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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...

Life Minus Me by Sara Codair (Evanstar Chronicles, #0.5)

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

Life Minus Me is a short and ultimately hopeful story of a wingless half-angel trying to help other people when she's not quite all right herself. Featuring casually excellent nonbinary rep and many cute dogs. I want more so I'm glad there's another. 

This is a short book which implies a much more complicated world than could fit in novelette form. It eschews deep backstory except to sketch fairly complicated family lives for the POV characters. I mean that in the sense that we don't know how they got to be here, doing whatever they're doing, but we learn relevant tensions with family and friends and a particular family secret. It's a book about feeling useless and adrift, not quite good enough for whatever needs doing. It definitely gets dark in places, but it's also grappling with that darkness. It features some persistent suicidal ideation, but the reader is shielded a bit by rotating narrators.

I'm glad this leads into a larger series because my main thought is that I want more story. I like these characters, I care about what's happening to them. This book is a snapshot of a particularly terrible week but I would happily spend more time here. To me it's always a good sign for a series when I feel like I didn't get enough time in a book, especially when I'm discovering a world with sequels already published. 

This book is full of good dogs; clearly written by someone who loves dogs very much. I'm not a dog person myself but the care is obvious and provides some brightness in what could have easily been a very grim book. 

Book CWs for depression, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, self-harm, and mention of infertility and miscarriage.

A road lined with snow-covered trees, overlaid with a feathered wing.

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