#Sarah Monette

[freckles-and-books]

Last, current, next

[fallloverfic]

The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison, a novella in the world of The Chronicles of Osreth, to release 31 January 2025!

Summary:

Set in the world of Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee The Goblin Emperor, The Orb of Cairado offers an unlikely hero in historian Ulcetha Zhorvena.

Five years ago, Ulcetha was studying at the University of Cairado, working his way toward becoming a scholar first-class in the Department of History. Then a prize artifact disappeared and Ulcetha, deftly framed, was kicked out. Now he works for a crooked importer, using his knowledge of elven history to write provenances for the fake artifacts Salathgarad sells.

When the airship Wisdom of Choharo explodes, killing the emperor and three of his four sons, it takes with it Ulcetha’s best friend, Mara Lilana. But Mara leaves behind a puzzle—the one thing Ulcetha can’t resist. And the puzzle leads Ulcetha back to the Department of History…and maybe the chance to clear his name.

----

This is a standalone novella. I contacted the publisher, and they said it will be sold as an ebook as well (at least in the US and Canada), but didn't say when.

The conclusion of The Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy, The Tomb of Dragons, releases 11 March 2025!

[linovadraws]

I think about this conversation from Corambis chapter 7 constantly and was sad that I never finished the more detailed version I had planned, so I repurposed it into a cute little experiment.

Please enjoy this bonus Felix face from the first draft. He is my favorite.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

So.

I grabbed a book off my shelf that's been sitting there for some years to read on this trip, because I know the author's writing well enough at this point (this is my sixth book by her) that it would be long and dense enough to last the trip.

Except I bought this book because of the author, and it turns out I have been suckered into my second Sherlock Holmes adaptation ever.

Kind of.

In my defense, this is nowhere apparent until you start reading.

But I think the "these are not the characters you think they are" is also important, because this story is narrated by one J.H. Doyle, recently returned from Afghanistan with a debilitating war wound that saw him discharged from the royal medical corps and who takes up rooming with a non-human Angel named Crow who works as the world's only consulting detective.

Anyway, I'm (only) 94 pages in. So I don't really know what's going on with this (this sounds insane, but is the way of this author). But. I guess this sort of counts as an adaptation, anyway?

It's got a queer tag on Storygraph, but I think I heard some years back that it's kinda iffy on ace things (not sure enough of my recollection to recall why), but knowing this author, there will be queer characters who are exactly as miserable as everyone else and eventually at the very end get set on a path to healing.

...I don't read her writing because I want happy queer shit.

[muppetebbtide]

Incompetently made but enthusiastic Goblin Emperor family tree for ya 👍🏻

(aka a needlessly elaborate and definitely incomplete family tree for a book which came out a decade ago. for your perusal, but mostly for my own reference. key under the cut!)

KEY:

Green arrow- legitimate child

Blue arrow- illegitimate child

Red double line- marriage

Yellow line- sibling

Dashed red double line- engaged

Dashed green line- kinsman, but by a nonspecific/unknown connection

Purple box- deceased

[commandercoriandersalamander]

The transition from Doctrine of Labyrinths to Goblin Emperor and Cemetery of Amalo is so funny to me. The editors were like, "Sarah, you're so smart, you're so talented, but your branding is off; we want you to change your name to reflect the new you and leave behind all the incest graphic rape, and unlikable (affectionate) protagonists." And Katherine looked them straight in the eyes and was like "okay, sounds good, but you will pry my ritualistic mazes and fancy earrings from my cold dead hands." Love her.

[grassangel]

99¢ Sale, including Katherine Addison/Sarah Monette titles on Rebellion

If you want a DRM free copy (epub and mobi) of The Witness for the Dead, The Grief of Stones or A Theory of Haunting, Rebellion are having a Halloween sale on some of their spookier titles.

$0.99 USD each for the above titles, plus more of their catalog including titles by Isabel Cañas & Premee Mohamed.

ETA: sale is now over, but the link goes to their sale section, so whenever Rebellion have a sale on (which is irregularly) it should display the titles available

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[kazzle-dazzle-em]

“I really think if he’d thought he could get me to go along with it, he would’ve challenged me to a duel. But I ain’t a gentleman, and duels are just fancy knife fights and just as fucking stupid.”

-Mildmay, Corambis

[abigailspinach]

I forgot I had this book. I read it in I want to say 2009-2010 ish and at the time was like.. hmmm….I think these authors also read Pern at a formative age and wanted to unpack the whole “going into heat alongside your psychic animal companion” aspect of world building. Except Vikings and wolves and more willing to delve into queer themes than Anne McCaffrey.

I’d be interested to skim through it again since like A/B/O and knots and that is all so much more prevalent in fic and stuff? I don’t remember super loving any of the characters all that much but that might be a personal taste thing. I appreciate but don’t usually warm to Elizabeth Bear’s writing (personal taste, not a critique)But yeah I bet it would be half ahead of it’s time and half very early 2000s. I do love Sarah Monette’s works under Katherine Addison very much.

Early 2010 smut ahead

[roseunspindle]

Books by Women

[ravencromwell]

This is the worst story I know about hocuses. And it’s true. Four Great Septads ago, back in the reign of Claudius Cordelius, there was a hocus named Porphyria Levant. The hocuses back then had this thing they could do, called the binding-by-forms, the obligation d’âme. It happened between a hocus and an annemer, an ordinary person, and it was like an oath of loyalty, only a septad times more. The hocus promised to protect the annemer from everything, including kings and other hocuses and basically anybody else who had an interest. The annemer promised to be the hocus’s servant and do what they said and no backchat, neither. And they renounced their family and all their other connections, so it was like the only thing in the world that mattered to them was the hocus. And then there was a spell to stick it in place and make sure, you know, that nobody tried to back out after it was too late. You can see the problem, right? Most half-bright folks can. But some hocuses were so powerful and so nasty that I guess it seemed like it was better to go ahead and do the obligation d’âme with a hocus you sort of trusted than to go wandering around waiting for a different hocus to get the drop on you. So there was Porphyria Levant. And there was Silas Altamont. Silas Altamont was annemer, a guy who’d been the favorite of Lord Creon Malvinius, and then when Lord Creon got married, Silas Altamont was out on his ear, and scared shitless of Lord Creon’s wife, who was way better connected than him, and was rumored to have three or four hocuses on her string to boot. And she was poison-green with jealousy, because she loved Lord Creon like a mad thing, and everybody knew he didn’t give a rat’s ass about her. So Silas Altamont goes to Porphyria Levant—who was powerful enough to protect him from Lisette Malvinia, no matter who she had running her errands—and begs Porphyria Levant to do the obligation d’âme. And Porphyria Levant smiles and says okay. Now, the thing about the binding-by-forms, the way my friend Zephyr explained it to me, is that it lets the hocus make you do what they want. Except for kill yourself. They can’t make you do that. But what Porphyria Levant tells Silas Altamont to do is fuck her. I’ve heard it different ways. Some people say Silas Altamont was beautiful as daylight, and Porphyria Levant had been hot for him for indictions. Some say Porphyria Levant didn’t know he was molly, thought he was janus and wouldn’t mind. And some say—and I got to admit, this is what I think—that she knew he was molly and that was why she did it. There are other stories about Porphyria Levant, and it’s the kind of thing she would do. Anyway, there’s Silas Altamont. He’s molly, and he’s still in love with Creon Malvinius, but he has to do what the obligation d’âme says, and it says, You got to fuck Porphyria Levant and make her happy. And after a while he goes to her and says, “ can’t stand this no more, please, let me stop or I’m going to go out and slit my wrists.” And Porphyria Levant says, “Silas,” and smiles her little smile, “I forbid you to kill yourself.” That’s what hocuses are like, and that’s why, if you live in the Lower City of Mélusine, you keep one eye on the Mirador all the time, same way you would with a swamp adder. It’s just common sense.

I forget when I first heard rumblings about a book series called the Doctrine of Labyrinth by an up-and-coming writer named Sarah Monette. It was undoubtedly before 2014, because when she published Goblin Emperor as Katherine Addison, I bought it without even reading the synopsis I was that ecstatic to finally get a taste of her writing. You see, Monette had a string of publishing woes, notoriously leading to at least one of the books being out of print before the series was even finished despite having amazing critical press and quite good initial sales. And one of the books just _vanishing from shelves was pretty much the series' death knell; new readers wouldn't start something they knew they couldn't get their hands on half of; and if readers weren't buying, neither were libraries.

It was this unicorn series: dark (dealing extensively with the aftermath of abuse and mind-control), inventive as hell, all about found family and the juxtaposition of brothers: one a high-class sorcerer with a stick up his ass and the other a slum-dwelling lord of cat burgling. With, from what tiny, glorious tidbits I could weasel from the internet the cat burglar acquiring a physical disability later in the series that was not! magically cured; queerness _everywhere; redemption and betrayal and invented languages. And magic absolutely _dripping off every page.

Anyone who's followed me for more than five minutes understands why this was a great white whale, over which I would eternally envy those fortunate few who had glimpsed its splendor.

But then! late last year, joy and jubilation poured forth from nowhere when Open Road Media re-published the whole kit and caboodle. ^^ (Monette/Addison had been low-key promising for a while there was good news in the pipe-line, but she's been very busy with her Tor ventures, including the magnificent Angel of the Crows, and I of little faith thought this news a very pretty mirage).

And then I got scared shitless. What if I'd poured inordinate amounts of the last decade into finding a copy of the whale someone could scan into text for me (cause the Open Road debut is its first in an accessible E-form), failing again and again only for it to be decidedly meh? ^^ But it's spring break and if I don't read at least the first one now, it aint happening 'till May. So, I girded my loins and y'all: just swoon with me over the brilliance of Melusine's prologue.

Mildmay, our lord o' the cat burgle: clearly educated, for all he's in the worst part of the city, but not bothering to sand off the patina of the slums either. An absolute mélange! of expressions, from the Georgian English "Molly" for gay men to the Latin "indiction" for calendric cycles (I'm assuming in this world they're as close as you can get to its original meaning of the five-year Roman Republic lustrum because there are also septets--clearly based off the Latin seven which seem to be the largest counting group so far within the city. Which wouldn't be the case if the indiction were the later fourteen- or fifteen-year length--unless of course indictions are meant to be multiples of seven and septads are a way of breaking that down into more manageable units damn now I can't wait to find out which theory is correct even the fucking prologue is crammed with world-building mysteries). Not to mention the slyest introduction of "Jaus" my beloved god of gates and duality as the perfect bisexual slang my GOD. And I know the linguistic pallet only gets richer, having caught a glimpse of Demi-Monde to explain the circumstances of an unfortunate courtesan Mildmay will be assisting.

Somehow, Monette weaves this mishmash of languages into something entirely comprehensible, giving the city a rich flavor you don't find in ninety-nine percent of fantasy, stuck on its castles and knights and feudalism. Fuck, this is gonna be so good. @dr-dendritic-trees this might be up your alley (not sure how dark you tolerate your fiction and this goes some pretty dark places from reviews, but know you were a huge Crow fan) ^ Open Road has a penchant for collecting out-of-print titles that become my heart's beloveds ala Elizabeth Wein's Aksumite cycle (opening in Winter Prince with an Arthurian-esque re-telling, but steeped in ancient Ethiopian culture and proceeding into…how the hell does one even describe Telemakos? Mixed-race child prodigy of thievery and diplomacy, simultaneously clever and mischievous as any trickster should be who will make you cry six times in every book is about the best I can do. These are absolutely as good as! Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief and even more underappreciated. ^^ Having grown up shamelessly queer in a landscape that only in the last decade has made significant strides towards making queer books accessible to the blind, I have so many white whales. Heather Gladney's Song of Naga Teot y'all. Sometimes, I just quietly keen over how much I wanna read this trope-filled book I don't even care if it's good people could probably make me accomplice to terrible deeds if they just promised to read aloud all the pulpy queer books, I still can't get my hands on after all was said and done.

[fallloverfic]

Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths quadrilogy is being adapted into English audiobooks narrated by Shawn K. Jain, and released over the next several months:

Mélusine: August 20th, 2024 The Virtu: October 22nd, 2024 The Mirador: February 11th, 2025 Corambis: April 8th, 2025

They're all currently up for pre-order on Kobo.

Also for folks who don't know, all four books are back in English ebooks.

[linovadraws]

Beloved! Beloathed!

[arachnostalgiac]

today i read the bone key and while i was doing that i opened a wip? and added three thousand words to it?

god damn, thanks sarah monette

[setnet]

look at this other awesome fic I was gifted for yuletide

big hell yes two cakes moment when I checked my email again