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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...

The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke (Scapegracers, #1)

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

The Scapegracers is slick like new magic, fitting like a second skin. Gay witches, rural small-town queerness, the anxiety of new friendships, and the terror of being hunted.

The prose hums and clicks, conveying a train of thought without getting sidetracked. It's full of fricatives and phrases begging to be spoken into the air, hurled at the sky. The blend of literal descriptions and visceral metaphors conveys a sense of physicality, of being in a body while magic is in the air and winding through Sideways' skin. It has the teenage friend-group version of "feeling lonely in the middle of a crowd"; capturing a feeling of awkwardness and surprise at being wanted, being invited, being anywhere and having it finally feel right; dreading the possibility that it's all a trick, that anxiety that everyone is just pretending to like her and that they might inexplicably stop. 

There's a traumatic event early on (which I won't spoil) and the aftermath affects how they navigate the world throughout the rest of the book. It made that event feel grounded and immediate. It would have been easy to have it kick off the main plot and disappear, but instead it shows up in little ways through to the end of the story, continuing to have emotional impact. 

This is one of those where I'm having trouble talking about it without spoilers, but it's full of tiny moments and turns of phrase that just felt right to me. I could always follow the plot but never could predict where it would go next. I loved reading this and I'll definitely read the sequel. 

CW for assault.



A line drawing of a fawn below a snake and a crescent moon.

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