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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...

Blackout by Mira Grant, aka Seanan McGuire (Newsflesh, #3)

Blackout is about moving on after trauma, coping with loss, and fighting monsters within and without, where every decision costs time and blood. Deadline felt like trying to breathe, Blackout is a defiant scream and headlong charge.

The balance between closing existing plot threads and establishing/closing new ones is very good. The resolution makes sense without feeling inevitable and there are some truly stunning scenes that build rich and tiny worlds which will only be visited once before they’re gone. This is my favorite book of the original trilogy (Deadline is good, but it’s very much the first half of Blackout’s story and it suffers a little for it), and I’m looking forward to checking out Feedback next.

CW for mental illness, violence, gore, major character death, death.

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