Patreon Year Two
Seanan McGuire
Fairies, ghosts, and weirdness
I will begin by clarifying what I am reviewing here. Seanan McGuire has a Patreon Creator page. Patreon is a website where artists can share their work with subscribers. Subscribers pay a certain amount (usually monthly, but that varies from artist to artist), and in return get access to things ("rewards" in Patreon-speak) that the artist posts on Patreon. "Things" can mean images, videos, or (most relevantly in this case) eBooks. Typically there are multiple reward tiers -- the more you pay, the more you get. McGuire set up her Patreon page in June 2016 and has posted a story every month since then, which makes 63 now (August 2021, when I am writing this), plus a few one-time extras. These "stories" can be pretty substantial literary works. For instance, the reward for July 2021 was a short novel. The way Patreon works, if you subscribe to a tier, you typically get access to everything that was posted for that tier at any time in the past. (In principle an artist could delete past rewards to prevent subscribers from gaming the system, but few of them do that. And in fact, this is a great way to lure in new subscribers. I subscribed in June at the CAD 1.50 level (CAD=Canadian dollar) and in this way immediately got 61 stories.) Most of the stories are posted in MOBI, ePub, and PDF form. MOBI files can be converted for reading on Amazon kindle, and that is how I have read most of these.
I started reading McGuire not long ago after stumbling on Discount Armageddon, the first book in the Incryptid Series. The Incryptid Series consists mainly of novels: ten currently published, with the eleventh due out in March 2022. Although McGuire has a stated intention of making the novels stand on their own, she has also released many Incryptid stories separately. The Incryptid Short Stories page on her web site lists about two dozen of these, some published in anthologies but most available free for download (completely free -- no subscription required). This list does not include the Patreon stories. In addition to the Incryptid Series, McGuire is best known for another series, October Daye. She also has a page of October Daye short stories on her web site.
I have read the first seven novels of the Incryptid series (that is, through Tricks for Free) and all the Incryptid short stories listed on McGuire's web site Incryptid Short Stories and the 13 stories posted in her first year on Patreon (June 2016 - May 2017). I will assume you have, too, in the sense that this review may include spoilers for those works. Aside from Patreon stories, I have not read any October Daye works, so you're fairly safe from spoilers on those. I will try to avoid spoilers for the works I am reviewing here, which are the 12 works McGuire posted in her second year on Patreon. These are:
Cabbages and Kings, June 2017 Patreon reward
From A to Z in the Book of Changes, July 2017 Patreon reward
Instruments of Darkness (Tybalt #4), August 2017 Patreon reward
With Honest Trifles (Tybalt #5), September 2017 Patreon reward
Heart of Straw, October 2017 Patreon reward
Last Call at the Last Chance, November 2017 Patreon reward
In Deepest Consequence (Tybalt #6), December 2017 Patreon reward
Write in Water (Patrick #3), January 2018 Patreon reward
Live in Brass (Patrick #4), February 2018 Patreon reward
Now Rest, My Dear, March 2018 Patreon reward
These Antique Fables (Jan #1), April 2018 Patreon reward
Goodnight, Sleep Tight, May 2018 Patreon reward
Six of these (the three Tybalt stories, the two Patrick stories, and the Jan story) are stories about fairies -- these take place in the October Daye world. All of these have some connection (though sometimes only a perhipheral one) to the Torquill family. Septimius Torquill had four children, Amandine, Simon, Sylvester, and September. September was a childhood crush of Tybalt (then calling himself Rand), and in the three Tybalt stories of this Patreon year he goes to her in Europe to ask her to tutor his niece, Caelin. Simon is the best friend of Patrick Twycross and somewhat important in both Patrick stories. September had a daughter, January O'Leary (like Cat Valente, McGuire has a fondness for naming female characters after months) -- January is the "Jan" of These Antique Fables.
Now, I don't like Tybalt. He is a pompous a--hole. Also, he doesn't have much of a sense of humor. Here is what passes for a joke with Tybalt:
Morane: You always did have a silver tongue. “
Tybalt: Again, I think that might be a bit more than is needed. My tongue of flesh speaks sweet enough words, and a tongue of silver, why. I would constantly fear its theft. I do much better with the tongue Oberon has granted me, and am quite content to keep it.
OK, I will go so far as to recognize that as a joke-shaped object. If it made you laugh, then you laugh more easily then I. Also, Tybalt talks too much. He loves his sister Colleen and her daughter Caelin. That is an endearing trait, but does he have to talk about it so much? A principal of writing is "Show, don't tell." Tybalt spends way too much time telling us of his love of his sister and niece. It's not that I doubt him (yet), but it is tedious.
Patrick and his mermaid honey Dianda are altogether more entertaining. The two Patrick stories recount an event in the courtship of Patrick and Dianda. Two stories, one event? Yes: Write in Water tells about the ball to celebrate Dianda's engagement (to someone else, not Patrick) from Patrick's point of view. Live in Brass is about the same events from Dianda's point of view. Definitely fun.
Then we have January in These Antique Fables. This is quite a long story spanning many decades, as we learn of the tragedies of Jan's early life. We end up in 1965 where she, like Patrick and Dianda, has to attend a ball. (Not the same ball. She has become the heir of Sylvester Torquill and is required to show herself at state functions.) Like Patrick, January is studious and interested in technical things. I liked her a lot.
OK, so the October Daye world takes up half of Patreon Year 2. What else have we? Well, we have three ghost stories, Heart of Straw, Last Call at the Last Chance, and Now Rest, My Dear. These appear to take place in the world of McGuire's Ghost Roads series, which is also the world in which the Incryptid series takes place. If you've read the Incryptid novels, the ghosts in these three books will feel familiar from the Price family's dead aunts Mary and Rose. These ghosts are typically well-disposed, but can be dangerous. Now Rest, My Dear is a particularly charming story about library ghosts.
In fact, the three final stories are a kind of love song to libraries. In These Antique Fables we learn that Jan loves libraries, and part of the action takes place in one. Goodnight, Sleep Tight is also about a library, though it is almost a horror story (depending on what horrifies you).
That leaves the first two stories, Cabbages and Kings and From A to Z in the Book of Changes. These are just weirdness on stilts, without clearly recognizable plot or characters. However, I enjoyed them.