Skip to main content

Featured

October Daye / Inheritance - Essay Series Part Five: Long Series and How to Read Them

Hello Patrons and general audience members! Welcome to another Books That Burn essay by Robin. Thank you to Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout. [Full Audio Available Here] This is the fifth and final entry in a five-part essay series discussing two long-running book series by queer authors: October Daye by Seanan McGuire, and Inheritance by A.K. Faulkner. I chose these series because I love them both, they were intended from the start to be long series, neither of them are finished yet, and the authors have different structural approaches to developing each series across so many volumes. Purely coincidentally, they are both long-running contemporary fantasy series mainly set in California in or near the 2010's, with major characters named Quentin, and whose fast-healing protagonists have a tendency to quasi-adopt a gaggle of magical teenagers. After a brief moment in the 1990's, October Daye begins in earnest in 2009 and has reached 2015 as of the eighteenth boo...
Post a Comment
Read more
Labels

Animorphs Book 16: The Warning by K. A. Applegate

The Warning shows Jake's increasing sense of internalized pressure as a leader. He's in charge and increasingly isolated. When he almost dies in an insect morph the text takes the time to dwell on his fear and helplessness in a pretty brutal way.

There's some fun stuff with 90's computer tech and chat rooms, but this is not a light book. There's a sense of helplessness, and the crushing reality that no matter how many people they can save, someone is still getting hurt.

Cassie is starting to be more of a lieutenant and confidant to Jake in terms of decision making and ethics. She has been the ethical voice of the team for a while, but this book codifies some parts of their dynamic in a way that feel natural.

These review are spoiler-free, but my stance is that "almost dies in an XXX morph" really isn't a spoiler for this series, since that's a constant in almost every book. You know it's "almost" because there are more books with him on the cover, and morphing is often dangerous. It's mostly used for combat/infiltration, which is dangerous. Even the act of morphing is dangerous due to the possibility of being trapped in morph.

A boy (Jake) turns into a rhinoceros

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts