Into the Sea
Seanan McGuire
The view from behind August’s eyeballs
Into the Sea is Seanan McGuire May 2022 Patreon reward. As she writes in her release message,
While this is another new narrator for us, I feel like this story fits very solidly into an existing sub-group, coming as it does right after (like right after) "And Deeps Below" and "Sacrifice Your Tears."
And Deeps Below and Sacrifice Your Tears were stories told from Simon Torquist's point of view, recounting the events leading up to and immediately after his three-way marriage to Patrick and Dianda Lorden. Their prevailing characteristic was the droopy, depressing tone of Simon's narration.
Those same events resulted in August Torquill, Simon's biological daughter, choosing Simon over Amandine, her mother, as her parent. Consequently August is now legally (to the extent that word means anything in Faery, which is nugatory) Simon's daughter and unrelated to Amandine. Toby also chose Simon as her parent, so August and Toby remain sisters. August went off to live with Simon, Patrick, and Dianda in Dianda's duchy, Saltmist, which lies west of San Francisco, in the Pacific Ocean. Yes, literally IN the Pacific -- Diana is a merrow, i.e., a mermaid.
This story recounts August's first day of settling in, discovering that undersea etiquette is very different from etiquette on land, and that she doesn't know the right way to behave down here. August is naturally very insecure, so much of the story consists of Simon, Patrick, and Dianda reassuring her.
August's narration is an improvement over Simon's -- unlike him, she is not filled with self-loathing. She is merely naturally nervous about what she has gotten herself into. Also, August is the only Dochas Sidhe other than Toby, so her magic looks a lot more like Toby's than anyone else's we have seen. That was interesting.