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white_hartI saw a lot of mentions of Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma's novella Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night on Twitter last month, and bought it because it sounded like a fun holiday read. I didn't actually get round to it until the very end of the holiday, but it proved to be just as much fun as a post-holiday read.
Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night is a fantasy set in a London where magic is real, fairyland is just over there and magic users are just another minority group in a diverse society. In it, Layla (sensible pathologist with a wife and two children) and Nat (blue-haired non-binary composer) have to put aside their mutual dislike to follow a trail of clues to bring back their boyfriend Meraud, a brilliant magician who has disappeared after an overambitious spell wet wrong. It's charming and funny, pretty geeky, racially diverse and very queer; I really liked the magic system Fabian and Datt Sharma have invented, based on rules of three, found objects and associations, and I loved the way it tackled broader questions of love and belonging and family and queer existence. And in case this makes it sound a bit more serious than it is; it's fun and fluffy and a delightful quick read at a dismal time of year.
Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night is a fantasy set in a London where magic is real, fairyland is just over there and magic users are just another minority group in a diverse society. In it, Layla (sensible pathologist with a wife and two children) and Nat (blue-haired non-binary composer) have to put aside their mutual dislike to follow a trail of clues to bring back their boyfriend Meraud, a brilliant magician who has disappeared after an overambitious spell wet wrong. It's charming and funny, pretty geeky, racially diverse and very queer; I really liked the magic system Fabian and Datt Sharma have invented, based on rules of three, found objects and associations, and I loved the way it tackled broader questions of love and belonging and family and queer existence. And in case this makes it sound a bit more serious than it is; it's fun and fluffy and a delightful quick read at a dismal time of year.
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Date: 2019-01-12 04:28 pm (UTC)