Silver and Lead is so much of the stuff we look for in an October Daye novel.



PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

Nanoreviews: Demon Daughter. Installment Immortality, Overcaptain

Demon Daughter, by Lois McMaster Bujold

A very gentle story, one of my favorites of the series. In Demon Daughter a young girl, Atta, is washed ashore following a shipwreck and for reasons ends up in the care of Penric, who (if you haven’t been keeping up with this series) is basically a semi itinerant priest who deals with cases of demon possession.

Demon Daughter ends up a combination of a small domestic drama and a question of the nature of demon possession in this universe and it is small and it is quiet, but it is deeply powerful. Atta is possessed by a very young demon and that allows for the perspective of Desdemona to come very much to the forefront of this novella.

This is the twelfth novella in the Penric and Desdemona series and for a reader who has been along for the ride since the first volume, Demon Daughter is deeply satisfying.

Installment Immortality, by Seanan McGuire

I have to wonder how close we are getting to an end point with the Incryptid series. That’s not a statement of exhaustion, but an observation of the stories McGuire is telling at this point. Spoilers will likely abound - but the previous book, Aftermarket Afterlife, had the Covenant (if you know you know) launching major attacks against the Price-Healy family and our heroes hitting back with a counter attack utilizing the ghostly skills of Mary Dunlavy to hit the Covenant at their main chapterhouse. Installment Immortality sort of deals with the consequence of that, in that it is focused on what happens to a ghost who blows everything up and can’t quite get away from the bomb and also gives an update on the state of the Covenant following that attack.

On the assumption Seanan McGuire isn’t just getting starting fifteen books into the series, It seems like we’re getting close to a potential end game for Incryptid (this is also notable after reading the description for next year’s book Butterfly Effects).

That’s neither here nor there when thinking about Installment Immortality, but the future of the series was weighing on my mind when reading it.

What Installment Immortality does well is tell what is functionally a side story from the main Price family action. Still a ghost getting to do ghost things Mary Dunlavy is put on a quest to put a stop to Covenant agents attacking the ghosts of America - and through this examines the consequences of several books ago regarding cousin Arthur (again, this will make sense if you know the series - I don’t know that I’d recommend jumping in here even though it’s a new narrator and those are typically jump in spots).

As a general rule I love this series. Seanan McGuire has done a fantastic job making Incryptid feel very lived in. We’ve been on a *journey* with this family and everything is familiar even with McGuire is doing new things, shifting perspectives, and making things generally uncomfortable for her characters. It’s impossible to read Installment Immortality in a vacuum. It’s the fifteenth book in a series that I’ve been reading for many years after diving headfirst into Discount Armageddon.

If Installment Immortality isn’t one of my favorite books of the series, and it’s not, it is still an overall satisfying read but I think primarily for those who have been along for the ride and it doesn’t hit some of the highs of earlier books in the series.

Overcaptain, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr

Alyiakal returns in Overcaptain, the latest entry in L.E. Modesitt’s long running Saga of Recluce. Following the events of From the Forest, success comes with a price and Alyiakal has been promoted, assigned to close a military post that has been a hot mess, and further assigned to be deputy Commander to an officer who doesn’t want the help.

There’s a trend in the Recluce series of extremely competent men who don’t fit the perfect political mold of those in power but who do their jobs so well their advancement cannot be denied but are given continually impossible tasks that are designed to either fail or kill them (or both). If you’re down for that, along with the understanding that Recluce novels live in the mundanity of their protagonists day to day lives that hint and build towards a much greater conflict.

Modesitt’s prose is smooth and Overcaptain is languorous easy reading. I continually describe Recluce as comfort reading, which isn’t to say that the action itself is comfort but Overcaptain (and the rest of the series) is a book to sink in and just live in this world for as long as it takes to make it to the end. The journey is the point of Recluce, much less so than the destination - but the destination always includes some fireworks.

Overcaptain is another solid entry in the Saga of Recluce.


PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

The October Daye Reread: A Killing Frost

Welcome back, dear readers. Today we’re going to revisit the fourteenth novel in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series: A Killing Frost. We are now in the midst of a real push to catch up to publication (after this there are four books to go), though I don’t think I’ll make it before September’s publication of Silver and Lead. *That’s* a book I’m absolutely excited to read.

Astute readers will note that I did slow down the pace of my re-read after last writing about The Unkindest Tide in December. That was my incredibly anticipated return of the Roane novel, which was a delight.

A Killing Frost is something different and I’ve been very open about spoilers throughout this re-read, in part because there are some truly groundbreaking events that occur over the course of the series and this book has perhaps the biggest. If you’ve been following along you probably know what’s coming but if not, I am going to spoil the hell out of this book and about the second biggest, as well as speculate on what will be the third biggest event of the series when it happens.

It’s all happening.

Let’s go.

Three books ago, The Brightest Fell, featured Toby’s to find and bring home her long lost sister, August - a sister so long lost that Toby didn’t know that she had one until fairly recently. The cost, because there is *always* a cost, was that of the even more recent redemption of Simon Torquill, August’s father.

See, August was lost more than one hundred years ago when *she* embarked on a quest to find and return Oberon to Faerie. Oberon, one of the Three, the father and co-creator of all of Faerie. He’s been lost for some five hundred years, clearly doesn’t want to be found, and the price of August’s failure was that she lost her way home. Home, in this instance, means the entire concept of home, of her family, of herself.

In the Brightest Fell, Toby had to bring August home but because August never found Oberon she had no concept of home and being whole, or even who her father was. To bring August truly home, Simon took on August’s debt. Simon lost everything that he regained, had no idea of anything other than his initial service of villainy but worse, this time he didn’t even know why.

I wrote about all of that and the tragedy of Simon Torquill, but that brings us back to A Killing Frost. It’s Simon’s turn. October is a Hero and that means big quests. Bringing Simon back to redemption is the quest du jour of A Killing Frost but it’s not that. August failed to find Oberon. Simon will never look, but Simon needs to find Oberon.

This is the book where Toby find Oberon.

It’s staggering, really.

There’s a quest.

That’s not what I want to talk about so much as I want to talk about Maeve. Maeve is one of the Three, one of the mothers of Faerie along with Titania. Because I’ve been spoiling stuff throughout the re-read we know that Titania has been under an incredibly powerful (cast by Oberon, natch) gaes and currently incarnated as Toby’s friend Stacy. More on this in a moment,as well in the entire book Be the Serpent.

But Maeve. We’re still speculating on Maeve because through eighteen novels so far published Maeve has not yet returned to Faerie. We know that she’s been missing since Janet and Tam Lin broke the Ride, which led to Titania’s banishment and Oberon’s abandonment (honestly, if this is all too mumbo jumbo for you, don’t worry about it, it matters and it absolutely doesn’t).

There have been hints of Maeve throughout the series and in The Unkindest Tide we’ve seen there is something deeply wrong with Marcia, an ostensibly changeling with only a tenuous tie to faerie and I think she’s Maeve.

“Hi,” I said brightly. “Maeve, right? I’m a friend of your daughter’s. Antigone, I mean. The eldest. A *good* friend. I helped her bring back the Roane. She’s not sad all the time anymore.”

So - on the road to find Oberon Toby gets stuck in an area with ties to Maeve and so Toby calls for Maeve’s help AND GETS IT. I’m not sure this can be overstated. Maeve doesn’t appear but her magic clearly aids Toby with what she needs to move forward. It’s another reminder that Maeve may be more aware and closer to the surface than anyone truly suspects, especially in comparison to how deeply Oberon and Titania are buried.

It’s not possible for roses to look amused, but these ones came remarkably close.

What I’m really curious about that, besides if I’m right about Marcia, is how much does Maeve know about what she is responding to. Does she know the specifics of what is going on and how her magic is being used or does it just respond to those who call upon her while in her spaces? How aware is Maeve of who she is?

This brings us to Titania because hey, I’ve already read this book and what I find most fascinating is the speculation. We’re two books away from everything blowing up and Titania returning like the villain she absolutely is.

There have been hints about Stacy over the course of the series, but here’s the big one:

“She’s always been weird about the idea of any of us dating,” she said. “She saw me holding hands with a Hob changeling I went to high school with once, and she lost it. Like, complete maternal meltdown. Way out of proportion with a little completely innocent hand holding. I never dated after that. Technically, I’d never dated before that.”

Something about that story didn’t add up. I’d never stopped to think about it before this, but it had never been my business.

This was all incredibly new information for Toby about her closest friend and she’s deeply suspicious. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of time for the suspicion to take hold, it’s really just foreshadowing for when stuff goes down in Be the Serpent. McGuire is laying down a hard piece of evidence right here.

“Titania’s fucking ass, is that *actually* fucking *Oberon*?” he asked, in a voice that managed to remain reverent, despite the mortal profanity.

The main event comes as Toby pulls everything together at the end. She figured out, or at least she’s staking her sense of identity on the idea that she is right, that Officer Thornton, a semi random character who got caught up in faerie, was actually Oberon who magicked himself into forgetting. Oberon was right there, in the Luidaeg’s house, for months now.

The Luidaeg bit her lip as she stepped toward him, black tears escaping from her eyes and running down her cheeks. They left tarry streaks behind, like she was crying off her mascara, but she was actually weeping the color out of her irises, leaving them driftglass green and clearer than I’d ever seen them.

“Daddy” she asked, in a voice that was barely bigger than a whisper. It shook on the second syllable, breaking.

It’s a heck of a moment that McGuire pulls off here. How do you write the return of what is functionally THE supreme being of the series, a character that is far more myth than reality and who is so far beyond any of the barely mortal fae that it can hardly be fathomed? It’s so very well done.


Random Notes and Random Quotes

**“It doesn’t matter what I wear to the wedding, we both know it’s going to be completely covered in blood before we reach “I do”.”

**“Language,” I said, in my primmest tone. “I’m asking important questions about the nature of Faerie here, and we’re still walking” - I love deep questions about the nature of Faerie

**I was never going to get a happy ending. Heroes never do.

**“I’m not sure I’d brag about being Titania’s favorite,” I said. “It seems like an honor with very few selling points.”

Evening scowled, red, red lips pursing in a moue of displeasure. “I’ll thank you to keep my mother’s name out of your mouth.”


Next up on the reread will be When Sorrows come, in which a wedding request actually occurs, Toby wears a magic wedding dress, we learn some fae political history, and Evening Winterrose is still the worst.

Open roads and kind fires, my friends. 

 

Previous Rereads

Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night
Late Eclipses
One Salt Sea
Ashes of Honor
Chimes at Midnight
The Winter Long
A Red-Rose Chain
Once Broken Faith

The Brightest Fell

Night and Silence

The Unkindest Tide


PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

Nanoreviews: The Martian Contingency, Tidal Creatures

The Martian Contingency, by Mary Robinette Kowal
While getting ready to write about The Martian Contingency I listened to the Hugo, Girl pod on Red Mars, obviously, that’s a very different novel published some thirty plus years ago, and the only real point of comparison between the two novels is that they are generally about the colonization of Mars. Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel is intensely detailed (painfully so, at many times) and Mary Robinette Kowal is focused on the space science, some politics and conspiracy, and handles it all with a light and gentle touch. I bring it up because the pod made me think about the differences in how stories are told about settling Mars and what different writers choose to focus on.

The Martian Contingency is a VERY Lady Astronaut novel, which is probably a dumb thing to say given that this is the fourth Lady Astronaut novel and the third one focusing on Elma York but this is a *very* Lady Astronaut novel.

What that means is that if you’re all the way in on this series like I am, you’ll find a lot to love here. It’s familiar and comforting. If The Calculating Stars or The Fated Sky did not land for you, though, The Martian Contingency won’t change your mind. It’s more of the same as far as how Kowal tells her story and does her characterization. If you liked the first two books but struggled a bit more with The Relentless Moon because of the protagonist shift to Nicole Wargin, The Martian Contingency is right back to Elma York for everything that entails.

The plotting aspect of The Martian Contingency’s narrative is the second mission of Martian settlement and the challenges that it faces to accomplish that mission, from technical challenges to identifying and addressing an unspoken issue from the First Mars Expedition to dealing with political obstacles back on Earth despite being millions of miles away. I dig how Mary Robinette Kowal tells her stories with easy, breezy prose so this book like so many of her previous books is borderline comfort food. She’s dealing with big ideas, but because the lens she uses is with characters who could be our friends, the big ideas don’t overwhelm the book.

The Martian Contingency is aspirational science fiction and despite being set in the early 1970’s as alternate history (and even more so the farther away they get from The Meteor in The Calculating Stars) the novel very much feels like a response to America and the world today. Some aspects are handled very quietly, like Nicole Wargin being the first woman President of the United States (after her Presidential Candidate husband was killed in The Relentless Moon, which makes me wonder about the rest of *that* story), the perpetual issues with “lady” astronauts and the inherent sexism the women face, and abortion issues much more overtly in this novel. This is along with Elma York’s working her way through understanding and misunderstanding of cultural differences.

This is a generally standalone novel and I think it works as such. The only Lady Astronaut novel that isn’t is The Fated Sky and that’s because it follows immediately after The Calculating Stars and reads more of a duology as a distinct work on its own. To that point, I’d recommend starting with the Hugo Award winning The Calculating Stars. I adored that novel and it really sets everything up for this alternate history, but The Margian Contingency works without that base. This is fairly accessible science fiction for non science fiction readers and there’s a lot to like here for everyone.

Tidal Creatures, by Seanan McGuire
The third volume of Seanan McGuire’s Alchemical Journeys and quite possibly her most ambitious. Middlegame was a true showcase for what McGuire can do as a storyteller and blended more ideas together than one could reasonably expect to form into a successful and satisfying melange of awesomeness. Middlegame also set a standard for what we can expect from this series, and if Seasonal Fears didn’t quite level up to those incredible heights it was still a very good novel.

Tidal Creatures is doing something more, if potentially less successfully. It is taking those major elements from the first two books, bringing in the ideas of A. Deborah Baker’s Up and Under series a little bit more concretely, and *then* working with the idea of a murder mystery where aspects of moon gods are being killed and how that impacts the larger conflict of alchemists vs everyone and the culmination of the plans of Asphodel Baker.

I should digress for a moment. Asphodel Baker was a background character in Middlegame who wrote four Up and Under children’s books that was able to form the core magical / alchemical system that underpinned the events of Middlegame. Seanan McGuire then took that idea and *wrote* the four Up and Under novels under the pen name of A. Deborah Baker, which then referenced later events and ideas in the Alchemical Journeys series - but now McGuire is making those connections yet more explicit. Confused? It’s a lot. I don’t think you *need* all of those books and connections to appreciate Tidal Creatures, but it helps to build resonance.

The problem is that this is where it does all begin to feel like too much and it’s takes at least a third of the novel to even begin to bring it all together because that first section of Tidal Creatures is a wholly new introduction to characters and a setting that is generally unfamiliar. Hey, this is fantasy, that’s what we do but it’s a little jarring in the third book in a series where readers are once again figuring it all out AND trying to make those connections to how this relates to what has come before.

McGuire does eventually bring all of those elements together and Tidal Creatures becomes more familiar and more satisfying than readers might have expected earlier in the novel. Tidal Creatures is still a lot, but it’s a lot in a way that Seanan McGuire’s readers will appreciate. I like that I have no idea where any of this is going in the next book or two of the series (which may conclude it), not even the bare shape of it beyond the conflict with the alchemists.

Strong recommendation to NOT start here. Read Middlegame, love it, and then continue in order.

Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather, Hugo and Ignyte Award Winner. Minnesotan.

The October Daye Reread: The Unkindest Tide

Welcome back, dear readers. Today we’re going to revisit the thirteenth novel in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series: The Unkindest Tide. I’ve been waiting for this one for some time, at least in its concept. I’ve mentioned several times throughout this re-read that I’ve had a difficult time remembering when certain events happened. This is one of them. For at least 2-3 books, if not more, I would absolutely have assumed *that* was the book where Toby helps the Luidaeg bring back the Roane. But it’s not.

This is.

Also, it’s worth noting that I probably won’t quite keep up the same pace as the last couple of months of pushing through the re-read, but at least at the moment: Thirteen down, only five to go.

It should go without saying that I have every intention of spoiling absolutely everything that crosses my mind about the series, both past books and future, but I’m going to say it. It’s going to happen. I’m also going to wildly speculate, which is going to tie into the two biggest events of the thus far published series.

Let’s do this.

“This doesn’t bring back the ones who were lost. This doesn’t make things *right*. But it makes things better than they’ve been, and maybe that can be enough to let us move forward, you know? Maybe this is where some of the broken bits get fixed.” - Marcia

It’s time.

There are no straight lines in an October Daye novel. Here’s the path: The Luidaeg puts out the call to the Selkies that it is time for them to face the the consequences of their ancestors and they need to meet at the Duchy of Ships where Toby will assist in transforming the Selkies into the Roane. Unfortunately, that’s probably not a full novel. It’s a novella at best and more likely a short story. Murder and kidnapping will ensue. There is sidetracking. Before we get to that, I should probably, briefly, explain the Selkies / Roane - though I’m not sure the necessity of this given that The Unkindest Tide is really not a good entrance point to the series and if you’re here you probably already know.

Okay - so The Luidaeg is Firstborn (meaning, a child of Oberon and Maeve in this instance) and any children of Firstborn develop as the distinct races of Faerie. The Roane was the descendant race of the Luidaeg and they had the gift of prophecy, for which (amongst other cruelties) they were eventually slaughtered almost to full extinction. In the cruelty of that slaughter, the skins of the Roane were flensed from their bodies - but the result of that is, through her grief and rage, the Luidaeg used her magic to bind those skins of her dead children to the children of the killers (the killers of the Roane having been killed by *their* children to potentially appease the Luidaeg) and thus create the Selkies as a separate race in Faerie. The Luidaeg promised that one day there would be a reckoning.

The actual action of the core of the A plot of The Unkindest Tide is very straight forward. Once it is time near the end of the novel, The Luidaeg and Toby combine magic and transform the selkies into Roane and while they are not the same as what was lost, the Luidaeg sort of has her children back. Not *her* children, but her children. It’s almost anticlimactic.

There is also a minor grace when it is discovered how to make more selkie skins and provide an opportunity for the selkies to have seven more years to truly end their culture when the remaining skins will be bound as Roane - which depending on the timeline of future novels may or may not occur on page. This whole thing is traumatic for the selkies because they are being judged for their ancestors horrible actions and being held to account for it. They know what was done, but they didn’t do it and the selkies have their own society and culture and it is tied to their identify as selkies and it’s being taken away.

“I know you don’t have a choice about this. I’m still grateful. I’m glad to know you, October.” - the Luidaeg

Okay. I think that’s enough about the actual book, which was lovely. I want to speculate a little.

The series is about to get into finding Oberon, Maeve, and Titania - and the big question is asked here. The Firstborn are able to tamp down their Firstbornness so strongly that they are just viewed as powerful fae but not anything more, and they are so substantially *more* than their descendant races. The question is “how much more can the Three do? Can they disappear so that no one can follow them? Can they ever be found?”

Spoilers, but the answer is yes and here’s where it gets a little complicated. When October was given the task to bring her (thus far unknown) sister August home it was because August was lost on a quest to find Oberon. She was unable to find her way home or remember her family until she found Oberon and brought him back to Faerie. She failed.

She failed, but when October found August it was with the help of August’s father, Simon Torquill (the villain Simon Torquill as I often think of him). Simon was working on gradually redeeming himself from his awfulness that he did on behalf of Eira Rosynhwyr (Firstborn, major antagonist), which was deeply uncomfortable for me as a reader - and Simon took on August’s debts to bring her home - which means that *Simon* lost all his progress and all of his humanity and was functionally reset to Villain Simon until *he* can bring Oberon home. Just before he villains out, Simon tells Toby that he believes in her ability to save him. This is all The Brightest Fell

Well - as part of a new deal with the Luidaeg (don’t ask) Toby is tasked to bring Simon home again, which means to bring Oberon home. The king of Faerie who hasn’t been seen in five hundred years.

Spoilers, but we’ve already met Oberon. He’s a very minor character (Officer Thornton, who followed Toby to deep faerie and is now in a fugue state with the Luidaeg’s home). And Toby is going to bring back Oberon, we’re also going to get the returns of Titania and Maeve. In the published series so far - Titania returned as a murdering force of nature after slowly breaking Oberson’s geas on her. Titania was living as Toby’s best friend Stacy. Much more on that in the coming books as Be the Serpent is the heartbreaking return of Titania.

Maeve, though. Maeve is still hidden and I have a theory that seems to also be the common one in October Daye fandom. I had seen it mentioned online in the past but it felt more immediate reading The Unkindest Tide.

“No,” said Marcia. She met the Luidaeg’s eyes and didn’t flinch. “I have other paths to walk, and other roads to run.”

Maeve may well be Marcia and unlike Oberon / Officer Thornton and Titania / Stacy, I think Maeve knows much more about who she is than the the other two. Oberon deliberately buried his true self so deep that he couldn’t awaken himself. Titania was forced into other forms until she learned how to be a better person (spoilers, she doesn’t).

Something is not right with Marcia, a changeling with so little Fae blood in her that she needs faerie ointment to even be able to see Faerie. And yet, Marcia is not affected by the spells on the ship taking them to the Duchy, the spell that almost floors Toby and is worse the more human blood one has.

There are lots of little moments.

“Your name is Marcia, and you travled with the Count of Goldengreen. They *said* all that. But I don’t know you. Something about you isn’t right. Who are you?” -Captain Pete

“I’m nobody,” said Marcia, taking a half-step backwards, like she was getting ready to run.

I’m not sure that Marcia was scared, even in the face of a Firstborn’s full attention which would be enough to cow anyone. She just doesn’t want to be revealed for whoever she actually is. I think she’s Maeve.

There have been little touches of Maeve throughout the series, suggesting that she isn’t buried nearly as deep as Oberon and Titania. We’ll see, I suppose.

Random Notes and Random Quotes:

*I love all of the speechifying in this series. Folks are ready to spout off and declaim at a moment’s notice and I am absolutely here for it.

*I still don’t remember, but what does the Luidaeg know about Officer Thornton? Anything? I’ll find out in the next novel, so I don’t have long to wait.

*“Sometimes I *really* miss the old forms,” muttered the Luidaeg. “You should have come to me with a raw salmon in your hands, its gills still heaving, and been apologizing before you were even close enough to look at me. You might as well stand up. You’ve already insulted me as much as you’re going to.”

*“You won’t call Arden by her name, because her title is more important, but you’ll back-talk the Luidaeg? I just want to be clear on where your sense of self-preservation.” - Toby to Quentin.

*“I’m the motherfucking sea witch. I don’t have to answer your question.”


Next up on the reread will be A Killing Frost, in which a wedding request turns into a quest, the father of them all returns, Amandine make an appearance, there’s a divorce, and surprise transformations.


Open roads and kind fires, my friends.

Previous Rereads

Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night
Late Eclipses
One Salt Sea
Ashes of Honor
Chimes at Midnight
The Winter Long
A Red-Rose Chain
Once Broken Faith

The Brightest Fell

Night and Silence


PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

Nanoreviews: Alliance Unbound, Nuclear War, Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

Alliance Unbound, by C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher

Follow up to 2019’s Alliance Rising (my review) and only the second Alliance / Union novel published in the last fifteen years, which is far too long for my taste which is a statement I’ll make while ignoring the ten plus Alliance / Union novels I have yet to read. Alliance Unbound jumps right into the action of the previous novel with Ross Monahan having taken refuge on Finity’s End, a top of the line and incredibly powerful merchant ship following the takeover of his family’s ship, The Galway, during the conclusion of Alliance Rising.

It’s a little difficult to talk about Alliance Unbound without talking about the larger galactic politics and how this book fits into the larger series of generally connected novels because the actions with both Alliance Rising and Alliance Unbound center around the founding of the titular alliance between merchant ships to counter the encroaching power of the Earth Company as a border and buffer against the Union of other worlds and space stations. It’s both incredibly important for understanding the underlying landscape (spacescape?) of Alliance Unbound and not at all important because with very limited exceptions across some thirty novels, these books can be read and enjoyed in any order.

The core of Alliance Unbound is the founding of the Merchanter’s Alliance and my favorite bits of the novel are the ones that are dealing with the minutiae of interstellar politics and the issues merchant ships have with Earth Company (and it’s projected power of the home planet against ships and stations it views as their property even when years can pass between possible communication). The Neihart family of Finity’s End is compelling, though certainly a bit heavy handed as the rich / powerful merchant family, as they work on getting the last two family run ships signed on to the Alliance and discover a possible Earth Company

It’s not just the devil being in the details, it’s what the novel hangs on. Fans of Cherryh will find a lot to like here, especially if Cyteen was a hit though Alliance Unbound is shorter and moves around more than that novel but it has some of the same delightful awkwardness and power politics of Cyteen.

Nuclear War: A Scenario, by Annie Jacobson

The most truly frightening book I’ve read in a long time is Annie Jacobson’s Nuclear War: A Scenario. The “A Scenario” part is incredibly important here because Nuclear War isn’t a novel though part of it is fiction and it’s not a non-fiction work even though a significant portion of Nuclear War is deeply researched history and background detail for how Annie Jacobson knows what she knows and how she is building this scenario of what a nuclear war would actually look like with a minute by minute (and sometimes second by second) explanation of what would happen if…

In Nuclear War Jacobson takes us from the second a surprise attack from North Korea is launched against the United States. Jacobson walks readers through how quickly detection occurs, how information gets relayed from the detection points through military commands to the President, what potential barriers to communication and decisions are in place, what policies are in place to guide those decisions, how little time there really is make those world altering decisions, what can go wrong, and what little hope there really is for the rest of us if there is a nuclear launch.

Nuclear War is part fiction. Unless we all live in a simulation that is continually reset, this hasn’t happened. Nuclear War isn’t a novel, though. It’s a thought experiment wrapped in deep and intensive research about how this all works with more information than we might have imagined is out there (but with so much more still so deeply classified that the only way out is via a deathbed confession, which, according to Jacobson, is functionally how some of the policy detailed in this book did come out).

Nuclear War isn’t science fiction and it’s not even the “five minutes in the future” sort of storytelling that bleeds into the genre but I can’t help but think of Nuclear War: A Scenario as being tangentially related in the sense of what writers could take from this book to build off onto their own terrifying futures. Clearly being riveted to Annie Jacobson’s incredible creative nonfiction and being terrified out of my gourd as to how little we’ll know until it’s too late (and hoping that somehow Nuclear War can be a warning call to today’s global leaders) wasn’t enough that I needed to start thinking about how this book could impact genre fiction as well.

That was almost how I began writing about Nuclear War, actually. I wanted to make an argument about how Nuclear War could fit into genre awards as a nonfiction work or a “Related Work” as the Hugo Awards go. This isn’t a genre work and is only genre adjacent in the sense that science fiction has a long history of thinking about how nuclear war could impact the world, the future, and everything around it. And yet - Nuclear War is so immediate that it seems to be a part of everything. Want to know what the future could look like? Read Nuclear War. Want an underpinning to the next decade of near future science fiction? Read Nuclear War. I don’t know. Nuclear War feels right as being genre adjacent, but I also look at a lot of things through a genre adjacent lens.

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear, by Seanan McGuire

It’s taken ten novellas, but Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear is the first miss for me in the Wayward Children series. It’s worth noting, as a well established fan of Seanan McGuire that this “miss” in this instance means that I enjoyed it fine but my level of expectation is significantly higher for this series and its emotional resonance than it is for other stories.

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear is the tenth novella in Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series which began in 2016 with the practically perfect Every Heart a Doorway (my review). The general concept is that some children who don’t quite belong in whatever life situation they are in will find a doorway with the words “Be Sure” written above and when they pass through they are dropped in a weirdly magical world where the rules are all quite different but the child in question finds a place in which they truly belong. The series as a whole is about belonging, and the books alternate between the worlds through the doorway and the kids who come back home again and are very much not the same person they were before going through.

This is one of the through the doorway stories and features Nadya, her life in a Russian orphanage, her adoption into the United States, and her journey through a doorway. Nadya was previously seen in Beneath the Sugar Sky (my review) and frankly, at this point I don’t remember a thing about Nadya’s prior appearance or how she interacted with Eleanor West’s.

To that point, Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear felt somewhat more disconnected from the wider series (perfectly reasonable in a through the doorway story) but possibly more importantly Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear doesn’t *seem* to add much to the series / world beyond where it will certainly connect with other readers far more than it did with me. Coming off of the two Antsy books which had a truly compelling lead character and a new take on the wider universe (multiverse?), Nadya’s journey into the drowned world was lacking something.

Seanan McGuire is historically very good at layering her series work and seeding little bits that will pay off in big ways later, so I’m more than willing to be absolutely wrong in another three books about how this is secretly the second best Wayward Children book. I don’t expect that because despite the giant turtles, immigration, and physical disability, Nadya’s story is much less immediate and feels like it has been told before.

All of this sounds far more negative than I intend it to be and that’s one hundred percent tied to how much I love Every Heart a Doorway and how successful most of the Wayward Children novellas are. A novella that is absolutely fine and lovely only pales in comparison to those stories that shine as bright as so many from this series. It’s good. It’s doesn’t reach the heights of the rest of the series.


Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather, Hugo and Ignyte Award Winner. Minnesotan.

The October Daye Reread: Night and Silence

Phew!

Friends, I have a confession to make. I have felt quite motivated the last couple of weeks and I think I’m back on the horse in terms of my reading and even starting to write again, though I may need to offer apologies to the Wheel of Time Reread. I pushed through a few books that have been lingering, and I’m feeling good (about reading, anyway). It’s been a while, relatively speaking, for October Daye, so I picked up The Unkindest Tide and I’m starting to take notes and speculate about a couple of characters (who *is* Maeve, anyway?) when I thought maybe I should double-check that I’m caught up on actually writing about the rereads.

I am not.

I finished Night and Silence back in August, so we’re going to do the best we can here.

Welcome back, dear readers. Today we’re going to revisit the twelfth novel in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series: Night and Silence. We are making a good push to catch up with publication, and with no October Daye novel this year, and if the September publication schedule holds with Tor (the series having moved from DAW), I’ve got some time. If I don’t flake. Twelve down, six to go.

The preceding novel, The Brightest Fell, took Toby to the deepest (and sealed) realms of Faerie to bring home the sister she never knew she had. Being a hero, she might have done so anyway, but Toby’s Firstborn mother Amandine took Tybalt and Jazz, and so a-questing-she-did-go. As an investigator and fully named Hero of the Realm (not always in capital letters), many of Toby’s novel-length missions involving finding people.

Night and Silence is the second book, after One Salt Sea (#5), where Toby has to find her missing daughter. There’s a much longer story there, and hopefully, if you are reading me talk about book twelve, you’re well familiar. If this is all new to you—hey, I really like the October Daye series, definitely recommend you read it, and start from the beginning. The books more or less stand on their own, but there is a growing impossibility of references and connections to how all this fits together that so much of the richness would be lost if you start *here*. There are worse places to start (Be the Serpent), but this is maybe also not the place.

If you are here, though, you’re ready for the search for Gillian and for Secrets to be revealed. I really like lore, and Night and Silence builds the lore of Faerie through the storytelling and also with more detail that Toby’s ex-husband and Gillian’s father has remarried a woman named Janet. Because this is a Seanan McGuire novel, Janet is far more than she initially seems—which is just the new wife who raised Gillian when Toby disappeared (being turned into a fish for fourteen years and all) and resents the mere idea of Toby trying to get back into Gillian’s life—but begins the novel accusing Toby of kidnapping their daughter, a scene that does not go well for either Toby or Janet at all. With grace, these are two hurting parents with no reason to like or trust the other. We see everything through Toby’s perspective, of course, which is one of the things I most appreciate about this series, because we see Toby trying to give understanding to Janet (and others). She may not always verbalize it, but she is more thoughtful than she often gets credit for by other characters.

Let’s just be clear that I’m going to spoil Night and Silence and, frankly, anything that runs through my mind while working through this.

I’ve mentioned Janet as the woman who married Cliff, Toby’s ex husband. If you’ve read the series this far, you don’t know Janet. You know Miranda. People have multiple names in this series and alternate titles and it’s just a mess of names. Miranda has been magically alive for some five hundred years. This bit doesn’t make a ton of sense, but it’s also the underpinning of the series. Back in the day when Oberon, Maeve, and Titania were walking through Faerie, there was a “Ride” where a human becomes a part of Faerie and is granted some power and position, but that incurs a debt, and that debt is paid through the sacrifice of that human’s life during the Ride of one of the Big Three of Faerie.

Janet, then a daughter of a Scottish landholder, fell in love with a man named Tam Lin, and Tam Lin was to be Maeve’s sacrifice in her Ride. Through the conniving of Firstborn Eira Rosynhwyr (always, she’s the worst), Janet “broke” Maeve’s ride and is ultimately responsible for Maeve’s disappearance and the splintering of Faerie. She, through a dalliance with Oberon, is also the mother of Amandine, which makes her Toby’s grandmother and Gilian’s great-grandmother despite now being married to Cliff and being known as Gillian’s mother.

It’s an absolute mess and also holy crap. McGuire has brought up breaking Maeve’s Ride a number of times throughout the series, and it’s mythic in every possible way. It’s this thing that happened so long ago (and is it weird that I wonder if 500 years isn’t actually that long in Faerie?) that it’s legend—but then, for all the fae, now Oberon and Maeve and Titania are all legend, and we are very close to McGuire pushing towards a presumed endgame in bringing back Oberon and Titania (like her daughter Eira, Titania is the WORST) and we have to be on the cusp of Maeve’s return. I’ve got a theory, which I’ll discuss more when I write about The Unkindest Tide, but it’s almost a certain that we’ve already met Maeve.

Lore! It’s a lot of Lore!

Also lore, but truly pertinent to Night and Silence, but for a number of books now the Luidaeg has been talking about needing to do something about the Selkies and that their debt is going to come due and they are on the clock and Toby is going to help the Luidaeg deal with it—but through the eventual rescue of her daughter, Gillian is elf-shot, and being fully human (see One Salt Sea), is going to die. But wait, there’s more! To save Gillian, the Luidaeg gives Gillian one of the lost Selkie skins, which anchors Gillian into Faerie, and Gillian *cannot* take off the skin for one hundred years and return to being human, or the elf shot will kill her. Faerie is seldom kind.

What all that means is that we are truly on the cusp of the Luidaeg doing something about the Selkies, and now Toby will have an even more personal stake in that action.

Next up on the reread will be The Unkindest Tide, in which the Selkies’ debt is paid, Toby is stabbed again, more Firstborn!, and because the path from A to B will always run through any number of additional letters, there is a bonus murder mystery.

Open roads and kind fires, my friends.

Previous Rereads

Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night
Late Eclipses
One Salt Sea
Ashes of Honor
Chimes at Midnight
The Winter Long
A Red-Rose Chain
Once Broken Faith

The Brightest Fell


PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

The October Daye ReRead: The Brightest Fell

Welcome back, dear readers. Today we’re going to revisit the eleventh novel in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series: The Brightest Fell. We continue to push towards catching up with publication, which is frankly going to make the reread a little bit weird (or, realistically, just finish it). I was just looking at my writeup of A Red Rose Chain, where I wrote “nine down, seven to go” and now I’m writing “eleven down, seven to go” after McGuire published two October Daye books last year. It’s hard out here for a rereader.

With that said, it doesn’t look like there will be a new novel this year, which will mark the first year since Seanan McGuire started publishing novels that there will not be a new entry in the series. McGuire has published seventeen novels in this series alone (let alone everything else). She deserves a break if she wants one. I hope this was McGuire’s choice. At a minimum, this provides a greater opportunity for me to get closer to catching up (or it would if it didn't take me seven months to get here after writing about Once Broken Faith in January).

The Brightest Fell begins the Simon Torquill rehabilitation project, which is not something I was down for the first time I read the book. I maybe didn’t feel as strongly as Sylvester, but I wasn’t here for Simon to be redeemed, and man, this is a JOURNEY. It all starts here when Toby and Sylvester wake him from being elfshot in order to further Toby’s quest to find her decades-long-lost sister August.

Simon is an absolute tragedy.

Before the tragedy, though, I should note that we’re going to get deeper into spoilers than the broadest outlines of what The Brightest Fell is about.

Amandine is the absolute worst, as has been previously noted, and unfortunately returns in The Brightest Fell to transform and force-lock Tybalt and Jazz into their animals forms as an impetuous to compel Toby to undertake a quest to find and return Toby’s decades-long-lost sister August. She’s just a terrible mother / person / Firstborn / everything. Amandine, that is.

”What I did, I did for the best of reasons. That doesn’t forgive it. If anything, that makes it worse, that a good man might become a villain thinking himself a hero in his heart. Take care, October. Your current quest . . . this is the road that broke me.”

Simon is a surprisingly thoughtful character, and while I can’t speak for all readers, I can say that I wasn’t prepared by the depth of pathos Simon evokes in this novel. He was such a hated character, and the absolutely amazing feat that McGuire pulls off is making me give a shit about him. Simon was the monster. But August is Simon’s daughter with Amandine, and all of Simon’s actions, his entire motivation, is to find his daughter. Everything he did to bind himself to Eira / Evening was in service to bringing his daughter home. Every horror Simon unleashes, every terrible action was to save his child.

That’s relatable.

It excuses nothing, and Simon doesn’t ask for excusal or forgiveness here. It does explain so much.

It also makes the heartbreak of the ending hit so much harder. Simon’s going to become a villain again? Well, he’s been one. But after everything he did and all his work to become a better man no longer under the influence of Eira to reclaim his humanity (or, at least his true core self, not being a human and all) is about to be gone in service of actually and finally saving August.

”I understand why you want to do this, but I don’t think you know how much ground you’ll lose. You smell of apples again, Torquill. What my sister did to you is going to leave scars, but you might get to be your own man again if you stay free, if you keep heading for home. Don’t you want that?”

“With all my heart,” he said.

His voice broke. So did my heart. There is a brief scene when August gets to see and remember her father and find “home” and not be so desperately lost as she’s so frustratingly been for most of the book. This is absolutely wrenching because Simon knows what he is giving up in exchange and August doesn’t.

Toby and Simon do rescue August, but the only way to bring August all the way back —because magic has a price— is that Simon has to trade his decency and his memories for August’s. His daughter will find herself and Simon will be back to the full-throated villain he was when he was at his worst and will have no memory of any of his gains and recovery.

What an absolute tragedy.

What an amazing experience where McGuire can make the re-fall of one of the worst of her villains (thus far) so touching and painful. I still don’t like Simon Torquill, but I can empathize with and understand him better.

Random Notes:

”Stacy jumped up onto the stage without waiting for the DF to say anything, grabbing the microphone.”

As always, Stacy’s presence hits different now that I know. Does the Luidaeg know? We’ve got a few books to go, but the loss of Stacy and Toby’s friendship will be heartbreaking.

“Oh, sweet Titania, no.”

That just reads differently than we knew at the time (also, “Sweet” Titania?). This is also in reference to Toby being forced to sing karaoke at her bachelorette party. Also, the Luidaeg sings “Poor Unfortunate Souls” and it is a thing of absolute wonder even though we can’t actually hear it. But we kind of can, right?

”I’ll help you with Rayseline’s defense no matter what, Sylvester; you only ever had to ask me,” I said, fighting to keep my voice level. “But I need Simon now, and I need you, my liege, to help me. Will you help me?”

I really hope one of the next Toby novels will get a chance to delve more into her revised relationship with Rayseline and how that changes from this point on. What began as a broken cartoon character is slowly becoming a far more interesting one as the series progresses, though we don’t have a lot to work with.

Also, the conclusion to The Brightest Fell is part of Sylvester (Toby’s liege lord and father figure) pushing further and further away from Toby. This time not because of breaking her trust as he did in the past, but because Toby’s restoration of Villain Simon means Sylvester is pulling in to his family, and despite what he has said in the past, that doesn’t actually include Toby. I hesitate to exactly say fuck Sylvester, because it makes sense to a point, but kind of fuck Sylvester anyway.

Bonus fun: a “Cats Laughing” shirt makes an appearance, which is a real-world Minnesota-based band featuring writers Emma Bull and Steven Brust, among others.

Next up in the reread will be Night and Silence, in which Toby's former family is not quite forgotten—with a bonus history lesson.

Open roads and kind fires, my friends.

Previous Rereads

Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night
Late Eclipses
One Salt Sea
Ashes of Honor
Chimes at Midnight
The Winter Long
A Red-Rose Chain
Once Broken Faith

PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

Review: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, by Seanan McGuire

Let’s ignore the absolutely perfect cover art just for a moment. Mislaid in Parts Half-Known is NOT the dinosaur book that it appears to be. There are dinosaurs and they are wonderful, but following on 2023’s excellent Lost in the Moment and Found, Mislaid in Parts Half-Known continues the story of Antsy, a girl who stepped through a portal to another world and found herself in a borderline magical shop that was a bit of a hub world which has its own cost (as entering any of those doorways do).

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known is the ninth novella in the Wayward Children series and brings Antsy, a girl who looks a bit older than she actually is, to Eleanor West’s and there is a sign that states “No Solicitations. No Visitors. No Quests.” Readers, there are quests. This book is a quest. It is also an escape, perhaps not for the reader but Antsy has a particular gift where she can find just about anything that has been lost and some of the kids at Eleanor West’s want to take advantage of that.

In an attempt to escape, Antsy and others have to commit quest and yes, there are dinosaurs but there are other doorways and Mislaid in Parts Half-Known does what Seanan McGuire so often does with these novellas (and with most of her books, if I’m being honest), which is to weave together character stories in small ways so that it is building and laying seeds for future stories. Specifically, this is McGuire inching closer to really telling Kade’s story - which is one McGuire has publicly stated she’s been hesitant to do until she’s built up enough trust because Kade is trans and that’s a more challenging story for a cis-writer to tell with real grace and honesty and that readers (and trans readers specifically) will trust to get right.

That’s the thing about Seanan McGuire’s writing in general and Mislaid in Parts Half-Known in specific - the characters speak with blunt and plain honesty in ways that I don’t think we encounter very often in real life. McGuire’s characters are often clever in how they understand themselves (as they come to understand themselves) and how they explain themselves to others. It can very easily be too on the nose, and perhaps it is, but it also works perfectly for me as a reader and I *think* that this is stylistically something that will hit very hard for the right readers who are looking to find how they are feeling put down in a story about people who don’t fit in and can’t quite find their right places in this (or any) world. It’s what I loved so much about Every Heart a Doorway and the best of the Wayward Children novellas capture that feeling of yearning towards a childhood that could have been smoother and I had it so much easier than so many.

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known gets close at times and at its best is so tightly focused on the kids that it is one of my favorite books of the Wayward Children series. But even the ones that don’t reach those heights are still wonderful. It’s just that the bar is so impossibly high and Mislaid in Parts Half-Known gets there for me. It’s personal. It’s always personal.

Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

Cool Books I Read While I Was Too Sad to Review

If a review copy lands in the inbox when the reviewer is too overwhelmed to read it, does it even get a review?

Well, no, obviously it doesn't. Despite my fervent hopes, the review fairy did not visit me once while I was having a Big Bad 2023 to magic away my Netgalley obligations and show love to books during my period of chronic distraction. But the books continued to be good, and I'm going to cover some of them here in not-even-nano-sized review chunks.

Case in point: The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera was a 2023 highlight. I've seen a lot of deservedly flattering comps for this novel, a story of divine destiny denied set in a fantasy Sri Lanka:  my own mind was drawn to Sofia Samatar and Ursula K. Le Guin while reading, with a few of the bleak vibes I last felt in A.K. Larkwood's The Unspoken Name. For a story that really invites comparisons, however, Saint of Bright Doors is very much making its own mark on modern genre - and I'm sure there are plenty of threads of Sri Lankan and wider South Asian influence that I missed entirely.

Highlights of the reading experience for me included the way the story's geography seems to literally rearrange itself around the absurd authoritarianism of Luriat's state politics, the portrayal of gods and unknowable supernatural forces co-existing with a mundane, modern setting, and the greatest first person pronoun drop in genre history. This is an essential novel and I hope we'll be talking about it for years to come.

Translation State by Ann Leckie was a novel I hoped to feel similarly about. This latest standalone-ish instalment in Leckie's Imperial Radch universe is a solid, thought provoking piece of SF (Clara has some excellent provoked thoughts here) but it hasn't withstood the test of time as a standout novel for me, Don't get me wrong, I love the Presger translators, and I highly appreciated the way Leckie gives us crumbs of further context without really making anything clearer about the setting's most mysterious alien race. Less attractive on reflection is the treatment of alien biological urges as fundamentally irresistible in a way that would simply not make sense if the author were talking about humans. Protagonists Reet and Qven are, for different reasons, terrified of the urges of their alien heritage, but all Presger translators simply have to go through "puberty" in the way their creators designed, so oh well, suck it up kids, they'll be fine once it's done. 

I understand the narrative is setting up questions about personhood in general, not creating any deliberate queer parallels, but gender is so integral to the setting as a whole, and aliens so often used as a stand-in for human queerness (and neurodivergence) that it's hard not to think about Qven and Reet's lack of choice through that lens. It would be nice to see stories that think more about how alien queerness would manifest, from the starting assumption that of course it would manifest in any sentient species, but I'll keep searching for those books elsewhere. In the meantime, any Imperial Radch is good Imperial Radch, but this one didn't hit "great" for me.

Joe and I share a love of Seanan McGuire's October Daye series, and while he does the honours of the full Nerds of a Feather reviews, I also found time for both of last year's double-Toby entries, Sleep No More and The Innocent Sleep. These are the 17th and 18th books in the series respectively, and they effectively act as companion novels to each other: Sleep No More follows series protagonist October - a fae changeling - as she grapples with the effects of a reality-altering mass illusion, while The Innocent Sleep breaks with series tradition to focus on her Cait Sidhe husband Tybalt, who is working against the illusion from the outside. The actual points of narrative overlap didn't set my world on fire (In one book, October thinks Tybalt looks angry! In the next book, we learn Tybalt is angry!), but the double-bill allows McGuire to let loose with the most unsavoury conventions and darkest corners of fae society in a way that brings the series full circle to its earliest vibes. There's also more time across the books to feature a wide set of supporting characters - including one unexpectedly sympathetic "recast" - who demonstrate the breadth of the series' worldbuilding. As always, I'm eager for more.

Let's talk about some more underrated series! Claws and Contrivances is the second in Stephanie Burgis' Regency Dragons romances and it's just as delightful as the first: an intricate and often hilarious plot of misunderstandings and reversals, sprinkled with fun dragon naturalism and centred around a young protagonist with a lot to learn and a LOT of willing accomplices to her various schemes. Unlike the first book in the series, Scales and Sensibility, Claws and Contrivances takes place in a fundamentally loving family environment where queerness and difference are accepted, and it's the perfect backdrop for Rose Tregarth and her nerdy, autistic-coded love interest Aubrey to fall for each other.

Furious Heaven by Kate Elliott is anything but light, both in content and in physical weight. As Paul covered in detail, this is a 750 page chonk retelling events from the life of Alexander the Great, except Alexander is now Princess Sun, daughter of Eirene of Chaonia, an expanding galactic power rubbing up against the much larger might of the Phene while trying to maintain their own powers at home. If you know the history of Alexander the Great, you'll probably recognise more moments from real history, but it's certainly not necessary to enjoy the combination of pew-pew space battles, irreverent epithet-laden narration, "oh no she DIDN'T" politicking, and silly teenagers with entirely too much power. Go look up the facts afterwards to find out which bits really happened (no genetically modified four-armed people in antiquity, unfortunately), and get some knowledge useful for pub quiz as a bonus!

Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Bluesky at adrijjy.bsky.social.

Microreview: Aftermarket Afterlife, by Seanan McGuire

Where previous novels were (mostly) focused on a single character and a relative discrete story that gradually expands the scope of this Incryptid world (which is our world, only there are magical creatures living around us and with us and hiding from us), Aftermarket Afterlife starts to blow up that formula. The novel is focused on Mary Dunlavy, a sometimes corporeal ghost and family babysitter (with a somewhat complicated backstory that is really changed by the Antimony novels).

Here’s what you need to know: There has been an ongoing and building fallout over the last few novels with The Covenant of St George (an organization of humans dedicated to eradicating the aforementioned supernatural creatures) after Antimony really pissed them off. This is after her older sister Verity let the Covenant know there were still Prices still around. Aftermarket Afterlife is an explosive novel - and that’s not even counting the return of Alice and Thomas to the family (see Backpacking Through Bedlam) after decades of Thomas being presumed dead. McGuire seldom lets her characters just sit in a moment without blowing something up. Or maybe it’s the readers who want more - but Seanan McGuire is a propulsive writer.

Seanan McGuire has been building to the Price family finally going to war with the Covenant. Or, more specifically, the Covenant is going to war with the cryptids of North America and with the Price family. Aftermarket Afterlife is for the long time readers (this is book thirteen in the series) who have been wondering when all of that mess is going to come to a head.

The choice of Mary as the focus is an interesting one as it continues the trend of the last four novels of allowing a small sense of distance from the core family while, at the same time, allowing for a wider breadth of family interaction. From Discount Armageddon through That Ain’t Witchcraft each novel has focused on one of the siblings of the youngest generation of Price children and their interaction with this world. That narrow focus would, perhaps, only mention the actions or existence of that character’s siblings. So - if this is an Antimony novel, there would be limited mention of Verity or Alex. Same with Verity or Alex’s novels, respectively. Even the Sarah Zellaby or Alice novels were limited in scope to the perspective of that character in that particular place.

Mary Dunlavy is necessarily different because she can ghost-travel to whichever family member calls for her (and sometimes if they don’t) - so even with a slight emotional distance, which is a statement that isn’t entirely accurate but is the best that I have to work with, we get so much more of the Price family than we have at any other time in the series. Mary can and does bounce between Verity in New York, Alex in Ohio. and Antimony in Oregon. The scope of the war with the Covenant can be shown beyond phone calls of an action that we don’t get to see because it’s somewhere else. Functionally, Mary can be everywhere and McGuire makes good use of Mary as plot device.

If most of this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, that is because McGuire is pulling a LOT of threads together and really assumes that readers are well familiar with the first twelve books of the series. I have no idea what it looks like jumping into this fresh to the Incryptid series and even though Seanan McGuire is frequently very good at introducing and reintroducing characters and story beats and dropping exposition, Aftermarket Afterlife truly requires the emotional equity of having been on this Price Family Journey.

With all of that said, for those readers who have been on this Price Family Journey, Aftermarket Afterlife absolutely delivers the goods. The awkward and painful reunions are earned, the desire to take the fight to the Covenant is earned, and the ultimate resolution of the novel is absolutely earned. Seanan McGuire has been building to all of this and she truly pays it off - and there is certainly going to be more, which makes me incredibly anxious and I cannot wait to read what’s next.

Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

The October Daye Re-Read: Once Broken Faith

Welcome back, dear readers. Today we’re going to revisit the tenth novel in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series: Once Broken Faith. We are making a real push on this series, though if 2023 is the only year McGuire publishes two October Daye books that will do well with helping me catch back up to to publication.

I was a bit confused with Once Broken Faith because I had assumed, based on the title, that this is the book where we deal with the selkies but apparently I’m still three books away from that and I still have no sense of what happens when in this series.

Instead, this is the book where everyone deals with there now being a cure to elf-shot. The High King orders a conclave and comes to the Mists, and not everyone is happy about the existence of a cure. Toby is coming off of having just deposed a second monarch, her squire (unbeknownst to most) is the heir to the throne of the Westlands, and was central to the discovery of the cure - and as such is invited to the conclave.

Since this is an October Daye novel, there is murder, Toby ends up involved (and covered in blood) and Toby is expected to find out what’s going on and save the day because that’s what heroes do and Toby is, by title, a Hero. Capital Letters.

This is a re-read and there are forever spoilers, but I am going to wonder and speculate on a major bit of an upcoming spoiler (from Be The Serpent, book 16) so be warned. Here be spoilers. We’re going to lead off with it.

“More than ever, it struck me how little she looked like her parents. That, combined with her unlikely, inexplicable magical gifts, made her seem like a changeling in the mortal sense - a child who shouldn’t have been where she was, who belonged to different parents, in a different world”

In this book Toby finds out that the Luidaeg has been taking extra protection for Karen beyond what she already knew, and that they have more of a relationship than Toby could have guessed - but here’s what I don’t remember and will rediscover as the series goes on: Does the Luidaeg know who Stacy Brown really is? What does she suspect about the Brown kids actually being Firstborn themselves as a reason for their power?

Stacy, for readers who may not remember straight off, is the long time friend of Toby. They are both changelings, and Toby stands pretty much as Aunt for each of Stacy’s kids despite the lack of blood relation - though that last bit shouldn’t be too much of a surprise for who Toby is and how she collects family. Also, and this is unrelated to the October Daye reread, but I should really think about how Seanan McGuire deals with the idea of Found Family, because it is a strong aspect of her Incryptid series and now I’m wondering how deep that goes in her other work (though these two series do cover much of her novel length work). It’s definitely present in the Wayward Children novellas.

Back to Once Broken Faith. At this point we know that Karen (Stacy’s daughter) is an oneiromancer (she can see glimpses of the future through her dreams and can communicate through dreams), a rare gift in Faerie. Another of Stacy’s other daughters, Cassandra, can see the future through the air. There’s a term for that too. And - spoilers for further down the line but the other kids will also have surprise and incredibly rare abilities. Because they are Firstborn. Because Stacy isn’t the changeling that she thinks she is. What does the Luidaeg know?

Once Broken Faith doesn’t answer that question. It really introduces it and only in retrospect. The Luidaeg knows seers, that’s what her Roane were, and as a Firstborn (and friend of Toby) she’s probably the only creature in a position to help Karen and guide her. I suspect that’s the real answer and whenever the other kids are revealed (and maybe it’s all after Be the Serpent, I don’t recall) - I can only imagine that it makes the Luidaeg ask questions. If it does, I suspect those questions are asked off page.

“You’re the hero of the realm here, Toby. I’m just the sea witch. You’re supposed to leave me slumbering in my watery cavern until you need a handy deus ex machina.”

Speaking of the Sea Witch, I do so very very much appreciate the self awareness from the Luidaeg. She’s a character that truly works because she’s half a narrative device but has enough restrictions placed upon her that she can’t just Firstborn her way into everything and blow it all up. The Luidaeg threatens all sorts of things and her reputation is such that Faerie believes her, but she doesn’t do nearly as much as it seems like she should.

Plus there is a sense later in the series (I think it’s later) that the Luidaeg has been positioning Toby for some truly significant events and it’s more than the selkie thing that has been looming over Toby’s head for a number of books now.

Also, staying with the Luidaeg for just a bit longer: There’s a moment with Elliott, a Bannick with magical cleaning powers, and the Luidaeg where he doesn’t know and is maybe hoping that she might be his Firstborn because the Bannick do not know who their Firstborn is and it’s such a small moment of purely rendered heartbreak. The propulsive narrative is always fantastic, but I love the lore digressions that never go deep enough for me.

Back to the actual plot - which is that one of the monarchs attending the conclave is murdered, another is semi ironically elf shot, and as hero the realm and an individual with a strongly vested interest in how this all turns out (and who is incorrectly a suspect by those who don’t care to know her very well) Toby has to do the hero thing and solve a bloody mystery. It’s not my favorite of the series storylines, but McGuire does a great job developing and expanding the reader’s understanding of the world.

We also learn just how far Toby’s body can be pushed and still regenerate. The answer: death. It can be pushed to death and still regenerate, for which I will have a lot of questions much deeper into the series because even though she risks it all most of the time, things are getting bigger and bigger and there’s a Titania sized fist headed Toby’s way and probably multiple times.

Next up in the re-read will be The Brightest Fell, in which Toby’s mother is the worst. Now, with bonus siblings.

Open roads and kind fires, my friends.

Previous Rereads
Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night
Late Eclipses

One Salt Sea

Ashes of Honor

Chimes at Midnight

The Winter Long

A Red-Rose Chain

Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.