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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...

Pages from the Pizza Crows by Evan B. Witmer (Odd Fiction #1)

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

Pages from the Pizza Crows is a collection with a framing device so good and weird that I'd be hard pressed to say whether the frame or the stories inside were my favorite. There are several that I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

I want more stories like this, ones which are unafraid to have endings that aren’t always great for the protagonists but also aren’t trying to be cruel. Not to say that they never turn out well, but they don’t turn out in a way anyone would ask for beforehand. They don’t rely on twists, precisely, but most of them have a line or two in the last page which reframes or expands the narrative without taking away anything from the story. An excellent read, one that I think will stay with me.

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