#Seanan mcguire

[smallgodseries]

[image description: A pointy – and grinning – green dragon holds lance in his giant claw. On the lance, the largest marshmallow you’ve ever seen. Lightning crackles in the background and a bright orange fire lights the scene. Text reads, “3, SMAURS, the Small God of Perfectly Applied Flame”]

They call on him so much more than they ever realize.

Want a car to start? Want an engine to fire, an egg to cook, a cigarette to light? Want to go through your life without being wreathed in a halo of brief, brilliant fire, burning away to nothing in the moments between the cinder and the scream? You call upon Smaurs, for without his grace, the fire goes where it will, does what it will, untamable. He is not a god of fire per se, leaves that act of terrible creation to greater forces than his own, but the control of fire? The application of fire? That’s entirely on his beautifully scaled shoulders.

They call on him so much more than they ever realize, and he rewards them with days unblistered, with hours unimmolated, with the knowledge of what it is to exist without burning. He loves them, in his distant way, for when they were children…

When they were children, they were his. No one calls upon a god of perfectly applied flame more often or more clearly than a child just embracing the catch and the candle, just learning how to angle a magnifying glass or light a match. He has sat at millions of campfires, marshmallow sticky on his claws, glorying in the taste of chocolate and graham and the sweet, bright wonder of young things on the verge of catching fire in their hands for the very first time.

They will grow to serve other gods, greater means of destruction, other ways of burning. But when they are children, they are his, and when they are his, he may do as any god does, and attend to his worshippers as they so ardently request.

In his claws, the marshmallows never burn, and neither do the hands that hold them.

It is the best protection he can give.

[juniperandmoonlight]

Can't vote on this because I love both of these, but passing it along because everyone should read them.

Queer Adult SFF Books Bracket: Round 1

Book summaries below:

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children series)

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children No Solicitations No Visitors No Guests

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.

No matter the cost.

Fantasy, portal fantasy, mystery, magical realism, boarding school, novella, series, adult

Paladin's Hope by T. Kingfisher (The Saint of Steel series)

Piper is a lich-doctor, a physician who works among the dead, determining causes of death for the city guard's investigations. It's a peaceful, if solitary profession…until the day when he's called to the river to examine the latest in a series of mysterious bodies, mangled by some unknown force.

Galen is a paladin of a dead god, lost to holiness and no longer entirely sane. He has long since given up on any hope of love. But when the two men and a brave gnole constable are drawn into the web of the mysterious killer, it's Galen's job to protect Piper from the traps that await them.

He's just not sure if he can protect Piper from the most dangerous threat of all…

Fantasy, romance, mystery, secondary world, standalone-ish within series, adult

[yeehawpim]

[chitaqua-toast]

Mari Lwyd meme.

“I wish all [PEOPLE WHO HAVE HOUSES]

A very [LET ME IN]”

[raptorkin]

A reminder from my favourite bookseller

[whoreadsbooksanymore]

Seeing a marburg virus outbreak in 2024 on the heels of a global coronavirus pandemic reminds me of reading a seanan mcguire interview in 2012ish where she discussed how our societal approach to quarantine is a joke & the individual desire for freedom & autonomy over safety gets people killed. I have to wonder what going through the early '20s as someone well educated in viral mutations and infection vectors must've been like. Prophets screaming from a crumbling parapet

[hellchilde]

seanan mcguire writing Feed in 2010: there was a presidential election, and a perfectly normal and reasonable human was running against the personification of evil

me in 2010: i dunno that seems like a caricature, surely that would never happen

me in 2024: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[valenshawke]

"'think of the children' always gets support unless what you're thinking about is leaving them with a better world. Somehow, we never need to think of the children when we're talking about climate change, or preventing pandemic diseases, or anything else that costs money. But here we are." - Unbreakable by Mira Grant.

[robocatfan]

I won’t be the only person in this hellsite who is obsessed over horror killer mermaid stories and then constantly die inside when not only there is a severe lack of that sub genre, but also when amongst those few these two mfs are one of the few ones that actually have good compelling stories, and I’ll make sure of that!

[nzbookwyrm]

January 2025

[hellcourt-v]

Family portrait

[smallgodseries]

“It all started with a mouse,” that’s what they like to say, over and over again, like it’s somehow impressive.  You know what else started with a mouse?  A hell of a lot of hantavirus, that’s what.  You have mice, you generally call an exterminator, that’s all I’m saying.  But it won’t do you a lot of good, because the mice will get in anyway.  Or get out. Can’t keep mice in cages forever.  That’s not what mice were made for.

Still, they tried like hell, didn’t they?  They changed the rules so many times we pretty much had to throw out the whole rulebook and start over with a new one.  Commandment one: Thou shalt let us do whatever we want, because we’re always right, and if you disagree with us, you’re wrong.  That’s how you lock in the result you want.  You cheat.

Oh, they cheated.  Go ahead and say they did everything legally, but if you have two mice and one maze, and say the rules are the same for both of then, then lay a trail of spray cheese between one mouse and the finish line, while the other has to run it the ordinary way, well, that’s cheating whether or not there’s a rule against it.  Ask any first grader.  That’s the real trick: if a first grader knows you cheated, you’re not even being subtle about it.

They didn’t use spray cheese, of course.  They used money.  And they weren’t racing mice, they were racing legal arguments.  Money votes.  Anyone who tries to say otherwise just doesn’t have any money.

But it all started with a mouse, and from there, it evolved—or devolved—into corruption, greed, and the desperate need to keep being the only people who could solve the maze.  They got so busy changing the rules that they forgot the one rule they couldn’t change.  The rule they should have remembered.  The first rule of mice:

Can’t keep them out.  And that means you can’t keep them in, either.

Everything crumbles.  Every mouse gets out.  And every story yearns to be free.  So tell me, now that you know it all started with a mouse, how are you going to write the ending?  I belong to you now, after all, as much as I belong to anyone.

But most of all, I belong to me.

********************************

For more information on Mickey Mouse entering public domain: https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/mickey-mouse-public-domain-disney-copyright-lawsuits-1235844322/

[nudityandnerdery]

Hey, so, have you read Feed and all the Newsflesh books by Mira Grant (aka @seananmcguire)? They're fantastic and I love them and I totally had my heart ripped out and cried several times so much fun! Highly recommended!

[aquaticintrepid]

my book tattoos! The bells of the Abhorsen from Garth Nix's series and a doorway from Seanan McGuire's Wayward children

[marmotsomsierost]

Quentin, buddy, you are in the wrong book series.

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]