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: Spring's Arcana by Lilith Saintcrow

Lilith Saintcrow brings her own unique ideas to an American Gods sort of universe, where a sheltered young woman is much more than she appears or even realizes.

Nat Drozdova has a problem she knows about, which ties to a problem she doesn't know she has yet. Her imperious, overbearing mother is dying, and Nat, devoted daughter, is willing to go to great lengths to save or help her. Even as she has a real love/hate relationship with her mother and wants to be out on her own and free, she is intensely loyal. Nat is loyal enough to go to a mysterious building owned by a powerful woman with esoteric powers.  Nat soon finds that her ability to talk to cats and that things aren't quite what they seem (no matter what her mother has told her) is far more true than she ever imagined.

This is the story of Spring's Arcana, first in a duology by Lilith Saintcrow.

I might as well come out front and discuss the gigantic elephant in the room, and at length, because many people reading this book in addition to myself are going to see it right away too. A young person, in America, finds themselves dealing with a host of the embodiments of esoteric powers, who jockey for power, influence, and a piece of the American pie, as it were. A novel that winds up being a road trip across America, meeting more such powers, places and the protagonist getting a sense of who they are, and who they want to be. So yes, Neil Gaiman's American Gods has to be part of the genre conversation of this book, absolutely.

But the book is not a clone of American Gods. While Spring's Arcana, like American Gods, is intimately interested in the American experience of divinities here, it's in a fundamentally different way. Where Gaiman's world is of old gods jostling with and against the new, American gods, Saintcrow explores these questions in a different way. There is sharpness, and commentary on the immigrant experience in Saintcrow's work. Questions of native born and imported powers and principalities are explored, I do wonder if such questions will be explored even more as Nat continues her journey into America in the second book.

The other way I thought about this book, and even more than American Gods, even, is the roleplaying game, Scion. It's one of my favorite verses, even if the system itself is something that is clunky and unappealing to me. I've lost my tolerance for that immense complexity of White Wolf games and really just go for the setting and characters and possibilities. In Scion, you play a child of a God. Maybe you knew you were special, maybe you had no idea why weird things kept happening around you. Maybe you are biologically a child of a god, and maybe a shard of divinity got put into you (à la the RPG Nobilis). Either way, congratulations, you are now part of a wider and larger world, and you have a Destiny, whether you run toward it or try and run from it. 

So I kept thinking of Nat's story in the latter framework. Sure, she could talk to cats and weird things kept happening growing up, but her mother said it was nonsense and foolishness. But when Nat uses a business card to meet someone who might be the Russian goddess of winter and winds up learning about the supernatural universe that really exists, I kept thinking of this as an initiation for a young Scion. She gets paired up with Dmitri, again, Russian or Slavic, and what he is the power of becomes clear to the reader, and he introduces her to the world she never knew. Even as Nat just wants to make her mother all better, she is caught in a whirlwind of people who know more about her and what she is than what she knows. It's a bit of a puzzle for the reader to figure out who Nat is, and who her mother is. We as the reader get enough information (especially from Dimitri's point of view, who knows more than he thinks to the reader, but enough leaks through to pick up clues) before Nat figures out who and what she is, who her mother is, and what her quest actually means in esoteric as well as real terms. 

I am sure that you can find other parallels as well to other works. The book is rich that way, from the start aware that it is in conversation with other books and literary references abound.

Above and beyond the plot and worldbuilding setup, however, where the novel really shines is where my previous readings of Saintcrow's work has really shone, and that is in character and in the line by line writing. There is a very palpable feel to the way she describes characters, locales and situations that is wonderfully immersive. I may be two decades removed from New York, but her description of Nat making her way through a winter in NYC brought back to me the feel of a New York City winter in memorable detail. Her cross country adventure, a party given for beings such as herself, the mirror-maze of a jumped up sorcerer, all of these locales and more are vivid and memorable. 

So, too, the characters.  Nat makes for a young, engaging protagonist with contradictions, flaws, and a lot of heart to root for. Once the reader (ahead of Nat) figures out what is happening to her and what must happen (and if you are clever, what her mother really wants), I felt for Nat and her story deeply.  Even though he is a murderous little fink, I came to respect Dmitri, our other POV character. His fate is tied to Nat's throughout the book, and he is our "inside man" to the esoteric world of sorcerers, powers and principalities that Nat knows nothing about. (That phrase and indeed the book's title makes me think of tarot, and it is clear that tarot also was a taproot for this book as well). Briefly seen characters like "New York Jay" not only show Saintcrow's ability to create characters on the fly, but also, as per the worldbuilding above, show the range of possibilities for the aforementioned powers and principalities. 

The novel ends with the road trip to find what Nat needs only partially done but with her getting a real sense of who and what she is, a natural stopping point. A map at the beginning of the book suggests that Nat's journey really has only just begun, and going from New York City to the plains of South Dakota is really just the beginning for Nat, and for the reader. I am quite interested in continuing Nat's journey.

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The Math

Highlights: Fascinating, esoteric, Hidden World, excellent writing, of characters and of locales, places and events

Nerd Coefficient: Score 8/10

Reference: Saintcrow, Lilith, Spring's Arcana, [Tor Books, 2023]

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

Microreview: Prison of Sleep by Tim Pratt

Tim Pratt’s Prison of Sleep completes his duology oif a multiversal story of a man who travels to a new universe every time he closes his eyes.

Zax, or Zaxony more properly, has a problem. A new problem.  His original problem, as detailed in The Doors of Sleep have been moderately solved. He can control his need for sleep, and thus the involuntary slipping through of worlds. He has found the love of his life, whole and complete, thought lost to madness. He’s made allies and friends, and managed to start to make sense of it all.  Until, of course, a cult attacks, scatters his allies, and threatens not only him, and his, but the infinity of worlds.

This is The Prison of Sleep by Tim Pratt.

The novel introduces a second, alternating point of view in Ana, the inamorata that Zax lost, and then found again at the end of the first novel. A lot of Ana’s chapters, though, are written as recollection of her story, explaining what happened after she was lost, and how she was able to reconnect with Zax. This does give the reader a lot more context and a feel for Ana as opposed to the glimpsed memories that Zax shares in the first novel. Instead of being an unreachable, perfect quest Dulcinea for Zax, she is a character in her own right, with her own goals and strengths. The disadvantage of this approach, though, is that in general, a good chunk of this book doesn’t propel the forward narrative of the plot at all, merely catching up the reader toward a present that eventually interacts with the mainline plot.I am not entirely certain this structure for the book works quite that well, although if Pratt was trying to show the separation of the two lovers by having them separated in time as well as space by the trick of this narrative technique, then he was entirely successful with that trick. In any event, it is welcome to see how travel through the multiverse could work besides Zax’s original model.

As far as Zax’s story itself, it switches from the “Flight to Forever” mode that the original book marked, and is a more directed journey on his part, and eventually turns into an inevitability as he finds himself in trouble with the newest threat to him. The Cult of the Worm, the “real enemy all along” from before the beginning of the original novel. Unlike the Lector, though, the Cult of the Worm as far as its members are much less interesting as characters. In the first novel, The Lector was a true Master like villain, a character with personality and drive to spare. In this novel, it is only The Prisoner (of the titular Prison of Sleep) that really jumps out. If Lector was The Master, the classic Doctor Who analogy for The Prisoner to go with is almost certainly The Black Guardian. 

I will refrain from going into the Prisoner’s plans, methods and goals too deeply here, but the novel does darken a bit, a notch, from the bright heroic light SF of the first novel as a result. But in general, this is a pulpy Good vs Evil story that might seem “simplistic”, but there is a notable lack of moral greys here. There is an attempt at moral complexity in one “episode” (to use the Doctor Who term) but that is quickly dismissed with. There are debates among the Companions about what is to be done but in general, there is Good and there is Evil. 

The novel keeps some of the strong strengths of the first novel, and a reminder of why I read and enjoy multiverse fiction. In often short visits, or even just a few well chosen words tossed off, Pratt creates a sheaf of worlds that spark the imagination. We don’t see much of these worlds, or any worlds, really, something that the author himself lampshades in dialogue in one of Ana’s chapters. But what he excels at is the invocation of entire worlds and societies in the briefest of spaces, providing a canvas that is largely left to our imagination, but giving us the tools for that canvas, that space. 

We do get a new Companion for Zax in the narrative and that would be Zaveta of the Broken Wheel. If we are continuing the Doctor Who analogies, and they do work so rather well in discussing this series, Zaveta is the Leela (4th Doctor Companion) for Zax, and is rather ferocious and dangerous in hand to hand combat. She doesn’t understand much technology, at first, but proves adaptive and ready to learn, just like Leela. Zax’s superpower is not that he is a super genius (like the Doctor) but that his social abilities and skills make him allies and friends everywhere, even unlikely ones. He doesn't, as Davros once accused the Doctor, of "fashioning his companions into weapons", they do that very well on their own, thank you very much. Zaveta, like the other characters, shows the variability and viability of a variety of characters to travel the universe with. If I might editorialize, one thing that the current Doctor Who hasn't tried much of, and I think it really could, would be to have companions NOT from our modern Earth.

In the end, though, I think, looking back on this and on The Doors of Sleep, the two novels quite frankly feel like an artificial division of a longer narrative. Coincidentally, this reminds me of another multiverse book series, the first two novels in the Hugo Finalist Merchant Princes series by Charles Stross, The Family Trade and The Hidden Family.  That was really a single narrative split ungainly into two books and the books suffered from its arbitrary and abrupt division. I would say that readers interested in Pratt’s work, or in multiversal fiction with the tone of Doctor Who will like these two books, but they should buy and read them together as a set.

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The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for providing a wider point of view in Ana, giving balance to the narrative.

+1 for a dense and chewy set of worlds and adventures for Zax and Ana to adventure through

Penalties: -1 The post-denouement sudden plot twists feels a little rushed and forced.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Pratt, Tim The Prison of Sleep [Angry Robot, 2022]

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