Book Review: Miserere (Revised Edition) by T. Frohock

The revised version of T. Frohock’s Miserere is a major overhaul of the author's debut novel, more than a decade afterwards.

Disclaimer up front and personal: In the process of this rewrite, the author asked me for my advice and suggestions for some of the Latin she uses.

Miserere was a 2011 debut novel by Teresa Frohock (who goes more these days by T. Frohock. Part of the wide ranging net that Night Shade books attempted to cast in those halcyon days, I read the original back in my relatively early days as a reviewer.

This new review is of the 2025 edition and focuses primarily on how I feel about the changes between the original and this version.

The basis chassis of the story remains from the original. Our major characters are four. Lucian is a Katharos, a holy warrior in the service of God, but he has been banished for abandoning his lover, Rachael (another Katharos) in an an attempt to save his sister, Catarina (who is basically a fallen Katharos at this point). Our fourth character is Lindsay,a young woman drawn to the liminal world of Woerld where Rachael, Lucian and Catarina live to be a Katharos herself.

The major conflict revolves around Lucian’s attempt to oppose his sister, who has truly turned to the dark side, the side of demons and evils. Lucian sacrificed his career, life and the trust of others to try and save his sister, but his sister had made her choice, now, to side with the demons seeking entrance from hell into Woerld (whereupon they will go to Earth, and thence to storm heaven, raining destruction in their wake).

Mixed in with this is that Rachael is being possessed by a demon that is slowly eating her alive, Catarina needing her brother to execute her plans to open these gates, and Lindsay, recently arrived to Woerld and a good source of “How does this all work?” just wants to go home, and find her brother (also caught in the same event that brought her here) in the process.

The subtitle for this novel is “An Autumn Tale”. And the original was indeed a dark story. It felt then and felt now like something you’d read in early November, as Autumn truly takes hold, the shadows get longer, the ground gets colder. The relative barrenness and harshness of the liminal world of Woerld encourages it. But this new version of Miserere feels more like a *late* Autumn tale, on the verge of but not quite winter. This new version makes both Catarina and Rachael more active characters.

To the positive of having Rachael as a more active character with more action on the page, this does make her a more heroic and less passive character. Frohock does this on the line level, and with her scenes from her point of view as well. The former version was very much a hand-wringing Lucian caught between his sister, and his ex. This new version has Rachael much less passive, much more active in this broken relationship and the relationship is all the better for it. Rachael’s trust of Lucian, broken at the start of the novel, has to be earned strand by strand and it is not easy. Her relationship with the demon that’s inside of her is also a more active sort of fight that she is having on a minute by minute basis.

Next up is Catarina. I thought Catarina was a dark force of nature in the original version, a memorable villain with dark goals and a dark relationship with her brother. This new version of Catarina is even more toxic, even more active, even more dangerous. Catarina has a very dysfunctional relationship with her brother in this new version. She uses, abuses and manipulates Lucian every moment she gets, all the way to the end. Hers is a tragic story, someone who has grasped for power, and grasps no matter the cost. Her scenes with Cerberus, as she bargains for ever more power, for ever greater costs, are well written and sharp.

But overall, in terms of writing and style, the additional scenes, removal of scene, and rewrite, especially early in the novel puts it a couple of shades of darker fantasy than it was originally. Is it horror? Not quite, because I think horror is a mode, and Frohock is not going for horror here. But it is a dark world, dark things happen and the overall aspect of the book can be, despite the hope and the light in it, rather dark and oppressive. I say in all seriousness this is not a book to read when you are in a dark place, mentally.

So let’s switch gears and talk about Lindsay. Lindsay and her brother Peter, fleeing a conflict with some local toughs, get caught in the veil and are brought to Woerld. The original version didn’t make it quite so clear, but this newer version clarifies just how and why this works. It’s a call to service, basically, from the godhead, to come and oppose evil on the front line of Woerld. I have some more questions now, but a lot of the roughness from the first novel is cleared up now. Lindsay asks a lot of questions and gives us a ground level introduction to some of the basics that Lucian and Rachael take for granted. And she is an unsullied beacon of light and innocence in the novel, as opposed to the far more world weary Rachael. And, of course, Lucian.

And so there is the heart of the novel, Lucian. He’s right there on the cover, flanked by Catarina and Rachael. At the start, he is in exile from the people he has served every since coming from our Earth, from the woman he loves, living as a house prisoner in the house of his sister. His is a painful journey, the realization that he cannot save his sister, his escape, he encounter with Lindsay, and the extended chase/journey as he tries to get Lindsay to safety. Lucian is full of doubt, throughout the novel, and needs the help of both Lindsay and Rachael, and needs to both convince them to help him, and accept their help when it comes. There is a whole lot of redemption that Lucian needs if he is going to survive.

Or not just redemption, but mercy. Hence the title of the novel, Miserere. The mercy that Lucian tries to show his sister. The mercy that Lucian himself *needs*.

This new version does add some worldbuilding and fleshes out more detail on Woerld, something that I had mentioned in my original view. This newly rewritten version, especially with the more active Rachael as mentioned above, and other changes does address some of the worldbuilding deficiencies that I saw in the original novel. I think on that the balance, the world of Woerld feels more complete in this world and I have a better sense of how and why it works. I would still like to see more of the world and get a better sense of it, but I do think this new version is an improvement.

I thought then and I think now that the theology of the book might turn off some readers. It’s not Christian apocalyptic fiction like Left Behind, but the theology of Woerld, despite being described as being very pantheistic, is, thanks to Lucian, Rachael, Catarina and Linday being Christian, strictly Christian. We get a full on exorcism, a lot of use of Latin, and so on. The real comp for Miserere that I can think of, and its a stretch even so given just how narrow and unique Miserere was then, and is now, is the RPG In Nomine. In In Nomine, you play minor angels (or devils) in a world where Christian theology is real, and you are trying to support your side, your own power and promotion, and trying to get along in a world where there are some very scary characters indeed. But that unique sort of world, theology, setting and characters is what drew me to the novel in the first place.

I think overall this version of Miserere is an improvement over the original on all axes, but it may have narrowed slightly the market for its readership by its somewhat darker turn. The stronger female characters do it a lot of credit and make it a much better book, without question, but this is a book that is most definitely not for anyone. But if you want to read a book were heroic men and women stand in the darkness against demons, and wrestle rather grimly with their own personal ones (including a literal one), and don’t mind and embrace the Christian theology of the book -- Miserere is the book for you. For those who might be curious about Frohock’s work but don’t feel this is quite the spot to read it, that’s understanding. The Los Nefilim novellas and novels and stories, which have a race of beings between angels and devils, might be a better fit for you than Miserere.

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Highlights:

• Revised and Expanded Edition: But Darker, too
• Stronger set of characters
• Better worldbuilding, stronger overall

Reference: Frohock, T., Miserere: An Autumn Tale, Revised and Expanded, [Nightshade Books, 2025]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvst

Microreview [book]: A Song with Teeth by T. Frohock

The conclusion to Los Nefilim harkens back and ties up plots and characters, including those from the previous novella trilogy, in a winning and engaging fashion.

T Frohock’s Los Nefilim Trilogy follows the story of a group of angel and demon descended beings who reside in Spain. The Los Nefilim, as befits their supernatural nature, are born and reborn again and again, and have a society and social structure, conflicts, power plays and relations with unknowing humanity. It’s like World of Darkness’ Masquerade, but with beings more in line with In Nomine.  In the first two novels, starting with Where Oblivion Lives, we saw how various factions of Los Nefilim took on opposite sides of the conflict that became the 1930’s Spanish Civil War. This is not a world where Los Nefilim control and subjugate humanity secretly, the horrors of humanity are firmly caused by humans, but they do indeed influence and bring out the best and worst in people. By the end of the second novel, Carved From Stone and Dream, many of the Los Nefilim have had to abandon Spain and the darkness of Franco’s regime, for France, just in time for the Second World War. 

Now, in A Song With Teeth (with the side exception of a brief opening in 1942), the year is 1944. France is under the Axis heel, the Allies hopes of an invasion are stymied because of supernatural help to German defenses. The remnants of the Spanish Los Nefilim, living in France in exile from Franco’s rule, and dodging the Axis occupation, do not have a lot of room to maneuver to try and help, even though they try. There are the Daimons, the demon descended members of their species, corrupting, dangerous, self interested.  The local French Les Nefilim, devastated by the German occupation.  And the German Los Nefilim, Die Nefilim, are out and out working with the mortal Axis Germans. The greatest test for Los Nefilim: Diago, Miquel, Guillermo, Ysa and all the others, is here and now, in the stews of war and occupation, in France.

The novel does a great job out of the gate doing something that is out of fashion among many fantasy novels, and that is recapping previous events in an expository fashion before we dive into the narrative. I think more novels could take a page from Frohock here and take this tack, especially for very complicated worlds, character threads and overarching plots that either require a photographic memory on the part of the reader, or a lot of snow shoveling of recollection on the part of characters--Frohock does do calling back all the way to the original trilogy of novellas, trying and binding the threads, personal and overarching, that have been part of the narrative since the beginning. Readers who have read In Midnight’s Silence, Without Light or Guide, and The Second Death will find additional enrichment in this volume, particularly of the new trilogy as there are plenty of callbacks to the events of the novellas, but readers who started off with this trilogy or even this volume are well taken care of in learning who is whom and what is going on.

A real source of strength and power in these novellas is the use of characters. We’ve followed as readers Diago, Miquel and those around them for several books and novellas now, and there is real joy in the character development and character interactions that Frohock has brought to the series. There is real triumph and tragedy when family members, on opposite sides of conflict, must choose how to deal with one another, this is compounded by the fact that, generally, you will meet again in future lives. (although the threat of extinction, the Second Death, is the ultimate and most devastatingly card to play that even the antagonists of the book will not use except sparingly) , The queer Miquel and Diago relationship, and their relationship with Diago’s son Rafael, finds it final and ultimate flowering in this book. Guillermo’s relationship with his adversary, his brother, Jordi, shows the promise and peril of a fraternal relationship where siblings both hold power and cannot abide the plans of the other. Guillermo’s daughter Ysa really comes into her own in this novel, becoming a full fledged and fully take charge member of Los Nefilim. Aside from the Diago-Miquel-Rafael trio, hers was the story I felt the most resonance with, and I felt that the author poured a lot of heart and soul into Ysa’s story.  It is these sorts of characters, their relationships, how those relationships make and drive the plot, is the reason, I feel, to immerse yourself in the author’s work.

The overall plot, then, is much more born of these relationships than a grand meta-plot of events grinding, although, like the previous novels, she has a hell of an engine for that--the Second World War here (as opposed to the Spanish Civil War in the first two novels). Los Nefilim sympathetic to the allied cause are trying to undermine the Germans, trying to help paver the way for the eventual liberation of France, but the various factions all have personal and individual things to bring to account.But, again, it’s the personal relationships and what they do, sometimes harkening back to previous lives long ago, that really drives the narrative and the overall plot. This novel is a little looser than the previous two (which dealt with a power struggle in the first book, and an exodus in the second book) in that overall structure, but wrapped up in the characters, the relative lack of a superstructure is not a weakness.

I want to highlight a more granular level of joy in this book (and Frohock’s writing in general) and that is the use of sensory description. There was a bit of a debate on twitter between authors who “Describe food” versus “Describe fashion”. And it is true that in fantasy that authors tend to fall into particularly types of description and descriptors and ways of invoking the environment. Various authors invoke and evoke the world of their novels through particular stratum or entry points. L.E Modesitt, for example, can be counted on to have vivid and descriptive descriptions and recountings of food, be it in Recluce or in his science fiction (no “food pills” for HIM). But what Frohock does here in this novel and in all of her writing is to work the senses, and not just one, like sight. No, she mixes sight, and sound, and smell, and taste and touch and effectively brings place, and feeling and emotion in her writing in a vivid way. Frohock’s stories never suffer from white room syndrome, and she does it by mixing up and varying which senses are brought to the table. It really helps me immerse myself into what the characters are experiencing, and more authors could take lessons on how to do that by studying her writing. 

Overall, it's a fantastic ending to a series of three novellas and three novels. There is one little bit I would have liked to have had the author tie in. Way back at the beginning of the sequence, the overarching concern was the potential gift of a superweapon from the infernal realms to powers here on Earth. Keeping that weapon out of the hands of those who would do horrible things with it has been one of the voices in the fugue that is the Los Nefilim sequence. I would have liked a little more touching back to that thread (it gets mentioned, but not quite as deeply or resonantly as it might deserve) 

In this world and moment in global history where authoritarians and fascists rise to try and overturn the results of Democracy, the story of the Los Nefilim is potent, resonant and a story that needs to be told. Not only as a warning and as a cautionary tale of where societies can go in the darkness of evil, but the good things and the positive things that are worth fighting for. Love, be it straight, queer or platonic. Friendship. Loyalty. Family, found and by blood. Doing what’s right and trying to build a better world, even while standing in the ruins of the old.

I look forward to what Frohock writes next. T., I will watch for you.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for well researched and resonant historical grounding and background for her secret fantasy history.

+1 for vivid, emotion packed and sensory rich writing that draws the reader into the world and characters.

Penalties: -1 A couple of plot beats of the series and arc don’t quite resolve satisfactorily

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 well worth your time and attention

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Reference: Frohock, T. A Song with Teeth [Harper Voyager, 2021]

Microreview [book]: Where Oblivion Lives by T Frohock

T Frohock's Where Oblivion Lives provides a strong novel-length followup to her Los Nefilim trilogy of novellas that works well as a jumping on point for new readers.

The time is 1932. The Spanish Civil War is on the horizon, Spain is a beautiful, but rather turbulent place. Diago and Miquel are lovers, and married in their own eyes, even if much of the world around them would not approve of a relationship between two men. Even more so that the two of them are raising Diago’s young son, Rafael. The fact that all three are secretly supernatural beings with one foot in this world, and the other in the world of the Nefilim is an additional complication.  But it is news of a Stradivarius for sale, an instrument that Diago once wielded in an earlier life, and the fact that it could be used for esoteric evil in the wrong hands, that will test both men, their son and the rest of the Nefilim as well.

Welcome to T Frohock’s Where Oblivion Lives, the first length novel in the Los Nefilim verse.

The strengths start with the characters, a strength of all of the author’s writing. Where the author’s leap off of the page is where characters meet and connect, conflict and come together, and otherwise form relationships of all sorts and stripes. The loving queer relationship, the family of Diago, Miquel and Rafael is the center of these relationships, and those links draw all three into contact with other members of the supernatural community, forging friendships and rivalries that make for social dynamics that feel and come across as very real. Even minor characters like the young Ysabel get characterization and character development in a very few scenes.

The worldbuilding first and foremost shows the strengths of the author’s historical research, as she effective places the reader into1932 Spain (and later, Germany). There is a real sense of place, of understanding a nation and a historical moment on the road to a yawning abyss that the author knows about and the savvy reader knows is coming. But the characters, even given their supernatural nature, only know that darkness is coming and that they will play a role in it, and the time now is to prepare. That tension between the Nefilim and the human world, and how the political situation in the human world influences and informs the supernatural world is one of the best mirror parallels in the book.

This does provide for the author, and thus the reader, a way to show the whole supernatural verse by means of illuminating this conflict. A lot of the heavy lifting, and avoiding as you know, bob moments in conveying just who and what these forces are and what their goals are is wrapped in how the two sides are drawn into conflict with each other. And then, given the plot and the ultimate revelation of the driving force of the plot, we get an additional layer of the human-Nefilim interactions and even more crunchy exploration of her universe.

The world of her Nefilim verse to my roleplaying heart feels like a game of the RPG In Nomine, a game of Angels, Demons and those in between, set in 1932 Spain. Her cosmology and her hierarchies of how her supernatural worlds only have vague parallels to the RPG, but the idea of light and dark forces grounded in a human world, with supernatural infusions and intrusions on the mundane reality does make me think of a low power In Nomine game where the characters for the most part stay away from Heaven or Hell, and the beating heart of it all are the anchors and threads that connect all of the characters, allied and opposed alike.

The prose is as always one of the things that I reflect upon time and again as I look back on the reading experience. Even given the rich characters and the worldbuilding, what makes this novel really sing is the author’s ability on a line level to evoke those character beats, and to evoke and develop that world. From Spanish Villas to German Castles, to tense conversations to expressions of love and deep emotional bonds, the author always has the right word, the effective phrase, the turn of language to provide maximal impact. This novel would make a good entry point for readers who delight mostly mimetic fiction and want to give some sort of fantasy novel a try, especially if they have read and loved historical fiction. Conversely, for genre readers, this brand of writing is more like Caitlin Kiernan and Kij Johnson than, say, Jim Butcher.

The novel doesn’t require the reader to have read the previous novellas set in this universe (In Midnight’s Silence, Without Light or Guide, and The Second Death). The author does an excellent job in encapsulating the events and relevant plot points from those three stories in the early portions of Where Oblivion Lives, so that from a point of view of “What is going on?” readers are rather well grounded in the setup. Where those novellas might be valuable, after reading this work, is to find out more of the backstory of Miquel and Diago and the latter’s relationship to his son, Rafael. Having come into this novel having devoured those, I had a rich foregrounding in the characters and was invested in them already. However, I think you can read the novel and then go back to the novellas (which take place in 1931, a year before this book) to fill in details.

Terrible times are ahead for the world of Los Nefilim. The Spanish Civil War and the Second World War are on the horizon. The supernatural as well as the mortal worlds are clearly going to be tested, tormented and transformed by future events that threaten to put a permanent darkness over all. But it is the light of Frohock’s characters, candles against that darkness, that shows that the key to writing and evoking dark fantasy is to have characters whose natures, however imperfect, are set against that darkness. In this, the author succeeds wonderfully.

Anyone interested in  historical-grounded dark fantasy should give the Los Nefilim verse of T Frohock a try. There are wondrous things within to be found.

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The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for evoactive use of historical detail to provide setting
+1 for sympathetically developed complex characters

Penalties: -1 for a little bit of rushed plotting at points in the book.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10:  very high quality/standout in its category


Reference:  Frohock, T, Where Oblivion Lives [Harper Voyager 2019]


POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.