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This is the second 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 such as these two. 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.
Series Structure - Series Arcs and Monsters of the Week
This essay spoils major elements of the first ten books of the Inheritance series by A.K. Faulkner, as well as the first six books in the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire, while lightly discussing some spoilers from later books in that series. It touches briefly on themes of murder and death, as well as alluding to fictional depictions of kidnapping, torture, and harm to children.
When writing a long series, there are two structural questions which will affect each reader's experience, regardless of whether the author plans them or lets them unfold naturally: what is the series like for new readers, and what is it like for long-time readers? Series arcs and monster-of-the-week stories can provide satisfying solutions to shape these experiences for all readers. The combination of gradual changes and impermanent characters enliven each series, making new books meaningful and stopping them from being wholly interchangeable with the books around them. Both are used to great effect by Seanan McGuire in her October Daye series, and by A.K. Faulkner in their Inheritance series.
What Is a Monster of the Week?
Long series with more than one narrative arc planned or in progress need something to differentiate each entry from the others, some thing which is the focus of that particular story. In TV shows, this is sometimes known as the "monster of the week" where there's some problem to solve, usually logistically (e.g. killing or otherwise dealing with a monster), which appears for that episode and then is gone by the next week's story. In long-running book series, such as Inheritance and October Daye, there generally is something happening which the characters deal with in each book, some focus around which the plot can revolve. These moments are what makes the time shown in the book worthy of being in a narrative, something different than when the characters implicitly exist and live their lives in the moments between stories worthy of a reader's attention. A shorter series (like a duology or trilogy) can ensure that every conflict matters very specifically to the main arc of the story, but this would be unworkable for a longer series. When following characters for a long time, it's important to have narrative rest, to have crises which can arise and then actually be resolved, even if the damage done and any lessons learned take longer to settle down. Whether they're handled forever or just for now is something only time (and more books) will tell. For my purposes, a "monster of the week" in a long book series is a problem, monster, or antagonist who has not been a significant issue in any earlier books (or has been quiescent for a long time between distinct appearances), is relevant for a single book, then is defeated and either killed or otherwise removed, not an active player in the next several books (if they're still alive or revivable), or gone forever (if they're permanently dead). An early story's monster of the week might be some more durable villain later, but a reappearance doesn't necessarily recharacterize their debut.
Structurally, monsters of the week help provide focus to individual books. This is important in a long series to maintain individuality for each entry. It also provides opportunities (whether or not the author chooses to accept them) for villains or monsters to actually get defeated or forced to realign to help the protagonists in the future. The slightly reduced menu of baddies can be more developed and thus more interesting, because the narrative focus in the longer term isn't diluted between a dozen villains. This need changes, however, for extremely long series like decades-long manga or superhero comics, with no planned end in sight and a need to keep their options open. Neither Inheritance nor October Daye are that kind of series, however. They need to keep a lid on just how many actively hostile forces are running around after their first confrontation with the hero(es). Foes can become friends to the protagonists or end up dead, and both these series do a fair share of each.
Monsters in Inheritance
Inheritance is organized into a planned five "seasons" of five books each. In the first book, JACK OF THORNS, the antagonist is Jack, an entity who claims to be a god, heavily implies that he is Laurence's deity, and demands that Laurence provide him with sexual energy to sustain him. Laurence might not have an objection to any sex he may have incidentally helping his god, but there's a major problem: The only options Laurence can imagine when Jack arrives on the scene are Quentin, the hot British guy who's terrified of sex and whom Laurence doesn't want to scare off, and Dan, Laurence's ex-boyfriend who has already tried to assault him. Good news for Laurence and Quentin, neither Jack nor Dan survive the first book's events, and are cemented as the first monsters of the week. Jack, in particular, would be an existential threat to Laurence in the short term and the city of San Diego in the longer term if not stopped, but, because he is killed here, he is instead an early casualty of the narrative need to tie up loose ends so they don't clog the series. Emotionally, Jack and Dan linger, particularly in Laurence's thoughts. Jack taught Laurence the main method he uses for seeing the future, sometimes using his gift brings up thoughts of the erstwhile god. For his part, Dan was Laurence's boyfriend before he became a stalker with aspirations towards assault, and that specter is not so easily shed.
The second book, KNIGHT OF FLAMES, is paired with the fourth, REEVE OF VEILS. They cover the same period of time from two different sets of perspectives. Quentin and Laurence are the focus of KNIGHT OF FLAMES, with Quentin's twin, Freddy, showing up early on to try and get Quentin to return home as their father demands. That sets up some threads for the arc of season one, but Freddy's attempt to quickly deliver a plea is stymied by Quentin's refusal to return and the appearance of this week's monster, Kane Wilson. Kane is a psychic with the ability to control people with his voice, and he lives in a mansion with a bunch of teenagers and a couple of bodyguards, all of whom have psychic abilities ("psychic" in this series is a catch-all term for a particular kind of inherent ability which is distinct from either magic spells or demigod powers). Kane needs to be known as awesome and powerful, he revels in the control he exerts over others with just his voice. It becomes obvious that he's the antagonist when it turns out that Kane has been responsible for a series of brutal murders over the years, beginning when he was a teen himself, driving first his childhood bullies and then his adult adversaries to messy deaths, sometimes at their own hands, always against their will.
While the fourth book is fascinating from a series structure standpoint, it is not really a monster-of-the-week story (nor does it need to be). REEVE OF VEILS reveals that Freddy, who was so helpful in the second book, was actually up to more than either Quinten or Laurence could have guessed. In particular, he came across and then entered into a relationship with Mikey, Laurence's former dealer. Mikey was in some of Laurence's visions, and relevant whenever Laurence spoke of his heroin use, but Mikey himself first appears here. REEVE OF VEILS focuses mainly on what Freddy was working on in the background of KNIGHT OF FLAMES, through a mix of retold scenes from Freddy's perspective instead of Laurence or Quentin, or wholly new scenes with Mikey or Freddy when Quentin and Laurence were not present. It also transpires that Freddy is a telepath, which recharacterizes his few interactions with Kane Wilson in KNIGHT OF FLAMES. This information was revealed at the end of KNIGHT OF FLAMES, but this is the first time the implications are explored in any depth. Freddy finds Kane to be uninspired and petty, and Kane's powers don't actually work on him. To Freddy, Kane is a problem mostly because Freddy needs to avoid revealing his telepathy to Quentin, since Quentin is as immune to Freddy's telepathic influence as both twins are to Kane's. Once Freddy learns of Laurence's ability to look into the past, he also must limit his outward actions so that they don't condemn him if viewed by Laurence in the future. If Freddy had encountered Kane on his own he would have either ignored him entirely or dealt with him easily. Instead, constrained by a need to hide his abilities from his brother in the present and from Laurence's scrying in the future, Freddy moves more carefully, limiting his overt actions. To view REEVE OF VEILS as a monster-of-the-week story would necessitate viewing Freddy as the monster in the other men's story, and that's certainly a plausible reading. Ultimately, I don't hold with that lens, since, even as Freddy causes trouble for Quentin and Laurence, he does so in ways that are more closely tied to the larger season arc, not restricted to this one entry.
Circling back to the third book, LORD OF RAVENS focuses at first on Laurence and Quentin as a couple, sharing intimacy. After Laurence looks into the past to find out the reason for Quentin's scars, the tone pivots sharply onto Laurence's new horror at certain aspects of Quentin's backstory, and other things related to Quentin's abusive father, the Duke of Oxford. Before that can be resolved, a creature, Black Annis, appears and kidnaps one of the children, declaring that she will take a child every day until Quentin does what his father wants - come home and learn magic. If he does not come in a week, she will eat the children she has taken. While the Duke is pulling the strings, there is a very literal monster at hand, and defeating her doesn't resolve the larger issue of the Duke's attempts to exert control over Quentin's life, and his willingness to harm children in pursuit of his goals. Likewise, because Black Annis is just this book's monster, not a season-long threat, stopping her doesn't change the longer term issue of the Duke and his drive to control his children's lives for the sake of his legacy.
The fifth book, PAGE OF TRICKS, is literally a season finale, bringing together Laurence, Quentin, Freddy, Mikey, and the Duke into one country when Freddy kidnaps Laurence at the Duke's orders and brings him to England, forcing Quentin to follow in order to get him back. While the third and fourth books are tied very strongly to these events, the first and second retain their monster-of-the-week qualities, even in retrospect. The Duke was wholly unaffiliated with Jack, Dan, and Kane, and even his use of Black Annis was deployed in a manner which continued the episodic feeling of the early season. The first three books see their antagonists die (technically the fourth does as well, but I'm disinclined to credit Kane's death a second time), placing them outside of any reasonable chance at reappearance.
Where things get very interesting for this week's monsters is in Season Two, when it appears at first that a string of very bizarre situations and antagonists are completely unrelated, only for it to turn out that a villain was pulling the strings to make those problems happen now, instead of later or never. The reader, privy to the epilogues, was alerted to this connection from the start, but Laurence and Quentin initially have no idea. In book six, RITES OF WINTER, a Black Dog appears and takes Quentin to Annwn in Otherworld. The warlock who summoned the dog was trying to test Laurence, but because the rest of the story takes place in Otherworld, the warlock didn't get most of the information he wanted, and needed to try something else. In the seventh book, SIGILS OF SPRING, that something turned out to be sending a person naturally immune to powers and magic to kidnap Quentin, forcing Laurence into action once again. While, technically, the warlock doesn't send the memory-erasing entity into action for SPELLS OF SUMMER (book eight), its interference is caused indirectly by things he set in motion years ago, coming to a head because he recently sent his daughter into Laurence's path as a magic teacher. The ninth book, RUNES OF FALL, brings trouble from a group of demigod Nazis whose leader can't stand that his daughter ran away rather than stay home and be a superpowered racist. She had run away very successfully, until the warlock sent her current whereabouts to a member of her father's group, putting danger once more in Quentin's and Laurence's path, as she is under their protection. WHEEL OF FATE (book ten) wraps up the season with a confrontation between the warlock and our merry band of protagonists, this time with some help from those who have been more ambiguously aligned in the past.
Monsters in October Daye
The October Daye series follows October "Toby" Daye, changeling and blood-worker, the de-facto investigator of strange things due to her current position as someone who grew up partially in the mortal world and partially in the Summerlands - a not-uncommon situation for those who are part mortal, part fae, and Choose Faerie. She is a private investigator in the mortal world (it pays the rent and grocery bills), and is called upon more and more to apply those same skills to strange happenings among the fae. This is a perfect setup for a plethora of monster-of-the-week stories, and this series has plenty, including two of the early entries: A LOCAL HABITATION and AN ARITIFICIAL NIGHT.
A LOCAL HABITATION is the second book in the series, sending Toby to the County of Tamed Lightning to check on her liege's niece, January Torquill, whose normally regular communications to her uncle, Sylvester Torquill, have ceased. When Toby arrives with Quentin in tow, they discover that January thinks her uncle is the one who stopped taking her calls, and she's been trying to reach him for weeks about a series of strange deaths in the county. A LOCAL HABITATION is a murder mystery in a restricted setting, and the antagonist is eventually discovered and killed. It's also a perfect monster-of-the-week story, especially this early in the series. Toby doesn't know any of the residence of Tamed Lightning, and thus has few preconceptions as to who the murderer could be. It's a genuinely twisty mystery, deeply engaging on a first read-through, with a pretty satisfying resolution. Monster-of-the-week stories don't have to be deeply relevant to the main saga, but they are better contributors to the overall series when they continue to matter even on re-reads. In the course of trying to find and stop the murderer, Toby meets several characters who will be important in later books, as well as demonstrating her magical prowess in a manner which is inconsistent with her current understanding of herself as a Daoine Sidhe changeling.
AN ARTIFICAL NIGHT (book three) begins with a string of disappearances of fae and mortal children. Toby is first alerted when two of her friend Stacy's children go missing in the middle of the night, and a third has fallen into a deep sleep and won't wake up. Before she can get much information, Tybalt, the local King of Cats, appears and asks for help, telling Toby that a number of Cait Sidhe children are missing. Finally, Quentin arrives on her doorstep, distraught that his mortal girlfriend, Katie, has disappeared. All the children turn out to have been kidnapped by this week's monster, Blind Michael, who Rides with his Wild Hunt, breaking mortal children into steeds and twisting fae children into Riders. Changeling children (partially fae, partially mortal) could be either Rider or Ridden, depending on some combination of factors which mostly remain unexplained but are implied to be a mix of magic and will. Blind Michael's Hunt is the narrative lever by which many pieces are moved into place for later in the series. After this book, he matters most for the hurt he caused and what it means that Toby kills him, a Firstborn. Toby becomes very attached to some of the children she rescues, including Raj, a Prince of Cats, who normally would have never come into contact with someone like Toby, aligned as she is with the Divided Courts. Later on, once Quentin officially is her squire, Raj will be her squire in all but name, friends with his fellow teenagers and a frequent guest on October's couch. The Wild Hunt, the stories of the Ride, and the ritual needed to break it will be relevant again much later, but for now they're a terror ended, as Blind Michael will Ride no more.
Series Arcs
There is no one right way to structure an ongoing series, but McGuire and Faulkner have chosen different structural approaches for handling the same narrative need: balancing the ability to introduce new readers to a series-in-progress with building an ongoing story for continuing readers. McGuire favors a series of overlapping narrative arcs, such as in her October Daye series, while Faulkner’s Inheritance series is organized into fixed-length seasons. Despite this initial structural difference, they both use a pattern which is beneficial for long series, one which furnishes new readers with periodic entry points without retreading ground in a way that might be frustrating to longtime readers. This structure is as follows: Initial Setup, Small Resolutions, Heightened Stakes, Plateau, Inflection Point, Larger Resolutions, then a New Entry Point replaces the Initial Setup, and the cycle continues with Small Resolutions. Sometimes more than one book holds a specific stage, or something like the plateau can get skipped in service of the larger story (or in a deliberate attempt to deny the characters time to rest and assimilate recent events). However, this pattern holds enough to be a guide to understanding why certain kinds of events happen how they do, and which books are friendlier to new readers once the series gets going.
Arc Structure and October Daye
The October Daye series is structured in overlapping narrative arcs which generally follow this loop. Sometimes more than one book will linger in the stages for Plateau or Larger Resolutions, but the other stages tend to be restricted to one book in each cycle. Early on a stage may get skipped, or combined in a single book with another stage, but the general order is consistent. Fairly early on, the series began to include a novella with each main book, which often takes care of small resolutions tied to the main story, freeing up the next book to take on one of the other stages unencumbered. In a long series, this cycle accomplishes several important things at once. By having new entry points after each large resolution, the entry points double as moments to welcome new readers and set up the next set of important events for continuing readers. As the series continues and accrues notable characters, these moments can function as times to remind continuing readers of characters who haven't been notable in a while, but who return to be more significant in the next section of the series. After either the initial setup or a new entry point, the small resolutions phase provides a sense of momentum, a way to make sure that each book feels like it matters on its own, not just as a piece in a larger whole. ROSEMARY AND RUE (book one) is the initial setup with a small resolution for that particular crisis. A LOCAL HABITATION (book two) has small resolutions of its own in a new location. Once October arrives in the County of Tamed Lightning, it's as close to a bottle episode as this series gets. The stakes are life and death, and affect the trajectory of the whole County, but it's mostly in retrospect that this book feels so important. On a first read-through, it's a murder mystery in a weird setting that could have felt complete even if none of the new characters ever appeared again.
In the heightened stakes phase, new villains may appear, older problems may suddenly take on new meaning, or new information may change something important in a way that forces the characters into action. AN ARTIFICIAL NIGHT (book three) sets up heightened stakes and, again, has some smaller resolutions of its own. This time, many children are in peril and Toby ends up killing Blind Michael, one of the Firstborn and terror to children for centuries uncounted. Killing Blind Michael proclaims two things: Toby is not someone whose effects can stay small, and she's not predictably cowed by the trappings of a throne, not even that of a Firstborn. It's been a very long time since one of the Firstborn died, and there are people who already wanted Toby dead who now have an excuse to brand her a murderer and call for her execution. This particular loose end will cause her some trouble in the books to come, but Michael himself won't trouble anyone anymore.
When present, the plateau which follows is a time to digest the new information or deal with the aftermath of recent events so that the forthcoming large resolution isn't clogged by loose ends. If the larger resolution will be more logistical, the plateau may address emotional arcs, processing recent changes and assimilating relevant emotions into the characters' current mental landscape. If the larger resolution is emotional, the plateau is a time to tidy up necessary logistics so they don't get in the way in the near future. LATE ECLIPESES (book four) is a brief plateau, a place to address what's happened so far without introducing too many new threads, wrapping up or giving new context to events in the first three books. It's also a time to deal with things allowed to lay fallow too long, such as October's certainty that she is Daoine Sidhe, when she's actually Dochas Sidhe, daughter of a Firstborn, and something wholly different from almost everyone else in Faerie. This is more of an emotional loose end, since Tybalt had first mistrusted Toby for claiming to be something her scent and her abilities said she wasn't, then he figured things out for himself but wouldn't give her those answers. Now, Toby finds out that she is Dochas Sidhe, which explains her heightened affinity for blood and her extreme difficulty with illusion magic (something which should have come easily to the Daoine Sidhe changeling she understood herself to be until now).
After the plateau (or after the heightened stakes in the absence of a plateau) comes the inflection point. This is a prelude to the forthcoming larger resolution which may or may not also take place in this book, a time for some confrontation to force a change in the characters which will be important for how they approach later battles. They might realize the importance of an ally, the danger of an enemy, or gain new understanding of their resources. Whatever it is, it's important, but the scope of the danger (however large) won't be as earth-shattering as what they still have to face. Reaching the actual finale/large resolution, the characters now have to incorporate the recent arc's changes and apply the lessons from those changes if they are to have any hope of surviving this conflict. If any beloved characters died in the recent inflection point, their death(s) will be a motivating force in how the large resolution plays out. ONE SALT SEA (book five) is this combination inflection-point-and-large-resolution, more closely tied to the plateau of LATE ECLIPSES than to the three books before this pair. They wrap up some large plot points in a way that makes space for Toby to handle more things in the future, easing the way for the next book to introduce new readers to the series. The thing that changes everything in ONE SALT SEA is that someone is trying to instigate a war between the Undersea and the Land Fae by kidnapping two children from the Undersea. When it becomes clear that the kidnapper is Rayseline Torquill, daughter of Toby's liege, Sylvester, this leads to a final confrontation once Toby finds the missing boys and fights Rayseline to get them out without further harm. Interestingly, Rayseline wanted the boys' deaths to force a different confrontation than the one she got. If she'd had her way, they would have died in the inflection point and been the excuse for a bloody and terrible war. Inflection points and large resolutions alike are moments for important character deaths. They are times when any characters who learned insurmountably self-sacrificial lessons or didn't learn the right lessons in the relevant moral paradigm might not survive the story. Unfortunately, in LATE ECLIPSES, that casualty is Connor, a Selkie whose timing with October never quite worked out. First, he was forbidden by his clan to date someone who wasn't a Selkie, then Toby was dating a human and ended up cursed to be a fish for over a decade. When she returned from the pond, Connor was in a political marriage with Rayseline, a woman broken by being kidnapped as a child and held in the dark for a decade. In ONE SALT SEA, Connor and Toby are finally both emotionally available for a very brief period when Connor's marriage is dissolved due to his wife being a kidnapper and murderer. During the final confrontation, Connor is shot with an arrow and bleeds out while the rest of the fighting wraps up. Things are tidier with him gone, leaving room for Toby's growing closeness with Tybalt to blossom in the books to come, but Connor wasn't killed off just for a romance arc. Some important things related to Selkies and Selkie deaths are explained to Toby in the aftermath of his demise, details which will come back in THE UNKINDEST TIDE (book twelve), itself a time for large resolutions.
Following the dramatic events of ONE SALT SEA is the sixth book, ASHES OF HONOR, as a New Entry Point. October spends a lot of time with a character who has until now been more of a background figure, only occasionally around, appearing to be traditionalist, boring, and entirely obsessed with propriety. This, of course, is Etienne, one of Sylvester's Knights, who mostly stays in Shadowed Hills. It turns out that Etienne has a changeling daughter, and that daughter's powers have manifested in a catastrophic fashion which threatens all of Faerie if October can't find her in time. As an introduction for new readers, it works pretty well because Toby has to deal with new information (the existence of this changeling) while leaning into her relatively new understanding of herself and what her magic can do now that she's no longer clinging to illusion magic as a mark of her competence (or lack thereof). In an effort to not wholly spoil the series so far, I'll quickly list my categorizations for the rest of the books available as of August 2024 when I'm writing this.
- Ashes of Honor - New Entry Point
- Chimes at Midnight - Small Resolutions
- The Winter Long - Heightened Stakes
- A Red-Rose Chain - Plateau
- Once Broken Faith - Inflection point
- The Brightest Fell - Large Resolutions
- Night and Silence - Aftermath/Plateau
- The Unkindest Tide - Large Resolutions Part Two
- A Killing Frost - Even Larger Resolutions
- When Sorrows Come - New Entry Point
- Be the Serpent - Heightened Stakes
- Sleep No More - Plateau Part One
- The Innocent Sleep - Plateau Part Two
For the second cycle in this series, starting with ASHES OF HONOR (book six) and culminating in A KILLING FROST (book fourteen), the events being covered are large enough to require three books of large resolutions with a plateau in the middle to address the first wave of resolutions and changes to the status quo. The fifteenth book, WHEN SORROWS COME, works as a new entry point because of the way that it's an emotional culmination of the series so far. Logistically, it's also an introduction for new readers of the major players and Toby's current relationships to them. This is especially important because, when BE THE SERPENT (book sixteen) heightens the stakes, it will hinge on dramatically upsetting one of those relationships, which could be confusing or less impactful without a recent reminder of what this person means to Toby. For now, at least, I place SLEEP NO MORE (book seventeen) and THE INNOCENT SLEEP (book eighteen) as two halves of the same plateau. They cover similar timespans from two very different perspectives, and while much emotional change occurs, logistically they are a fight to restore circumstances to what they were at the end of WHEN SORROWS COME, to whatever degree is possible, otherwise, to near the end of BE THE SERPENT.
Seasons in Inheritance
Turning to Faulkner's Inheritance series, the series is structured into seasons of five books each, with five seasons planned, for an eventual total of twenty-five books. This means that, in my six-stage template, the series is more strictly paced and the Plateau tends to get skipped, or combined with a turning point. In a series like Inheritance with strict arc length, there is neither the room nor the need to take a narrative break for a whole book. This is in contrast to a less strictly-paced series such as October Daye, where plateaus are more necessary at intervals just to let the characters adjust and plan before the next major event shakes things up.
In Season One of Inheritance, JACK OF THORNS is the initial setup, containing character introductions and the defeat of the first villains that Laurence and Quentin will face together. It lays the groundwork for a variety of characters who will become important later, but doesn't come close to introducing absolutely everyone who will matter and is technically around. KNIGHT OF FLAMES brings in the teenagers who will be under their care, and resolves the issue of the psychic who is keeping the teens with him against their will. It also introduces Freddy, Quentin's twin brother who was mentioned in the first book. While the issues dealt with feel huge to Quentin and Laurence, merely one villainous psychic who can be killed by mundane means is a much lower threat than pretty much anything else they'll face this season (let alone the next). LORD OF RAVENS brings Quentin's father, the Duke of Oxford and Quentin's abuser, to their door a manner much less metaphorical than Quentin hoped. The teenagers are put in danger, and Quentin has to figure out how to handle things while Laurence is unable to help for the moment. REEVE OF VEILS is in some ways a plateau because it goes back into the past and takes place during a time that's already been covered, but it's specifically a major inflection point because it increases the role of Mikey, Laurence's former drug dealer, and shows that Freddy was up to much more than either Laurence or Quentin ever suspected while he was helping them deal with Kane. Finally, PAGE OF TRICKS forces a confrontation between Quentin and the Duke, with Freddy as a torturous intermediary who eventually is convinced to ally with his twin against their father. Things are forced into a new shape, for now, and there isn't yet time to heal. The epilogue teases the next season's villain, but not enough to explain much at this point.
Season Two begins with RITES OF WINTER, soon introducing Quentin and Laurence to Basil and Jon, who will become good friends with them, despite their geographical separation. This is a new entry point to the series, showing another side of Otherworld and giving Quentin some new tools to process what he recently learned about his childhood. The main crisis originally appeared to not be connected to the villain teased at the end of PAGE OF TRICKS, but he reappears in the epilogue to menacingly convey for the reader that this event was instigated by him by mysterious means and for some unknown reason. SIGILS OF SPRING has a lot of pain and some small resolutions. Much of what comes up here is either identified but not solved at all, or is only addressed in a very temporary manner. SPELLS OF SUMMER heightens the stakes when Laurence finally has to pay what he owes to his teacher in witchcraft, Rufus, and that alerts him to the existence of the mysterious warlock whom the reader has already met in the most recent epilogues. RUNES OF FALL pretends like it’s going to be a plateau, with a trip to Disneyland and a planned excursion to the desert for Quentin, Laurence, and the teens to practice their powers. The trip to Disneyland mostly goes as planned, with only a minor interruption from an annoying figure. Quentin and Laurence do get some time to process recent events, but this calm can't last. Unfortunately for everyone, their second planned outing is marred, then completely derailed by the arrival of the book’s antagonists: crashing first their gathering, then their helicopter. It is an inflection point in several ways. The most important of these is that the teens learn more about their powers and start to actually work as a team with Laurence and Quentin against an outside threat. Nearly as crucial of a change is that Quentin kills someone instead of relying on Laurence to do it, accepting that killing might be the only way to stop someone bent on death, destruction, and hate, such as a Nazi demigod with a superpowered hatemongering crew. WHEEL OF FATE is a story of large resolutions, finally dealing with the warlock and showing how various characters have matured since the last season finale, when Quentin, Laurence, the Duke, Michael, Freddy (and Myriam) all work together to defeat the (other) warlock. The last time all these guys were together, the Duke was the one they were trying to stop, and Freddy and Michael were more ambiguously aligned.
A Balancing Act
The combination of series arcs and monsters of the week is a robust one. The series arcs provide new and old readers alike with a sense of direction, signposting how the characters are growing and that the series is heading somewhere in a way more complicated than mere power creep. It doesn't matter, in a general sense, whether the series arcs are rigorously structured (e.g. Inheritance) or flow more loosely as events demand (e.g. October Daye), as they are solutions to the same goal - long term story scaffolding without stagnation. On a book-by-book basis, the monsters of the week keep the series fresh, providing opportunities for some challenges to be handled in a single volume. The mix of the two will give the series a unique feel, becoming something more tangled than can easily be explained, but with access points along the way to welcome new readers.
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