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.
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This is the first 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 book, while Inheritance is ambiguously set in the mid-to-late 2010's. Each of my essays focuses on a particular topic of importance to long series. They're designed to be intelligible on their own, and can theoretically be read in any order, but most readers will have the best experience if they start with the first essay and proceed linearly.
Character Growth - No one is perfect, especially not a protagonist in book one
This essay spoils major elements of the following books: ROSEMARY AND RUE by Seanan McGuire and JACK OF THORNS by A.K. Faulkner, as well as lightly discussing some spoilers from later books in their respective series.
"Character growth" in fiction, at its simplest, is the idea that the significant character(s) in a story will end the story with experiences and knowledge which they did not possess at the start, and that the effects of these experiences will be to change them for the better along some relevant moral, material, or educational axis. A more general, related term is "character development", which encompasses any alterations and complications in understanding by and about the character, whether or not they are positive. In a stand-alone story following Western modes of storytelling, there's usually a sense that a character's growth within the lone volume will be significant, that they will have some change or learn some lesson that transforms them, all in the space of a contained narrative. Conversely, when a story is the first book in a series and that series is planned from the start to play out over ten, twenty, or even more volumes... there's room for the protagonist(s) in the first book to be far from ideal. This doesn't require an arc as dramatic as that from villain to hero, though that can happen, just that the person they are in the first book isn't who they'll need to be in order to make it through everything the author has planned for them. They might even, as the series continues, go through phases where they regress because it's hard to fully accept changes, even positive ones. This can be accomplished through a mix of specific plans and general trajectories, allowing for the author to know where things are going and a few necessary events on the way, but not actually requiring them to know specific details for books they're still years or possibly decades away from writing. The protagonists have to start somewhere, and for both of these series, that place is California, where their lives are about to be complicated by other people's magic.
In ROSEMARY AND RUE, the first book of the October Daye series, October "Toby" Daye is pulled out of her life with her human husband and (mostly) human daughter when Simon Torquill turns her into a fish. She remains trapped in a pond for fourteen years, while everyone thinks she's dead and moves on with their lives. Soon after the spell breaks and she has to start over, she's cursed to solve a murder, forcing her back into entanglement with Faerie and the Fae she's been working so hard to ignore since leaving the pond. Toby thinks she's a Daoine Sidhe changeling with weak magic, whose fully Daoine Sidhe mother, Amandine, is shut up in her tower, ignoring the rest of the world. Her human father is long dead, and believed Toby died as a child. The things that Toby knows about herself, her history, and the various Fae around her are many, established gradually throughout ROSEMARY AND RUE. However, she is mistaken on several crucial points. So many salient bits of worldbuilding established in the first book eventually turn out to be important, not because they were true, but because people with power worked very hard to hide secrets, and some of those deceptions still held when Toby emerged from the pond. There are some which, eighteen books on, haven't been directly contradicted, but I have good reason to suspect they aren't as they appear. Toby isn't lying in ROSEMARY AND RUE when she describes herself as Daoine Sidhe, characterizes her relationship with the Countess Winterrose as a complicated friendship, or expounds on her contentious interactions with Tybalt (an annoyingly handsome Cait Sidhe and the local King of Cats). She thinks Tybalt hates her, but here she trusts his honor as an enemy more than she trusts almost anyone else's friendship. That doesn't make any of these assertions true in an objective sense, but it matters just as much that Toby thinks they are true as what the real answers will turn out to be. What is consistent is the core of who Toby is: a person who cares for the people around her, returns loyalty in kind, and will wreck herself in pursuit of things and people that matter to her. The book ends, not with Toby having changed wholly as a person, but with her acceptance that Faerie won't ever let her go, and she's much better off choosing the terms by which she engages with it and the people who care about her.
JACK OF THORNS introduces Laurence, heroin addict, current low level drug user and occasional pot dealer, trying very hard to not disappoint his mother, Myriam, and actually do his job at her flower shop, The Jack in the Green. Myriam and Laurence can both make plants grow healthier and faster than normal, which is a very handy skill for a florist, as well as a bit magical. Three years ago, during an overdose, he had visions of the future, only some of which have come to pass. A British man playing a piano is in one of those visions, and Laurence is surprised to come across the man in a park three years on. Quentin, the Fifth Earl of Banbury (don't make a fuss, it's just a courtesy title) has spent the last five years migrating his way across the United States, landing for now in San Diego, California, in his attempts to get away from his past and avoid his father in particular. He doesn't have a cell phone, speaks about himself in the third person ("one does not disagree"), drinks both alone and in company, and has blackouts every time his telekinesis manifests, leaving him blissfully unaware that he has any kind of strange ability at all. When Laurence accidentally gets help from the wrong god, he and Quentin grow closer as Laurence tries to stop the god from addicting half the city to a strange, plant-derived, magical drug, all while Quentin figures out his new-found powers. Some of their character growth is pretty straightforward, shown in their speech (Quentin starts saying "I"), or in their actions (Laurence is calm enough with Quentin around to have a chance at staying off of drugs), but most of their character growth in JACK OF THORNS is focused on identifying some of their problems, not in actually fixing them. The timeline is too short for major changes in either man's personality, and that's not the narrative goal this early on.
In long series, especially when the author intends the approximate run length from the start (as is the case for both October Daye and Inheritance), the first book (possibly the first several books) are meant to establish the important players and the status quo which will be disrupted later. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this and create a sense of change is for the characters to be mistaken about some aspects of their lives, either not knowing major factors in play or misattributing the causes for something important. In both of these series, the main characters are incorrect about the extent and nature of their powers, as well as their own identities. Toby is not really Daoine Sidhe, Laurence isn't actually human, and Quentin (in Inheritance) is primordial chaos in sharp tailoring. When they later learn the real answers, there's a chance to see how they react to this realignment of their sense of self. Additionally, it lets any in the audience who enjoy re-reading to go back to the early books with this later knowledge and catch things that the characters probably might not. Even learning later that they were mistaken, it generally takes effort to reassess one's own life in the light of new information, and they're bound to miss something at first. The reader, however, can experience several layers of revelation as they read old words with new information in mind. With a long enough series, this can happen iteratively as books continue to be released and new information becomes available.
Another way to set up character growth in future books is to make the main characters' flaws clear early on. Character flaws, in fiction, are traits or habits which tend to prompt characters to make choices which, while narratively interesting, are bad for them personally. In ROSEMARY AND RUE, Toby rushes in without thinking of her own safety when someone has been hurt, and is reticent to accept help even when her life is in danger. This is partly due to an avoidance of debts in Faerie, where fealty and owing can have magical and dangerous consequences. In a world where "thank you" implies debt, actually accepting help feels dangerous, even if enough people genuinely care about her enough to remove the danger from most of the offers. Toby's hesitance, when combined with her tendency to get shot (or, for some variety, stabbed), means she ruins a lot of clothing and frequently needs to accept help. She spends most of the early book avoiding talking to Sylvester Torquill, former hero and her liege. Toby was transformed into a fish while looking for Sylvester's missing wife and daughter, now returned, and Toby is convinced that he must be angry with her. In her desire to avoid his ire, she instead denies them both catharsis. When she runs out of options and goes at last to his Knowe, he is overjoyed to see her, and surprised to learn that she feared his reaction. The idea that she could have failed him and he would not hate her for it was so alien to Toby that she let her fear rule her until she had no other choice. It turns out that she could have avoided some of the chaos and violence which eventually occurred if she'd turned to him earlier, though at least part of it had been set in motion so long ago that there was no diverting it now. Fearing Sylvester's anger and not imagining his joy might be waiting instead, Toby turns to someone who has been manipulative at best and actively abusive at worst: her former (and soon, renewed) lover, the Peter Pan of changelings, Devin. Devin runs Home, a place where he collects changelings who have rejected or been rejected by Pureblood Fae society. Toby understands that Devin is abusive, and she's aware of many ways he took advantage of her in the past, but she behaves now as if, having left and stayed gone, his ability to manipulate her has decreased. When the options for help are Devin or Sylvester, she keeps picking Devin, because he has no good opinion of her that could be ruined. This leads to disaster, as Devin turns out to be responsible for key elements of her current predicament, and to have orchestrated at least one of the times she was shot. By trying to hide herself from the disappointment of someone who cares about her, Toby set herself up to be used once more by an abuser she'd formerly escaped.
Characters sometimes have flaws in the present because they developed as coping mechanisms for something even worse in their pasts. In JACK OF THORNS, Quentin is injured the first time Laurence fights Jack, and he is aghast to discover on waking that his wounds were cared for, because it means that someone other than a doctor saw the many, many scars on his body. For Quentin, his clothing is his armor. He believes that it protects everyone from knowing the terrible secret of how hideous he is. In reality, he isn't a hideous monster, just a person with scars. This is something it will take a lot of convincing from Laurence across several books for Quentin to gradually accept. It will require even more for him to be ready to understand what happened to scar him, and who hurt him so badly that his mind routinely blocks out anything even moderately stressful rather than have to deal with it. As for Laurence, the first chapter from his perspective features him wishing he could be getting high, and feeling guilty about the stress his addiction has put his mom through. He needs something on a visceral level that is currently missing from his life, using sex and drugs to fill that void within himself. He almost died from a heroin overdose three years ago, but hasn't managed to give it up completely. Laurence has been in this town long enough that he's slept with most people who might interest him, and is currently trying to convince a particularly toxic ex-boyfriend that whatever they had going on really is over. He ends up so frustrated at one point that he prays for help without cleansing the area, and accidentally summons Jack instead of the god he meant to entreat. Gradually, it becomes clear that Jack is entirely self-interested under a veneer of helpfulness, and not at all fussed about consent. This is a very dangerous combination of traits in anyone, let alone a deity who is magically strengthened by sex. Jack starts demanding that Laurence sleep with someone, anyone, but Laurence is realizing that he's suddenly only interested in Quentin, and to say Quentin isn't interested in sex at this point would be an understatement. Defeating Jack at last requires them to trust each other and communicate in a stressful situation, and neither of them are allowed to sacrifice themselves for the other. The impulse to value their own lives cheaply while holding the other person's wellbeing inviolate will continue to cause issues in future books, but for now it's enough that the trait is obvious from their actions.
Characters must start somewhere so they can become better later, and this is handled similarly in ROSEMARY AND RUE and JACK OF THORNS. Both books portray the main character(s) as flawed, needing help but not knowing how to get it, or reaching for the wrong support in a crucial moment. They defeat antagonists who pretended to care about them while actually being ready to discard them as soon as the time was right. Toby accepts that Faerie is too full of people who care about her for her to leave it completely, while Laurence and Quentin cement their fledgling relationship with a little bit of god-killing. ROSEMARY AND RUE sets up a whole slew of worldbuilding details which will turn out to be misleading or inaccurate later, but in ways which make the whole series better as they are gradually overturned. JACK OF THORNS tends more to have gaps in information and open questions, with a sense of something missing while they proceed on conjecture that's good enough for now. In different ways, they arrive at a point where some status quo exists which can be complicated and deepened later, each a solid foundation for a series with many books to go.
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