#epistolary narrative

[elliepassmore]

Turning Darkness Into Light review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: dragons, linguistics, light/dark academia, multimedia narrative

A Natural History of Dragons review

Tropic of Serpents review

Voyage of the Basilisk review

In the Labyrinth of Drakes review

Within the Sanctuary of Wings review

This book stands as a companion/sequel to the rest of the Lady Trent memoirs. It takes place while Isabella is publishing her memoirs and focuses on her granddaughter, Audrey, who is a linguist specializing in Draconean. While I do think you could read this book without having read the rest of the series (stuff is explained as it comes up and for the most part the two focus on separate things), it does 100% spoil Within the Sanctuary of Wings and the series' 'big reveal,' so bear that in mind. I will also note that there are no dragons in this book, it's all focused on the Draconean stuff.

I was super excited to see a book focusing on linguistics since it played such a big role in the later Lady Trent books. Suhail makes a lot of really big discoveries alongside Isabella and so we got to read about those, but it only whet my appetite for more Draconean linguistics. That being said, I wish we got more of the nitty gritty aspects of linguistics and translating ancient languages. I know getting too into it would probably make it boring for readers not interested in that field, but as a linguist I so desperately wanted all the 'boring' details. I did find it interesting and fun that Brennan decided to model ancient Draconean orthography more on Akkadian and Sumerian than Egyptian, despite the rest of the ancient Draconean culture + the Cataract Stone being modeled on the latter. Akkadian/Sumerian is notoriously difficult to read and translate, especially if you're not an expert, and it doesn't really change anything else, so it makes sense to use that as the basis for Audrey and Kudshayn's work here.

At this point in time, Draconeans were discovered ~40 years prior, giving people enough time to form opinions and biases about them. The desire for ancient Draconean artifacts hasn't died down, and with the upcoming Falchester Conference to determine the fate of the Sanctuary of Wings and Draconeans as a whole, there's a new boom for them. Despite that, there are some people who are neutral, some who support the Draconeans, and some who dislike them. The latter group can be split into different fields of thought: Calderites who think Draconeans are lesser than humans and should stay in the Sanctuary, and Hadamists who think Draconeans mean the end of human civilization and want them dead. Both Draconean supporters and haters are out in full force with the upcoming conference, and some are eager to see what the translated tablets have to say, if only to use them against the other side.

The book is told in a multimedia style, with snippets from Audrey, Kudshayn, and Cora's diaries; newspaper articles; translated tablets; and letters. I really liked this method of telling the story since it allows us to get a much fuller look at everything going on during the course of the story. It's also interesting because it provides us with a number of different narrative styles, and I enjoyed how this storytelling technique nods to the topic of the book. I also liked that Brennan included the translations as Audrey and Kudshayn made them since we got to see the story unfold alongside them and we got to see some of their notes about the translation, some of which come back later on as plot points.

Audrey is clearly very passionate about linguistics and Draconean rights (obviously), and it's clear she's got the Trent/Camherst passion in her. At the same time, she has to juggle with the knowledge that she's being compared against her other illustrious family members -- from Isabella and Suhail to her father and mother -- and wants to achieve her own greatness. She doesn't always make the best decisions, but neither did Isabell, and I enjoyed seeing the dynamic of her trying to pursue her passions, live up to her family name, and 'do what grandmama would do.'

Kudshayn is a Draconean whose mother purposefully laid her clutch in a different environment in order to experiment with Draconean developmental lability with the hopes of ensuring Draconeans can live among humans and not just in the Sanctuary of Wings. Kudshayn, being a male Draconean, is a scholar and a priest, thus the translation is important to him as well as to Audrey. Kudshayn has a lot to grapple with in the book, from the upcoming vote about whether the Sanctuary should be recognized as independent and Draconeans free to roam, to the new religious insights found in the tablet, to the rocky history of human-Draconean relations. He's fairly quiet and sensible, but he also understands a lot about people and is forgiving when something is a genuine mistake vs. malicious intent.

Cora is Lord Gleinheigh's niece, tasked with being Audrey's assistant and with spying on her. Cora is autistic coded, though considering the time period, no one comes out and says it. Poor Cora is stuck between somewhat of a rock and a hard place -- she feels indebted to her uncle and so she spies on Audrey + Kudshayn, but at the same time she becomes friends with them and doesn't necessarily want to do it. Cora is quite clever and while she can't translate Draconean as well as the other two, she actually makes some decent headway and is able to pick some of it up quickly. I did enjoy her frustration with the more confusing or intricate aspect of ancient Draconean orthography. Cora comes into herself in this book and becomes quite the little advocate for herself. I really liked seeing her friendship with the other two (and a little hint in The Long Fall of how the three are still connected.)

Overall I enjoyed this book and think it's a great companion to the Lady Trent memoirs. I liked Audrey as a character and enjoyed following her journey in this book. I also really loved the linguistic aspect of things and am glad that we got a book focused on Draconean translations and linguistics.

[iforgetcanon]

Homesick

Pairing: Sirius Black / Hermione Granger Chapters: 9/9 Status: Complete Rated: Teen and up (for language and mentions of sex) Author: EdnaRose

Summary:

Tonks, I am sorry it took so long for me to write back. I kept waffling between responding to you, Ginny, or Harry first. Honestly, I'm still not certain I made the right call. However, considering your letter had the most recent and exciting information, I figured I'd write to you as I try to figure out what to say to Harry. This is big. But it's true, isn't it? Sirius is alive and well? ***** A series of letters; just snippets from the life of Hermione Granger and her closest friends. Hermione is stationed near Sitka, Alaska to investigate magical anomalies in the Tundra; back in London, Sirius Black has returned from the Veil. Owls are likely overworked as they fly back and forth across the UK and to the U.S. while a cast of characters gossip and confide in one another. Some are still healing from the war, others are learning how to confront the newness of life post-Voldemort. There are babies, dogs, record players and the beauty of America's Last Frontier. Third and final installment of the Guilty, Sweet, and Alive collection.

The prequel one shots Guilty as Sin and Too Sweet are not necessary to read to enjoy this fic, but who doesn't love a little bit of extra context?

[olis-inkwell-symposium]

Today’s Writing Challenge:

Write a story using only letters between two characters. What secrets will they reveal? Submit your entries by the end of the day!

[frmulcahy]

Newest episode of @antiquesfreaks with no context:

[cultivating-wildflowers]

initial Emily Wilde* thoughts:

I love her your honor

I would kill for Shadow (but also what kind of dog is he?? because she said boarhound [I think] which comes up as Great Dane but she mentioned his forelock I think???)

NORDIC**. ISLAND.

eeeee she's my age! (this is so rare right now asgha;ghgh)

these people sound like Dracula

I also love Bambleby. haven't even met him and I am completely enamored.

placing hold for the sequel as we speak

*[*squints* Emily Wilde..... Ah. Emily Windsnap. That's what it reminds me of.]

**I said Norwegian originally and that's not quite accurate but who's counting?

[asthmaticbee]

The craziest narrative choice gotta be Mary Shelley starting her science horror story as an epistolary in which another character’s life story is narrated which then goes into that character’s artificial human telling their life story.

[kirkwallguy]

now (horrific unemployment era) would really be the best time to write a long self indulgent oc fic... but i don't know how to structure it because the trevelyan lore is insane and kind of spills over into everything else

[quaalussy]

i dont usually go into an assigned reading for school expecting its gonna be one of the best things ive ever read but holy shit

[elliepassmore]

Within the Sanctuary of Wings review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: adventure, light academia, dragons, epistolary narrative

A Natural History of Dragons review

The Tropic of Serpents review

Voyage of the Basilisk review

In the Labyrinth of Drakes review

So...I still enjoyed this book, but I'm not totally sure how I feel about the big discovery made in this one. I do think it's a little odd and abrupt, but I can also see how the groundwork was laid in prior books.

This book opens 6 years (I think) after Labyrinth with Suhail giving a talk on Draconean linguistics and translation. The 'Cataract Stone' Isabella found in Mouleen provided a bilingual transcription that Suhail and other linguists were able to use to begin cracking the code of the Draconean language. Since the discovery of the stone and the bigger discovery of the mostly intact ruins in the Labyrinth of Drakes, there has been a huge boom of all things Draconean in Scirling society. For those familiar with the Victorian era, this tracks very closely with the Egyptian boom that occurred and, obviously, the Cataract Stone here is analogous to the Rosetta Stone in our world--Draconean art has always been described in a way analogous to Egyptian art, so I thought this was very nice continuity.

Toward the end of the first chapter, a Yelangese rebel and mountain climber, Mr. Thu, approaches Isabella to tell her about a dead dragon he found in the Mrtyahaima mountain range (i.e., Himalayas). Due to her past with Yelang, she's obviously wary, but it involves dragons, so obviously she, Tom, Suhail, and Andrew take off for Mrtyahaima. Caeligers are much more prominent now and there's even an event called the Aerial War that's occurring concurrently in the world. Thus, traveling to a remote and treacherous mountain range is a bit easier than when Isabella and Tom did it in book 1. Of course, getting to the mountain range is one thing, getting around once there is another.

Suhail's archaeological and linguistic work plays an important role in this book, but Isabella's theory of reproductive lability comes back in a big way as well. I liked seeing the convergence of some of these ideas, and I did appreciate that language was a bigger aspect in this one than in some of the other books (while I did study anthropology and find it fascinating, linguistics is my passion).

It's hard to talk too much about this book without giving away some very big spoilers that have been building for the entire series. I will say though that Isabella spends much of this book separated from her loved ones, and that a lot of her scientific work is done via observation. While this is true of most of the series, we were treated to some of her hands-on work in Labyrinth, so really this is just her going back to her usual style of fieldwork. The discovery and actions she takes in this book are the reason she goes from Dame Trent to Lady Trent, and is essentially a household name in Scirling forevermore.

I will say, for all her grumbling about not being good at politics, Isabella is actually very smooth when it comes to political maneuvering in this book. First she has to convince the Scirling government to let her go to Vidwatha (India) and Tser-nga (I am guessing Nepal) on the word of a Mr. Thu who, in exchange, wants her to pledge support to the revolutionary movement in Yelang. Then she runs into political problems later on with another group she runs across, and then she finds a surprising, but completely Isabella, way of following through on her promise of supporting the Yelangese revolution.

When the whole group is together, I enjoy their interactions and the way they're all familiar enough with one another to essentially read each other's minds. As usual, Suhail and Tom both have academic interest in the same/similar things as Isabella, and so the three of them are excited at the prospect of new discoveries. I like that Andrew has essentially become a member of their little group despite not being an academic. He's able to provide support in interesting ways.

Overall, a good and surprising ending to the series that combines the work Isabella and Tom have been doing for 5 books with Suhail's work. I'm definitely excited to read the spinoff/sequel/companion and see how the discoveries here have impacted things down the line.

[everybodyshusband]

10 & 12 for the ask game :) 🩷

Gimme book recs plz 👀

10. What's your favourite book?

undoubtedly 'red white and royal blue' by casey mcquiston, gay political romance my beloved !! and if you're a fan of longggg (think 100k+ words) multi-chaptered fics, the rwrb fandom has you COVERED and they're SO! FUCKING! GOOD!)

but another strong contender for my favourite book, or at least a book i've read a lot is 'all that's left in the world' by erik j brown !! it's a post-apocalyptic gay romance novel, a really quick and easy read and i adore it so much <3

12. Do you have any pets?

i do i do i do !!! i've got three silkie bantam chickens and a cat :)

[mortalityplays]

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[ma-lark-ey]

i’ll have such a good day and then i remember that perks of being a walllflower screen adaptation.

[pebblegalaxy]

Epistolary Embrace: Love Stories Unveiled through Letters #BlogchatterA2Z

Epistolary Embrace: Love Stories Unveiled through Letters #BlogchatterA2Z #LoveLetters #EpistolaryRomance #LongDistanceLove #TransformativeJourneys

In the timeless dance of life, there exists a delicate thread that weaves through the fabric of human connections – the art of letter writing. Within the folds of each carefully crafted word lies the potential to transcend distance, bridge hearts, and ignite the flames of love. These two stories epitomize the transformative power of letters, love, and life. From the depths of virtual realms to…

[prokopetz]

Inadvisable fanfic premise #137: Mouthwashing ten years later sequel in the form of an epistolary narrative told via the medium of insurance claim filings as a team of investigators try to piece together from physical evidence what the fuck happened here and who to blame.

[scribefindegil]

I love first-person because it’s about what the narrator chooses to tell. What do they focus on? What do they leave out? What can you learn from reading between the lines? Are they lying to you? Are they lying to themself? It’s great for unreliable narrators and for epistolary storytelling! It’s intimate but there’s still a distance because you aren’t really seeing the narrator’s thoughts--you’re just seeing the story that they’ve constructed.

I love second-person because it’s a conversation. Does “you” mean a broad, indefinite “you”? Does “you” really mean “I” but with plausible deniability? Does “you” mean one specific person? Can they hear the narrator? Do they know the narrator? What is the relationship here? Who’s talking? Who’s listening?

I love third-person limited because it’s focused and intimate. What does the world look like from inside this character’s head? What are they seeing? What are they feeling? It doesn’t grant them the privacy that first-person does; the narrative isn’t something they’ve chosen, it’s invisible and inescapable. As a reader you’re not watching so much as astral projecting.

(I love singular point of view because of how much it leans into that limitation. You’re not getting the whole story; you’re not seeing anything unless this character sees it. How do you embrace that? What do you do with the gaps around the edges? How does that define--or warp--the events that they’re experiencing?

I love multiple points of view because of how it broadens your understanding of the story and the world. If two point-of-view characters react in opposite ways to the same thing, what does that tell you about them? About the world? How does it feel to spend time inside a character’s head and then see them from someone’s else’s point of view? How do all of these viewpoints work together?) 

I love third-person omniscient because the narrative is a character. It’s great for stories that know they’re stories! It allows for a camaraderie between the narrator and the reader! It allows for wider and more cinematic descriptions because you’re not limited to what a specific person can see! It lets you look at the characters from outside while still giving you the option to delve into their heads because you have full control over what you’re focusing on!

And I love authors who can combine viewpoints in ways you wouldn’t think would work but manage to pull it off! Stories with multiple point-of-view characters where one is first-person and the others are third! Stories that combine first- and second-person! Stories where the omniscient narrator suddenly refers to themself in the first person! Stories where you realize halfway through that you were wrong about who was narrating it!

Isn’t it fantastic that there are so many different ways to tell stories!!!!

[kastalani123]

Not my usual content, but I just. I wanna ramble, ig.

Do you understand how baffled I was about how the vampire book, written by a man in 1897, is essentially a PSA about how important proper communication is?? Even after I scrolled through Tumblr, saw the memes, read people geeking out about the relationships (platonic and romantic) in Dracula, I was still caught off guard, because. Like. Everything in this book is about communication.

Sure, it's kind of a given, considering it's an epistolary novel partially made up of letters between the characters, but. I dunno. From Dracula controlling Johnathan's lettres, van Hellsing refusing to tell anyone shit, the men keeping Mina out of the loop, to Mina using her telepathic link with Dracula, it's. It's literally all about how important actually talking to each other and sharing information is. Fuck, throw in the fact that "Harker", Mina and Jonathan's, arguably the main characters, last name means "to listen"/"eavesdropper", and that the book is Mina's in-universe creation to help compile, organize, and share what they know about Dracula, and the book's very essence becomes centered around information-sharing!

And I just. The narrative punishes just about every secret hidden, every time the characters don't communicate. There's the obvious, Dracula keeping Johnathan from sending out letters for help and Mina getting bitten because the men leave her home alone, but also. Van Hellsing not telling Lucy's mom that the garlic flowers and closed windows and so on are the treatment and she is not to touch them is what kills Lucy and her mom! They maybe could have survived if he just told them what's happening/what he's doing! And even the godsdamned telegram he sends to Seward! If he had just addressed it properly (communicated to the telegram boy properly!) then Seward wouldn't have been late and maybe could have prevented the massacre!

There's also Jonathan's diary right after he finally reunites with Mina, and obviously Mina's whole ✨ thing ✨ with the diary during their wedding is like. Peak romance, but Johnathan doesn't fully get better until Mina reads and shares it with van Hellsing and van Hellsing assures Johnathan that he's not insane. Sure, it's an oversimplification of PTSD and healing and such, but it makes sense, especially if you consider communication and information sharing as a major theme! Only sharing his experiences, reading through them himself after blocking off the memories, is what heals him! He cannot get better without knowing what happened, and without others knowing what happened, because knowing and sharing is important.

Renfield's also an interesting case. I don't have the book with me right now to check, but as far as I remember, he tries to talk about Dracula, tries to get Seward to release him from the asylum so Dracula can't use him against Mina, but is dismissed entirely; as a consequence, Dracula gets in the building, kills Renfield, and bites Mina.

Even the language barriers! The villagers Johnathan meets on his way to Dracula's castle try so hard to warn him of the danger but they can't. They can't, because they don't speak enough of the same language, but they try so hard. But whatever does get through to Johnathan, such as that woman begging him to take the crucifix she gives him — that might've saved him. It keeps him unsettled and wary and he does keep the crucifix, which wards Dracula off. They can't communicate the full extent of the danger, but what they managed is probably responsible for him surviving.

And the whole idea is even mentioned in-text! Sure, Lucy saying that a wife ought to share everything she knows with her husband is definitely sexism-flavoured, but Johnathan says it too! He says that his idea of an ideal marriage is one without secrets! And Johnathan is effeminate, yes, he spends a good chunk of the book as the "damsel in distress", but he is still the hero! He is still the one who kills Dracula (with Quincey), and can therefore be assumed to be an intended role model. The (male) main character and hero of an 1897 novel says that a good relationship relies on communication. Sure, he doesn't always stick to it, mostly by agreeing to keep Mina out of the loop when van Hellsing pushes for it, but that doesn't discount that that is what Stoker set as the ideal.

I just. I love this book so much. It subverted just about all expectations I might've had about it and I'm so glad for it. It's undeniably a product of its time, with plenty of racism and sexism and ableism, but it's also so. Not, at the same time? It's so good.