October Daye / Inheritance - Essay Series Part Three: Unreliable Narrators

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This is the third 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.

Unreliable Narrators - Lies and Delusions

This essay spoils major elements of the first six books of the Inheritance series by A.K. Faulkner, as well as scattered revelations and major spoilers from the first twelve books in the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire. This is a discussion of lies, delusions, and the mistakes they create, and some take longer to dispel than others. It touches briefly on themes of murder and death, as well as alluding to fictional depictions of kidnapping, torture, and abuse of children. 

Introduction

The term "unreliable narrator" generally refers to cases where the narrator of the story does not give an accurate accounting of events, in a way where there is something for the reader to discover or infer about the gap between the narration and some level of reality. This can happen for a variety of reasons, only some of which are nefarious, and several of which occur in October Daye and Inheritance. The first, and simplest, is that the narrator is lying about something important. They are not merely mistaken, they intend to deceive their audience or they don't care that their descriptions of events would not be supported by those around them. If done nefariously, they might try to convince other people of their version of reality, using whatever means they have available to persuade them. On the other end is delusion, where the character has a perspective which, while sincerely held by them, is not shared by other characters and would be rebuffed if or when expressed. Midway on the sliding scale between lies and delusion is when they are mistaken. The character is missing important information or has been lied to about key facts. They are not truthful to those around them, but they are unaware that their words are lies. In stories where the truth is eventually revealed, a character being mistaken or misled is a temporary situation, one which will be remedied, eventually, either through better information conveyed just to the reader or through the character discovering they were lied to. In this case, if they discover the truth, they are likely to be upset that they were lying, however inadvertently. Obviously there are other permutations of how dishonest or delusional a character may be outside of these options, but they can either be covered by these three or they move towards "reliable enough" in a way that makes them largely irrelevant to the topic of unreliable narrators in Inheritance and October Daye.

Who Tells The Story

One thing which differentiates fictional stories from reality is the necessary presence of an author. When authors tell fictional stories (such as fantasy like Inheritance and October Daye), there is an understanding that the author is distinct from the narrator or narrators, and that opinions and beliefs expressed by the characters cannot necessarily be assumed to be those held by the author. Without this understanding, it would be hard to parse narratives containing villains in a complex or meaningful way, and heroes would be limited to the author's own understanding of themself. Thankfully, that is not how most fiction works. Because the author is distinct from the characters, the choice of narrator in each story is a part of how the narrative is being conveyed. Authors can have characters express mutually exclusive positions, then use other parts of the narrative to convey the message which they want the reader to keep as their overall impression. Which characters, how many, and whether the story is in first person, third person, or some other style - all of it adds up to convey whose story is being told, what the main narrative is, which characters should be believed by default, and whose assertions require initial skepticism. The presence of one or more unreliable narrators complicates all of these positions, and might mean that the reader's understanding of events needs to shift to keep up with new information. In a well-structured series where reveals are planned in advance, this creates room for the reader to have distinct and meaningful experiences upon re-reads, viewing earlier parts of the series with more information than they had access to the first time through.

Perspectives in October Daye

The novels in the October Daye series are, for the most part, from the perspective of a single character, the titular October "Toby" Daye. This means that when a reader is getting to know the world through Toby's perspective, they are limited to what she knows and finds relevant to share at the moment. They are also, regardless of the precise narrator, told in first person, which gives them a particular immediacy. Toby relays information as she understands it, passing on her perspective as a Daoine Sidhe changeling, only daughter of Amandine (herself Daoine Sidhe) and a human man (now deceased). She's weak with illusion magic because of her half-human nature, and pretty good with blood magic due to being partly Daoine Sidhe. Her now-liege, Sylvester Torquill, is the one who gave her the Changeling's choice, due to some past connection to her mother. Toby Chose to be Fae, like her mother. This did not change the balance of her blood, but if she had chosen Human she would have been killed to protect Faerie's secrets. Sylvester's twin brother, Simon Torquill, cursed Toby to spend fourteen years as a fish in a pond. When Toby emerged, she found she had lost her mortal husband and mostly-human daughter. They moved on and refused to let her back in when she couldn't explain where she'd been for over a decade. She's also mistrusted by Tybalt, a Cait Sidhe, the local King of Cats. They have a contentious relationship where he prods at her and she argues back, but neither of them seems to be able to stay away. Toby also acquires a squire, Quentin of no particular name, who is under a blind fosterage in Sylvester's household. 

Unfortunately for Toby, several of the preceding descriptions will turn out to be untrue, due to a combination of blatant lies and selective omissions. Toby discovers the real answers to all these points eventually, but she isn't lying, merely mistaken, when she misleads the reader in the early books. Depending on the shape of and reasons for the deception, Toby's reactions range from incredulous, to angry, to stunned and bemused, and some of her discoveries are harder for her to handle than others. 

Perspectives in Inheritance

Most of the early Inheritance books are narrated by Laurence (a florist and recovering heroin addict) and Quentin (Earl of Banbury, who fled to North America to get away from his father, the Duke of Oxford). They meet in San Diego, where Laurence lives and Quentin is temporarily staying. As the series continues, the cast of narrators grows to include Freddy (Quentin's twin), Mikey (Laurence's former dealer), Myriam (Laurence's mother), and several of the teenagers whom Quentin and Laurence begin caring for after the events of the second book. A few other characters get brief chances to narrate in the prologues or epilogues of various books, all of which provide chances to show what they're thinking in addition to what they say when the main narrators are around. This series is told in third person, subtly providing a distance between the point-of-view character and the reader. This is not a story being told to the reader, but a description of what the characters are experiencing.

Despite being a self-described addict who has lied to and stolen from his mother in the past, largely to maintain access to heroin, Laurence in JACK OF THORNS generally comes across as the more reliable of the book's two narrators. In his own head he doesn't have to hide his past as a liar, nor his frustrated acceptance that if his addiction gets the better of him he might becomes that person again. Quentin, for his part, is operating under the delusion that his many, many scars were caused by accidents and his own clumsiness, and no amount of Laurence or anyone else pointing out his current graceful poise can persuade him that something doesn't line up in his life's story. 

Lies in October Daye

In October Daye, Toby's squire, Quentin, has been keeping a secret, shored up by small lies and omissions in service of preserving his anonymity. When, eventually, Toby discovers the truth behind the secret she knew he was keeping, it turns out to be a much more interesting answer than she ever suspected. When the two met in the first book, ROSEMARY AND RUE, he was a Daoine Sidhe boy, fostered to Toby’s liege, Sylvester. Importantly, he was a “blind foster”, where his parentage and home were to remain secret to almost everyone until he finishes his fosterage upon his majority at age thirty. Toby assumed that his parents must be minor nobility, connected enough to want their offspring fostered, but not powerful enough to object to Toby (changeling, troublemaker) as a knight for their son. Instead, in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (the seventh book), Quentin reveals himself as the Crown Prince of the Westlands (i.e. North America) when Toby is trying to convince Arden Windemere to come out of hiding and claim her own (smaller) throne as Queen In The Mists. The revelation that Quentin is fae royalty throws Toby for a loop, causing her to reassess so many previous events in this new light. It’s not the case that Quentin‘s parents were unable to stop him from being fostered to someone unsuitable, they actually, for some reason, think she is a good knight for him. The reasons for this should be obvious to anyone who appreciates Toby enough to have made it seven books into the series, but Toby doesn't see herself as suitable, just as someone doing her best by him as a person in her care. Quentin has endured insults from people who think that because he is Toby's squire he will never be important or powerful, and that his perspective doesn’t matter. Once Toby knows the secret, she becomes a collaborator, helping him to hide that truth as much as possible for his safety. 

Simon Torquill is the person who ruined Toby's life by turning her into a fish for fourteen years. Once she finally has the chance to discuss that history with him, he claims that he transformed her to save her life, and, as a Pureblood Daoine Sidhe, immortal unless killed, it didn't occur to him that the loss of fourteen years might feel worse than death to Toby, at least until she was able to build a new life which was as meaningful to her as her old one. To the Pureblood Fae, there's a long history of turning enemies into something slow, getting them out of the way without killing them. For a long time in the series, Simon and Toby disagree on this point, but in a way that clearly conveys their perspectives without claiming that either is wholly right or wrong. Because of how little he has actually been in her life, Simon is one of the few people who hasn't spent a lot of time lying to or hiding information from Toby. Even Tybalt, once he discovered the mystery of her heritage himself, refused to pass the information on, keeping the secret as so many others had before him. One of those secret-keepers is Sylvester Torquill, and it causes a serious rift between him and Toby when she finds out that he held a promise made to her (currently) absent and (previously) emotionally abusive mother more dearly than his friendship with Toby and his duty to her as her liege. Sylvester does not disagree that Toby has a right to be hurt and angry, but the fact that the situation is understandable does not make it better for Toby. It's the kind of thing that time and distance will help, but not heal completely, and for a long time she doesn't know how to mend things.

Lies in Inheritance

In JACK OF THORNS, when Dan, Laurence's ex-boyfriend and current kind-of-stalker, comes to him with implausible tales of strange weather events around the hot British guy, Laurence is put in the strange position of trying to figure out whether his manipulative ex, who has a history of gaslighting Laurence, is a more reliable narrator of events than Quentin, the guy he's attracted to but barely knows. The reader has access to slightly more information than Laurence, having witnessed through Quentin's perspective both the event Dan relays and Quentin's near-immediate amnesia about the whole thing. Even here, in a situation where a self-confessed liar is trying to figure out whether to trust a manipulator or a stranger, the answer isn't as simple as saying whether Dan or Quentin is the one telling the truth. Dan is truthful that the strange events occurred, and lying his ass off as to whether he had done anything which might have negatively contributed to the situation (like stalk Quentin and sexually harass him).

This is in contrast with Laurence himself in KNIGHT OF FLAMES interacting with Quentin's twin brother, Freddy, who has come into town to look into this person his brother is dating. Unbeknownst to the reader for most of the book, Freddy is telepathic, actively manipulating Laurence in several instances, resulting in experiences which Laurence has and then immediately is made to forget, making Freddy the only one able to act on the information. Unlike Quentin's blackouts, anything Laurence immediately forgets is omitted from the book, hidden from the reader until it may as well not have happened. It's not until the fourth book, REEVE OF VEILS, when the reader is let in on the specifics of Freddy's deception. As of the end of the tenth book, Laurence still doesn't know about several of the specific ways he was used and made to forget, and at this point it seems unlikely that it will come to light (since Freddy took steps to future-proof himself once he became aware of Laurence's abilities as a seer). 

Delusions in October Daye

In NIGHT AND SILENCE, the twelfth October Daye book, Toby's oft-mentioned but as yet unseen mother, Amandine, appears and takes two of Toby's loved ones as hostages until Toby completes a task no one has managed for a hundred years: finding Amandine's missing first daughter, August, the sister Toby didn't know existed. This is when Amandine's title of "The Liar" changes from an interesting biographical note to an active danger for Toby. Amandine is perfectly willing to weaponize the difficulties in knowing for certain whether someone is lying or delusional. When she kidnaps Tybalt (a Cait Sidhe) and Jazz (a Raven-Maid), she forces them into their animal forms. Toby is warned early on by the Luidhaeg, someone who is magically unable to lie, that Toby needs to be swift in her quest. Amandine might keep them until it's been long enough for it to be plausible that she "forgot" they are fae, and kills them, dodging the prohibitions against murder by claiming ignorance. 

Amandine blames Toby for being alive, for not letting her strip Toby's fae blood away, leaving her fully human to age and die. Toby, to Amandine, is a present disappointment and terrible daughter by existing as anything other than a memory. She was born in the mid 20th century, long enough ago that if she hadn't died of old age as a human it would happen any day now. The idea that being perfectly human and dead might be a better state for her own child than alive, partially fae, and flawed, is a delusion which prioritizes Amandine's ideal of perfection over the person she helped create.  

Later, when Toby fulfills her mother’s quest and comes to claim Tybalt and Jazz, Amandine says Toby is lucky she doesn’t return their pelts and claim the terms are fulfilled. This cruel comment supports the Luidhaeg’s supposition as well as making it crystal clear to the reader that Amandine can and will lie as much as suits her, and that we’ll rarely know for sure just how much of the truth she’ll break on purpose. She is delusional in the sense that her beliefs about reality frequently diverge from how those around her perceive the same events, but she's also powerful enough, politically and magically, to have twisted people to suit her for the many centuries of her life so far.

Delusions in Inheritance

Sometimes an unreliable narrator is deluded in a major or minor way, conveying an understanding of reality which does not stand up to the available evidence. In JACK OF THORNS (book one), Laurence sees that most of Quentin’s body is covered in crisscrossing scars which were clearly inflicted over multiple years, but, when asked about it, Quentin insists he was not abused, his scars come from childhood accidents and clumsiness. This is demonstrably untrue, even in the first two books. Quentin is consistently shown to be anything but clumsy; he's a very well coordinated person, both physically and stylistically. He plays the piano very well, he runs several miles a day for exercise, and there’s information to suggest through flashbacks and some of Quentin’s current thoughts that he has been trained in firearms and is an excellent shot. In KNIGHT OF FLAMES (book two), he rides a terrified horse without a saddle, and only the fact that it was in the middle of a wildfire meant that he fell off when the horse was spooked beyond his ability to soothe. All of this is to say, that, when he insists that the layers and layers of scars covering his body are from accidents, generally on or near his birthday every year, and that he doesn’t remember the details himself, this framing is textual evidence to refute Quentin's understanding of those events, long before the actual explanation is uncovered. It matters both that Quentin believes that all his scars are from accidents, and that he is incorrect. It is the intersection of his insistence and the shape of the scars which prompts Laurence to try and find answers himself.

The reader is not left to wonder for very long, as, in LORD OF RAVENS (book three), Laurence looks into Quentin's past and witnesses one of the horrifying scenes of what is definitely child abuse. After a dramatic and terrible reaction which ripples through the rest of LORD OF RAVENS, Laurence must figure out whether and how to give Quentin this information. He doesn't feel right knowing this about Quentin when, under less amnesia-riddled circumstances, Quentin would know it himself, but it’s also deeply horrifying for Laurence to bear alone. Laurence resorts to using his oracular abilities to scry the future, looking for a way to tell Quentin without making things worse, but is unable to find a future where he's able to tell Quentin without causing emotional harm. This means that until Quentin is forcefully told in the fifth book by someone else, every time Quentin says anything about his scars, the reader has all the information they need to know that what Quentin is saying about it is not true. He’s not lying, he’s delusional, he believed his mother every year when she'd told him he'd had an accident, and then didn't reexamine those beliefs until forced to in PAGE OF TRICKS. 

Conclusion

In real life, it is often difficult to know for certain whether someone is purposefully lying, or if they are telling the truth as they understand it, but it just doesn’t match what you are perceiving. Since none of us is actually the character in a story, it's often impossible for an individual to know whose perspective is the one which diverges the most from material reality. Fiction allows for an author to craft a space that conveys that strangeness, often attempting (but not always succeeding) to definitively land on one side or another of that spectrum. When the author knows or has decided whether a character is lying, mistaken, or delusional, they can construct the narrative and write the character in a way that hints at that underlying reality, whichever way it lands.