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

Messenger by Lois Lowry (The Giver Quartet, #3)

Messenger connects The Giver and Gathering Blue to show the slow creep of xenophobia in the Village that had always been a welcoming place. This is a strong entry that can stand on its own, but is much better due to what came before.

I like the way that this story incorporates the previous two books such that this story can make sense on its own, but it completes the unfinished threads of the other books so that they feel more complete. I'm very excited to see how this series concludes in "Son", but "Messenger" alone filled in a lot of what was missing from "Gathering Blue".

The dynamic between Matty and the blind man was very good. Matty is not as knowledgeable as the blind man, but the blind man clearly values their friendship, and I think Matty enjoys having someone to help. From a narrative perspective, the way that we get hints of the blind man's breadth of knowledge even when Matty doesn't have the context for his assertions was very well handled. It made them both feel like full persons even when we mostly are left with Matty's thoughts.

I'm glad that Kira didn't let Matty heal her for the journey, and that he respected her autonomy and didn't force the healing on her. The discourse about disability within these books seems to be very well handled.

Overall I liked this one and I'm looking forward to reading the conclusion in "Son".

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts