He had become a passenger in his flesh, one half of a whole, as he'd thought of himself for so long.
Eddie stretched at the boundaries of his being with a tearing discomfort. Their union was not the pleasure he'd imagined it might be. Andrew's pulse struggled to beat, erratic. The knife glistened [...], droplets of Andrew plunking to the ground beneath their feet.
[...]
A concentric ripple washed from the site of his unmaking, his possession, through the earth and dust and bones the plantation was built on. The thing that had been Eddie was him, and he had become it as well. The crush of their beings slid home together, filling the gaps and crannies he had left, coursing through his blood and occupying his wounds.
[...]
come home come home come home
There's a coaxing part of me that doesn't want to review this.
That's murmuring to leave it undisturbed, untouched in my memory like a secret sworn to the grave.
Restless and clamouring, wailing desperately for release, but assured in my protection of it, my treasuring of it.
And another that's jittering to impart the sensory tattoo Lee Mandelo let loose on my ill-prepared mind.
How I breathed shallowly for just shy of four hundred pages under the weight of it, how it crushed me beneath its spectral heel and refuses to release me still.
I wish I could leave it alone, cocoon it within myself and never discuss it because it feels so solely mine; to talk about it a betrayal of its confidences.
But Summer Sons demands attention, it quietly goads and nips at the vulnerable edges of its readers until the thoughts and feelings it provokes are given permanence outside of the pages.
It isn't a quiet book, not even in its silences; aggressive in its repression, fierce in its incitement, and it gives no choice but to spill its secrets, and most likely the reader's own in the process.
Thus why this review is happening, resistance an unknown noun.
It may be a little awkward and a little stuttered in the making because the complexities of how this book made me feel outshine my limited vocabulary, but I'll try my best.
Even now I'm struggling, it's taken days to write the words above, words trapped inside by an invisible hand.
There's pressure, pressure, pressure.
How do I start? Where do I start?
Perhaps with an admittance that for over half the book, I was a little... underwhelmed.
I wouldn't normally accuse myself of being easily run off by stories with a glacial pace; I have patience, I can meander through exposition and intrigue to get to the meat of a story.
I can wait.
But there reaches a particular moment in unhurried stories where the questions begin to creep in: What exactly am I waiting for?Will it be worth it in the end? Where is this really going?
Impossible questions to answer, which result in an act of faith in the author to continue on, to trust that the seemingly endless, sinuous crawl they're guiding you through will resolve itself.
The satisfaction at the end worth the frustration.
But not every story is an equal exchange.
Some lead you on, make promises they can't keep, and it ends with the literary equivalent of a bad breakup, emotional hangover and all.
But others, like Summer Sons, it's the tone of their reticence that makes the final unveiling worth the effort; effort I was urgently willing to put in.
I was hungry for more, as hungry as the collective spectres roiling at the ocular edges of the story, pick, pick, picking away at the living.
Summer Sons is steeped in the Stygian rot of the undead, it streaks malevolent across the pages with the hot drag of summer, oil-slicked and indelible.
A sticky, fuliginous (viscous?) presence that can be felt as a physical thing through the fingertips, the ticklish crucible of the palm.
This story would hold the same depth of feeling in any setting but by placing it within the cloying atmosphere of the Deep South, that theurgic ooze adds an occult, sensory layer which would be noticeably absent anywhere else.
There's history in this story of spectral loss and possession; history of the characters, history of the land, history of the people, and as one they keen for our attention.
None more so than Eddie, the undead half of these Summer Sons, the best friend, the missed love, the lost one.
It's strange for a main character to be so profoundly missing from their own story, to not even act in a narrative role, for the importance of them to lie in their memory expressed through others.
Relying on how the living felt and recalled them in lieu of them being physically, mortally there to show us, but also for that shadow of them to breathe heavy down the necks of not only the readers but the living characters within.
Freezing pressure crushed his lungs. He woke with a heaving spasm less than a single blink from the moment he'd drifted off, or so it felt to his disorientated brain. His bones throbbed under his muscles, wracked with another shutter that torqued him against the seat. His right hand scrabbled at the divider; superimposed over his limp left arm was a headache-inducing vision of a skeletal limb dripping brackish blood.
Mist fogged in front of his face from the wheezing gasps of his breath. His own distorted, huffed yelps brought him further out of his stupor, enough to fling himself across to the passenger seat headfirst. The gearshift slammed into his calf. His temple cracked against the window. He scrambled upright, dragging his leg to the other footwell as if escaping a monster's claws. A hollow silhouette constructed out of negative shadow occupied the driver's seat in his stead, claiming the seat where it had belonged in life. He wasn't alone in the way Del imagined―far from it.
The enclosed space stank of summer-boiled earth, swamp-wet and fetid. Andrew snapped his teeth shut on a scream. The dead thing shifted through banded gold and black darkness, refracting the suggestion of a jawbone or a half-lidded eye, an elbow propped through the window without regard for the glass. It lifted a hand from the wheel to reach for him, uncanny as a marionette; searing cold fingertips tapped the tattooed bone of his wrist. The streetlight overhead popped at the instant contact, bursting in a flare of light that left him part blinded―and when his eyes cleared, the thing was gone. Abandoned again.
It was the third time in fifteen days that the haunt had visited him.
From the very first page Eddie is an inescapable force, spoken of to the point of obsession, remembered in a bed left unmade, grieved with the intensity of a soulmate.
Andrew clung to a thread of control as he collapsed into the grasp of the Challenger's driver's seat and pulled the door shut with a muffled slam.
One hundred thousand hours were packed on top of each other in Eddie's lingered scent: eleven years old and pressing cut palms with tears in their eyes, swearing brotherhood; thirteen and boxing up his bedroom for their move to Columbus, Eddie shell-shocked and silent over the loss of his mother and father and home; fifteen and smoking cigarettes under the back porch with the spiders; seventeen and drunk, Del sandwiched half-nude between them in the back seat of a borrowed sedan under cold winter stars; nineteen and messaging each other across a classroom with grins tucked out of sight; twenty-one and putting in their applications for the same graduate program in the campus café. That's where it broke, when Eddie surprised him with an earlier admission and a request that Andrew wait him out. Their first and last extended separation. Andrew had promised to follow behind, toes at Eddie's heels.
He had, and he hadn't. This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen.
You can feel the cool burn of it, of sweat-slicked spines, licked by bony fingers.
"Ghost" would be too simple a word for the unmistakable potency of him, of his physical possession of Andrew that existed before his death and exists stronger beyond it.
Nothing as sophomoric as goosebumps raised on the back of the neck for these two halves of the same soul touched by something "other" in childhood.
When Andrew grieves, Eddie is still there to curl around him with a soft, cold touch and even softer, incomprehensible words:
Fabric stuck to his damp cheek. The moment he realized that tears had begin to leak from the corners of his eyes, the dam broke; he tucked his kneed against his chest and he heaved with sobs almost deep enough to make him retch. Delirious, he imagined his ribs might shatter from the force and spike straight through his lungs. The uncontrollable weeping stretched on endlessly, the the start of physical pain then far past it. Streetlights hummed outside. Muscles spasmed across his sides, throat, and jaw as eventually his tension waned and he began to snuffle more than wail. Snot clogged his nose and exhaustion swaddled him, but as sleep descended, a prick of stinging sensation flared at the root of his spine. He had no time to resist the ice-cold press of an ankle slipped between his, the weight of a broad arm and elbow pressing around his shoulder and over onto the mattress. Bones like fingers combed through his hair. Indistinguishable murmuring touched the shell of his ear. He had a moment to think, Eddie, before the dream took him under.
And if Andrew strays even for a moment from his devotion, his search for answers, a desperate, calcified scratch is punishingly delivered.
Floorboards creaked scant inches to his left, but he refused to lift his head and look. He wasn't asleep; he wasn't on the cusp of sleep; he was awake. Manifestations this physical were not supposed to happen while he was awake, gloaming light shining through the big bold windows in streaks of red-gold, but Eddie had always been an exception to the rules. Don't, he thought, but he reacted instinctively to the first brush across the knobs of his spine with a yearning, flexing shudder.
An icy burn gripped the back of his neck in the rough outline of fingers, their shape more familiar than his face in the mirror. Against good judgement and survival instinct he leaned into the too-solid hold. It hurt, but he missed that tough so much, even this noxious remnant.
"Stop," he whispered again.
The papers sutler along their edges. Crouching in the hidden hollow of the closed, scruffed by the revenant that dogged his heels, he felt terribly and paradoxically alive. Rank breath drifted past his ear and cheek. The punishing grip pushed until his head bowed forward, forcing him to stare unseeing at his shoes, but the haunt kept going. It pushed until his skin chafed and his vertebra cracked, until the boundaries between its false flesh and his skin gave out. The cold sank straight through the gagging constriction of his throat to the cavern of his chest, grasping at him from the inside out. Blood and dirt were all he tasted in his drooling mouth, choked on the phantom's invasive presence. His first sleep on native soil dredged itself up behind his eyes: wrists cut to exposed muscle, a frantic retreat from the fact of death. He echoed the vision's desperate call for survival: I am awake I am awake I am awake―
Eddie is at once loving and devouring.
He's there in every word, every turn of the page, every sentence read with blinded eyes, hiccuped over as if it wasn't meant to be seen.
I experienced many of those hiccuped moments throughout the story.
Lee Mandelo's prose is what I can only describe as sporadically, lethargically lyrical; woven with pages upon pages of introspection, brittle conversations, the mundanity of academic paper shuffling, and then without warning, a formation of words that demand pause. That require a more focused look. That feel touched by that unnerving "other".
Barbs hooked through his palms on contact, echo calling to echo, blood answered blood. Slippery gore welled from the carpet as he crumpled over the trunk rim, sliding in the mess and struck stupid with borrowed agonies. His mouth filled with a taste that crossed old meat with the sick-sweet ooze of a cold sore. He gagged. If the vision at the tree had been hallucinatory, the trunk had no time for illusions. Images smashed through him, reeling like film stock and pulling like muscle memory.
A tarp filled the trunk and the slack, sluggishly bleeding body toppled into its plastic embrace. The remnant that had one been Eddie clung to its recent flesh, claws sunk into the inert matter of the corpse, unwilling to separate. One had flopped loose over the rim of the trunk, the wound below gaping raw and wet; the ravaging memories of pain lanced through the remnant and the vision and Andrews. The dead had was lifted and dropped on the corpse's chest with distaste, like a marionette gone limp.
The sound of Andrew's shoes sliding on gravel faded into the rush of his pulse in his ears as he lost consciousness.
It varies from person to person, but I imagine for everyone there are those moments as a reader where you come across an author who writes in a way that feels personal to you, that gouges down through your nervous system and strokes long-acknowledge but inexpressible emotions to life.
And it doesn't necessarily need pretty, poetical words for that stirring to occur, it can be be a feeling, a mundane coupling of adjectives, a narrative thought.
It doesn't matter, the cracks they form inside happen all the same.
I've felt that fissure often; the first time I read Love in the Asylum I was set ablaze by ten words:
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.
Ten words and they've been wrecking and soothing me for years.
And when I opened Lee Mandelo's book, read the first page, continued on and saw these unremarkable yet altering words:
he was yours
I felt that same familiar polarity, tugged in two directions by beauty and sorrow.
But in spite of how achingly familiar and beautifully put together those words were, the more distracted I became.
The more my attention kept skimming off the pages, diverted by shadows beyond my direct line of sight that seemed to fractionally move and beg to be acknowledged.
As if those shadows were like the haints clinging to the living in Summer Sons, baying for a taste of the life and power radiating from Andrew.
If I believed in ghosts, I'd say their demand for attention was to stop the story revealing its secrets, a last gasp to shield me from what was coming next.
The reality is that I was probably tired and couldn't focus, but it's comforting to think that maybe Mandelo purposefully wrote it this way, to turn a grieving, modern day ghost story into something outside of fiction, make its readership an active participant in the haunting Andrew was experiencing.
Force us to understand and bear his distress better.
Because Andrew is a difficult character to be led by; he's a black hole, devoured by his grief and love for his best friend, but also by his rage, confusion and betrayal at being left behind.
How could his other half leave him alone? What is he without him? What is he trying to tell him?
The endless questioning and battling doesn't make him a comforting protagonist, he has to be fought at every turn with lax bones to absorb the impact of his emotions while he begrudgingly, unknowingly sucks everyone into his darkness.
Eddie was his best friend and then some, and maybe they'd been closer than the norm, but no one else could have understood what it meant to live with the ghosts and the haunt-dreams, the danger that lurked in cellars and attics of friends' times, the endless throat-closing, loitering horrors that held off sleep for whole weeks during the most uncontrolled period of it. No one else had been there with him in the cavern for hours spread across days, freezing, terrified of encroaching death. No one else was Eddie, and no one else held him the same as Eddie had.
It's consuming, draining.
As draining as Eddie's slow consumption of Andrew throughout the story - mentally, emotionally, physically.
While Andrew's devoured, we're devoured with him and it feels something akin to being one of the shades that dog his every step.
A grasping, starving need that instead of walking with Andrew, consumes him piece by jagged piece.
We may never meet Eddie, but we understand his hunger, his desperation, his possession of Andrew, even more so than we understand Andrew himself.
It will always bother me that we didn't truly get any time with them together, time to enjoy their unfiltered relationship, their rage, their understanding, their smothered lust.
A strong, irrepressible corner will always want a particular ending to this story, will always crave that happiness and resent its absence, but we're not without satisfaction.
Memories, remembrances are dappled throughout for us to cling to, tender flashbacks to summers past.
A propriety clasp of the nape, fingers playfully pushed through sweat-damp hair.
No one had touched him so much in―weeks, months. Eddie had visited him a the end of the spring term and spent the whole five days manhandling him: scratching his scalp, digging his thumbs into the knots of his trapezius muscles, rolling on top of him during naps, once gnawing absently on the knob of his wrist for a full five seconds during a movie. Eddie's touch was a careless claim that meant home, home, home. These knockoffs hadn't earned the right to handle him.
A possessive tangling at a party.
Once at some frat party, he'd started to pass out on Eddie's shoulder and slouched instead to push his face into the soft-solid plane of his stomach, one arm around his waist. Touch settled Andrew in a good place as his body shut down. Eddie had run a proprietary hand over the crest of his shoulder blade. When some guy had hooted derisively from across the room, Eddie had scooped Andrew onto the couch, walked over, and smacked him straight in his mouth with one big hand.
And a moment so inciting it made me a feral, foreign creature.
"You know, I came to the dorm one night and let myself in, back when we were together, and he was in bed with you. You were asleep. He was running his hand through your hair and he had his mouth on your neck. He made some pretty serious eye contact. It wasn't friendly. I left. I don't know why I never brought it up until now."
These may be the only moments we get with them, to know them as a whole, but there's a sanctity in those memories, a hushed holiness gifted to us as a secret, a promise to keep those moments safe.
Their relationship may always, heartbreakingly remain a question mark, a mournful "What if...", but we'll know.
"I'm sorry he died before you figured it out. For what it's worth, I think you might've eventually, without me there to displace your bullshit onto. He was head over heels for you, and everyone knew but you, and maybe him. No, I think he knew. I think he hated seeing you with me, so he got himself involved."
We'll always know there could've, would've been more.
You can feel it in every wrenched cry from Andrew, and the hungry reverence Eddie's spectre follows him with.
There's a natural urge that occurs when you love someone this deeply, to fuse yourself with them, become a necessary, unshakeable, phantom limb.
It's fervid, at times unwelcome, and always irrational, but it exists all the same, whether we want it or not.
Love can be as painful as it can be wonderful, and in the case of our Summer Suns, post-mortem it becomes a twisted, broken thing, scenting the air with sweat, death and possession.
It permeates every unoccupied crevice and allows Eddie's wraithlike form to take advantage of Andrew's heartbreak and ride inside him, a gluttonous passenger eating from the inside out.
The death-chill felt almost good for a second, cupping the side of his face over the swelling split skin, before it seared like an ice cube sticking to a wound. A strangled grunt punched from beneath his diaphragm. The suggestion of the revenant's hand passed over his nose and philtre and fat bottom lip, burning despite its immateriality, sucking and gripping where real skin would've slipped on spit and blood. An atmospheric pop cracked in his ears, his brain, as the crusted remains of his blood absorbed into the nothingness, an offering lapped up by the ragged corpse-boned thing straddling him. His revenant settled heavier and hungrier, gaining an outline like exposed film. Andrew stopped breathing as it leaned in, its spine bending where spines had no joint or hinge, rot-stench breath gusting into his partially open mouth.
[...]
Andrew stared past the haunt at his own bare ankles sticking out the far window, his shoes speckled with brown-red fluids, the old-growth forest and craggy sheet rock exposed by the highway cut into the hill Roots tumbled from the trees down the exposed stone. He stayed limp as the creature leaned in for another taste.
Terrifying in its possessiveness, yet understandable in its desperation.
And there is an overriding sense of desperation in this story - Andrew's need to solve the mystery of his best friend's death, his desire to be around Sam Halse every waking moment.
Two bounding footsteps thumped the hardwood behind him and a hand caught his wrist, lurching them to a stop in the stairwell. Andrew snapped his arm to the side to yank loose from the grip. Momentum and desperation collided, along with their knees. Sam crowded him into the corner of the landing, his concerned, breathless expression half in shadow, lit by the small window onto the side alley. The kitchen door slammed. Cinders of need burned savage at the base of Andrew's throat, where Sam had spoken to his skin, glanced against him with his lips. The hand on his wrist slid up his forearm, past the tattoo, to settle around his bicep.
"What's wrong," Sam demanded, hoarse. "Tell me what's wrong."
Andrew lay his forehead on Sam's collarbone. Sam went still, his breath stirring the hair over Andrew's ear. The solid, undeniable strength caging Andrew against the wall provoked a stunning hinger, and his shirt smelled good, smelled right. Andrew arched against the wall to shove his whole body onto Sam's, sinking his teeth with moderate force and immense desire into the join of his neck and shoulder. The reaction was instant: a thigh forced between his legs, Sam's startled grunt in his ear.
And the feeling of betrayal that invokes.
(I can't talk about Sam Halse without getting emotional. He wasn't the character I expected to feel the most for, but he held out a roughened hand and didn't let go, and neither did I)
"He's dead, Sam."
"I know that. He's not gone, though. Look at us right this minute. Half the conversations we have, he's in them. I was going to fuck you wearing his ring on your wedding finger."
The hot flash that washed over him held discomfort and hunger in equal measure.
"Sorry―" he started.
"Don't be," Sam cut him short. "It's a choice I made, getting in this thing with you, whatever it is. But don't mistake me, I'm not interested in filling in for a ghost."
"You aren't," Andrew said.
Inadequate, but a start all the same.
Desperation, guilt, grief, they're engraved in every word, each syllable a lacquered threat, and the exhaustion they cause weighs heavy on the characters and the reader.
I was exhausted when I finished this book, worn out in a contented way which I only understood once I took that first full breath after reading the final word, sealing the book shut, and hugging it to my chest.
Not formulaic or expected, kind or forgiving, but the familiarity of simply being alive and carrying on in the pit of grief, feeling haunted by those who went ahead without you is crushing and comforting.
But it's not simply a story of loss and the lost, either.
There's so many important things going on inside and outside of Andrew's unraveling: racial discrimination in academia, being genderqueer, polyamory, class prejudice, suppressed sexual orientation.
Important, relevant, tangible things that don't get lost within the occult heartbeat of the story.
Summer Sonsparallels its southern gothic ghost story beginnings and makes necessary demands of its readers to acknowledge the complexities of being human in an unforgiving society.
Some with a sharp command, others with unflustered recognition.
It's a story with more meat on its bones that its phantasmal premise lets on.
Is it perfect? No, but damn close. Did I figure out the twist pretty quickly? Yes, but was I bothered? Nope. Did I scream bloody murder during a classic horror movie moment? As I do with all non-Final Girl behaviour, absofuckinglutely.
A requiem to those who've lost someone, their someone, and are cursed to live the rest of their life hounded with unfulfilled questions.
No answers to why?, or how could you leave me behind?,and where are you now?
No answers, no resolutions, only the hazy agony that dims with time, and becomes a bearable, softened weight clinging to the living's backs.
In Summer Sons, Lee Mandelo lets us feel, just for a little while, a sibylline moment, what it would be like for that carried remembrance to reach out and touch us back.
He'd known Eddie to the bone, or so he thought. But having Eddie's memories inside of him was different. The tender awfulness of remembering himself through Eddie's eyes, beautiful and cherished and wanted with raw confused intensity with ownership, a sublimated tangled connection that Eddie had never spoken or unpacked, though it loomed so large―that understanding was an answer to the things about himself Del had made him confront, that he'd started figuring out with Halse, but it didn't help. Having been loved wasn't the same as being loved.
A glorious, fucked up mess that's unfortunately let down by muddled storytelling but can be forgiven for those surreal, joyful eruptions of comic book depravity that knock the audience flat on their ass.
This was bonkers and I really wished I'd loved it more.
I don't know what's happening here, or even what kind of succulent this is (Echeveria? Mother, sister, help?), even though I've been growing it for two years, but I'm so excited to see where this little lady's headed.
And whether I've got an Audrey II situation on my hands...
Bonus saplings!:
This little one is the only survivor of the crop.
And this one:
She was hiding from me behind her matriarch.
I've been drowning her in water and she didn't get squidgy and keel over!
s
Whenever I managed to propagate anything I feel like Persephone, goddess of spring, queen of the underworld; look upon my offspring and rejoice!
I have actual goddamn witnesses to this behaviour.
Also, a gentle reminder to those affected by snobby lit-bros who utter the ignorant words "Wouldn't you like to read some serious literature?"
To that we collectively eye-roll and say:
You will die with books unread. It's not morbid, just a fact. So buy what you want, get to what you like when you can. This isn't a school project, a book report isn't due. You've supported an author and collected art you love. A library of unread books is a beautiful thing 🖤📚
I only lost consciousness for a moment. Then the cold shocked me awake, and I started thrashing, trying to find the surface. A crossbow bolt pierced the water next to my face, missing me by inches, and I froze, only to have Dianda grab me from behind and yank me deeper into the water. She stopped when we hit the rocky seabed, and we huddled there, with crossbow bolts flashing around us and failing, thankfully, to find their marks.
A wooden arrow the length of my arm sliced through the water like it was air. Dianda visibly relaxed, hair waving in front of her eyes like a strange new type of kelp as she pushed away from the seabed, pulling me with her. I didn't struggle. There's almost nothing I hate more than being in the water, and I'd expected to have a little more time to prepare myself before I let the Luidaeg's spell do whatever it was going to do to me. I just wasn't anticipating Goblin assassins with crossbows pushing me into a situation where the only viable exit involved riding a mermaid's wheelchair into the marina.
He turned his head slightly, meeting my eyes. I almost flinched away. Selkie eyes are always dark, but the darkness in Connor's expression wasn't just a matter of biology; not tonight. He was a man looking at a choice he didn't know how to make, and this time, he was the one who looked like he was in danger of drowning.
When you're a reader, it's near impossible to follow a series without investing your own wants and needs into it.
The more you grow attached to certain characters, the greater your demand on where their story should go, and who with.
It's only natural to fully invest in them, fictional as they may be, to crave specific things, to grow weary or even angry when your unspoken requests aren't met and rejoice when they are, or bettered, even, by their creator.
Passivity isn't a common behavioural trait in the reading community, we live and breathe for the ephemeral friends gifted to us by people we'll never meet, and it's both a gift and a curse.
When I picked up the first in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series, I instantly fell in love; it was grungy, sleuthy, sassy, and positively doused in the Fae's pernicious nature.
Four things I adore in an almost feral way.
And the moment I felt that first flicker of possessiveness towards Toby, I started to want.
I wanted her to be treated better, I wanted her to believe more in her worth, I wanted her to have people, her people, her family.
And in a more immediate way, I wanted everyone to stop trying to kill her every five seconds - soooo many murder attempts and it's only book five, but alas, that is not the way of the Urban Fantasy protagonist: if they're not being diligently dogged by death, they're not doing their job right.
You may not always get what you want in fiction - if only I could pull authorial puppet strings, if only! - but that doesn't quell the emotion.
Because I did want.
I wanted, I wanted, I wanted until I felt my mortal seams bursting - Toby has that effect on people.
But there was always one particular want that persistently fluttered around my edges, demanding fruition; pestering, pestering, pestering until the urge to open Wikipedia and earn myself some goddamn rest from it nearly took over.
A want that this story made no longer a perhaps but instead an absolute.
(To be fair, I already knew because I decided to unuse my brain and read the blurb for the latest story and spoiled myself accidentally - not the first time I've done this, happened just lately with the Rivers of London series ... Idiocy reigns supreme in this sack of bones)
An absolute that came at the cost of something precious, and has made me immeasurably sad.
"Now, now, my little soldier boy, stay as your are, and rest. Your place in this tale is nearly severed through, and the time for roving's done. Rest a while, before the end begins."
So sad that I'm not even going to bother censoring myself.
So, fair warning, this review is about to get zero-fucks spoiler-heavy; if you'd like to remain innocent, turn back now.
If not?
Okay, we're ignoring the actual story until I've got this out my system, so... here we go:
I'VE WANTED TOBY AND TYBALT TOGETHER SINCE THE BEGINNING BUT NOT AT THE COST OF CONNOR'S LIFE!
IT ISN'T FAIR.
IT ISN'T FAAAIIIIIRRRR!
*deep cleansing breath*
...
I don't feel better.
And I truly, truly, didn't think this was the way it was going to go.
(I should've, though; it's said in uncertain terms three quarters of the way through, and I noticed but didn't let myself believe. Amazing how the human mind will protect itself, even in fiction)
Connor may never have been my endgame for Toby, but he was never a spare part to be scrubbed out - not that this is how McGuire treated him, but how other authors tend to within tri-party relationships.
Love triangles are a pet hate of mine, they bring me absolutely no joy, because a) they never choose polyamory, and b) one side of the triangle is usually a giant douche-balloon who I can never fathom the reason for their presence in first place.
(If the triangle's actually an open-sided square, let it be an open-sided square for fuck's sake)
It's a frustrating, joyless trope and even the atoms in my bones are blowing raspberries at it, flipping it the bird, plotting its timely demise.
But do you want to know what's worse than that rotten fucking tri-sided bastard?
What's true, unholy geometry?
The quadrilateral triangle.
The triangle that's equal on all side, perfect in its balance, never to to be unshaped.
And when it is?
Agony.
Pure, unfettered agony.
It's a nasty trick author's pull, to make each party someone to grasp onto, to make the inevitable choice impossible because quite clearly there should be no choice at all, only polycule bliss.
It's fucking unbearable.
I'd rather eye-roll my way through a lifetime of love triangle clichés than spend one moment in that special circle of hell dubbed Impossible and Completely Unnecessary Romantic Choices.
There's no way to win, there's rarely satisfaction, and there's always someone who loses out.
In this case, it was Connor.
Connor who wasn't an asshole, wasn't there to distract from the inevitable conclusion, he wasn't fucking expendable.
The sound of the doorbell cute me off mid-sentence. [...] I stalked to the door, wrenching it open. "What?!"
Connor didn't flinch. Putting his hands against the sides of my face, he stepped close and kissed me deeply. I grabbed his wrists, using the added leverage to pull myself closer to him. For a moment―a brief, sweet moment―I forgot we were on the verge of war. His skin was damp, and his lips tasted even more like salt than they usually did. He'd been in the water recently. Connor was the only one who could make that thought appealing to me.
He broke the kiss but didn't let go. Pressing his forehead to mine, he asked. "Are you alright?"
"Yes. No. Maybe. I don't know." I laughed unsteadily. "What are you doing here?"
"I wanted to see you." He kissed me again.
But he is gone, I googled it immediately after the final page to make sure, and oh... oh, it hurts.
He may not have been the most fascinating character, he wasn't some godlike creature sent to turn Toby's hormones upside down, he wasn't the love of her life, but he was her first love, her best friend, a truly good man.
"Did you sleep okay?"
I answered with a kiss.
[...]
"How about you?" I asked him sweetly, running the toes of one foot down the side of his leg. "Did you sleep okay?"
"Except for the snoring, sure," he said, and smiled.
I couldn't stop myself from laughing at that, resting my head against his shoulder. This time of year, the way the light was coming through the window meant we had two, maybe three hours before we needed to get serious about heading for the Queen's Court. I had too much to do to lie around in bed, the temptation of my Selkie lover aside.
"Sometimes being responsible sucks," I grumbled, and rolled out of bed. I grabbed my robe from the floor. "Come on, Connor. Time to face another night in Fairyland."
Connor groaned and followed me to the kitchen.
Conversation died in favor of nutrition, or what passed for it around my place. Connor ate fresh fruit and granola, while I had most of a pot of coffee, pouring the last of it into a bowl of Lucky Charms before starting a new pot.
"You eat like a six year old," said Connor, grinning at me as he put his bowl in the sink.
"A caffeinated six year old," I corrected.
"My apologies. You eat like a caffeinated six year old." He walked back and kissed me lightly. "I need to check in and get changed for tonight. I'll come back and get you in a few hours?"
"I should be getting ready myself," I said regretfully. "Stay safe, okay? I'm not ready to break up with your again."
He laughed a little. "I'll try not to run into any knives."
"I'll hold you to that. Open roads."
Connor kissed me again. "Open road, sweet tides, and I'll be back before you know it."
"Liar," I said, and let him go. That was something I was getting less and less comfortable doing...
Such a good fucking man, even the way he died was brave and selfless.
The rarity of men like this, in fiction and reality, is blinding; normally a "good guy" reads as a douchebag incel who somehow feels he deserves a woman's attention while he does absolutely nothing to earn it, and will most likely be very subtly abusing her in the process - a passing comment here, a little gaslighting before breakfast, perhaps some innocent slut-shaming.
Not Connor, not my beloved Selkie, who to others may have come off as passive, a little bland, not a hero, but that's actually what made him such an attractive character and partner for Toby.
(I'm so fond of characters who aren't very strong or talented but are brave as fuck even if they don't have the strength/magic/intelligence to back up. To me, that's braver than being the biggest badass in the universe)
[He] put his arms around me. "Are you alright?"
"No," I said, and buried my face against his shoulder, breathing in the reassuring sea-salt smell of him. For a moment, I just let him hold me, trying to pretend that everything could ever be all right again. Voice muffled by his skin, I whispered, "She took Gillian, Connor."
"I know." He stroked my hair with one hand, holding me closer. "We're going to get her back. I swear to you, we're going to get her back."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I refuse to let this end any other way." He pulled back, just enough to press a kiss against the side of my jaw, and said, "Besides, she's your daughter. She's probably too damn stubborn to do anything but survive."
I laughed a little as I pulled away, wiping my eyes with the back of one hand. "I hope you're right."
He didn't demand her attention without reason, he showed concern when it was warranted but never tried to hold her back from what she needed to do, he respected her and liked her.
Loved her.
And it was snatched away in a page and I'm fucking angry about it.
I've lost many a fictional friend in my reading life, it's par the course; some I can mourn and leave behind because it felt right for the story, think of them now and then with fondness (Noahhhhh; I miss you soot-boy), but others? They're the dead I'll never get over, the parts of me that'll never feel just in their absences, the one's the author will never earn my forgiveness for.
And I've thought about it and thought about it, and I can't justify Connor's loss.
What was the point, other than to definitively clear the way for Tybalt?
Which pisses me off to no end because now? Now we'll never know if Toby would've chosen Tybalt in the end, if her and Connor would've realised first love doesn't mean forever and chosen friendship instead.
I'LL NEVER BLOODY KNOW!
Because McGuire fucked me up with a triangle and left me bleeding from its excision.
Made the choice impossible, then made it for me.
Made it final, made it irreversible, made it hurt like hell, and I'm not. fucking. okay!
Controversial statement alert:
I'd rather read Bella lead Jacob around by his wolf-snoot while sparkle-tits flashed his goods at her than go through this again.
No hyperbole, just facts.
I hate this.
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!
And now to be a little hyperbolic: I feel like it's going to follow me around for the rest of the series.
Logically, I know it probably won't; I'm a mercurial little shit who'll start swooning again the moment Tybalt flashes his leonine smirk at her in the next book.
Hell, he could glance in her direction with a perfectly raised eyebrow and I'd internally combust.
(Damonis Tybalt. End of discussion. Also, I'm probably going to end up watching The Vampire Diaries again, just for that fucking smirk)
He just has that affect on me.
But as of this moment?
Okay, I think I've exorcised enough emotional poison for one day, I'll just brood inside for the rest of my life from now on.
...
Let's talk story!
One Salt Sea begins in much the same way as the previous books in the series: Someone's missing, Toby's services are employed to find them, all hell breaks loose.
"Sylvester, what's going on?"
"Nothing bad. Don't be so paranoid."
"I can't believe you just said that," I said, eyeing him. In the past two years, I've been shot, stabbed, poisoned, betrayed, and nearly clawed to death, frequently while in Sylvester's service. This endless excitement has left me with too many scars for polite company, nightmares I try not to think about, and a resident Fetch who teases me about my tendency to spend Sundays in my bathrobe, watching TV and spending quality time with the cats. I've earned my paranoia.
"I'm sorry!" He held up his hands in surrender, not quite swallowing his laughter. "I promise not to question your right to be irrationally worried by everything I say. Now will you listen?"
"As long as you don't say the words 'simple,' 'little,' or 'favor,' we're fine."
"I need to ask you for a favor."
I closed my eyes, counting to ten.
It's pretty much the drill at the point and book five is no different, at least in its inception, because in this episode of let's send Toby on a mission that nearly gets her killed in a new and exciting way, we're venturing into the Undersea, into Saltmist, the Fae dominion of the merfolk, et al.
An elegant stone palace decked in mother-of-pearl and patches of living kelp rose from the seafloor ahead of us, cradled in rings of multicolored coral. It had been constructed with no regard for gravity, resulting in dozens of tapering towers, high balconies that went nowhere, and wide windows instead of doors. Why bother building to constraints that don't apply to you?
[...]
I could have spent days, if not weeks, exploring Saltmist. It was labyrinthine on a level even Shadowed Hills couldn't match, since Shadowed Hills has to at least pretend to believe in gravity. Saltmist had ballrooms where every wall was a dance floor, dining halls where the tables hung suspended on ropes of kelp that also served as a living salad bar, and passageways set in what I couldn't help regarding as "the floor" or "the ceiling." Even the air-filled areas were built with little regard for mundane architecture, following plans that seemed as much borrowed from sailing ships and Viking feast halls as they were from the medieval castles I'm used to seeing.
The fae were as strange as their surroundings. Merfolk with sea horse tails stuck close to the floor in the underwater areas. They seemed to fill a role similar to the Hobs back home, since they were almost all engaged in some form of housework or repair, and most didn't look up when we swam past them. Cephali were in evidence in both the wet and dry areas, usually armed and hanging from the ceiling. According to Dianda, they served as the Ducal guard, save for a few, like Helmi, who had gone into private service.
We've never been here before, normally beached on land like most of the Fae who aren't invited to come play with the selkies and make sand-angels with the undines.
It's uncharted territory, even for Toby, and honestly?
This thalassaphobe had a fun time, dealt fairy well, didn't squint through chapters until we reached dry land again.
I mean, I only grimaced a few dozen times, most notably when the Cephali appeared - the cephalopod equivalent of the mermaid.
Did I consider throwing the book across the room? Yes, yes I did, because well, octopuses, and also if an octopus-lady (reverting to toddler-talk because PHOBIAS) wrapped her tentacle around my wrist and manhandled me, no matter how nicely, I'd yeet myself across the next continent and finally experience the one minute mile. Preferably on land.
...
I shuddered just writing that.
Tentacle.
Call me a wimp, call me a landlubber, call me anything you damn well please, I don't care.
The ocean is fucking terrifying; too deep, too dark, and there are way too many alien creatures living their best squishy lives in it (JELLYFISH ARE JUST ALIENS AND THEY WILL TAKE OVER ONE DAY).
And I am negative point five million okay with it.
However... I will suffer through it for Toby, and for yet more missing Fae children, which is becoming a theme.
Book three, and as far as I'm aware book six(the one after OSS), have both involved missing children.
Snatched from their beds and spirited away to unknown, unsafe pastures.
Which should be impossible as children are precious to the Fae, difficult to conceive and in danger of their own magic until a certain age; the Fae protect them fiercely, and to harm one is a crime so verboten the punishment is unfailingly death.
It shouldn't be this easy for their progeny to disappear into thin air like they are.
Which makes me wonder: are the Fae just really shit at protecting their offspring, or issomething rotten in the state of Faerie?
Does something wicked this way come?
Is this prologue to the omen coming on?
A broached mischief to unborn times?
Some ill a-brewing towards Faerie's rest?
Do the waters swell before a boisterous storm?
Do lean-looked prophets whisper fearful change?
Do these late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us?
...
Sorry, I'll stop Shakespeare-ing at you, but his bardness really did like a good omen.
The question still stands, however:
If children are the heart of the Fae, their most cherished possession, is there a reason for their continuing disappearance?
They're never taken by the same person/being twice, it's always someone new, but they are always taken and without fail for nefarious means: Blind Michael for his Wild Hunt, and now Rayseline for her violent grasp for the throne.
Does this mean something bigger, darker is coming? Something more machiavellian controlled by one, sole Fae? Simon Torquill, perhaps? And are the children the first step of the plan?
I have so many questions about this, so many, but I only have two choices: spoil myself and miss out on the big reveals, or be a good little goblin and wait it out.
...
I guess we're going goblin because spoilers are the worst!
As demonstrated by myself by just spoiling myself accidentally, again, and goddammit, it was a big one!
Like, story arc revealing big, and I can't unseen it!
Damn my need for information to write emotional word vomit, I should be banned from Fandom Wikis, banned for life!
Ugh, I'm so pissed, but back to some sort of salient point:
Something fishy (merfolk joke, badum tshhhh) is going on and in the case of One Salt Sea,it starts with the kidnap of the Undersea monarchy's children.
Whether this leads to anything more significant in the series, whether my theory's correct, I'm still completely in the dark but it did make for a reliably fun, tense, bloody outing with Toby and her cohorts.
If it had been a lesser writer, the trope would've lost its shine, dulled through repetition, but because it's Seanan McGuire, because it's Toby, every desperate search for the Fae's offspring is ceaselessly exciting.
If Toby's not hitching a ride on the Queen of the Undersea's wheelchair - with the queen in it, may I add - in a desperate bid to escape goblin hitmen-for-hire, she's unknowingly letting the Luidaeg turn her into a temporary fucking mermaid - I mean, it's right there on the cover but I was still shocked and worried for Toby and any signs of goldfish PTSD, or quite pleasingly allowing Tybalt to steal a kiss before throwing her into the freezing Shadow Roads in an attempt to save her life - that's my kinda romancing, it's never boring, it's never expected.
It was easier to see than I expected, my eyes sorting through the darkness of the waves the way they would normally sort through the darkness of the world above. I could even see colors―green clots of kelp, mossy barnacles clinging to the pilings, the jewel-tone sweep of Dianda's tail. And beneath me, in the space where my leg should have been, the crimson-and-copper scales covering my own tail. It wasn't a surprise. That didn't stop my heart from dropping into my stomach, and for a brief, terrible moment, I wasn't sure I was going to be able too swallow my panic.
Well, at least you can't drown, I thought dizzily.
That struck me as funny for some reason. I swallowed my laughter, since I wasn't sure what would happen if I sucked in a lungful of water; the effort helped me get the panic back under control. I tipped farther forward, trying to get a good look at myself. The combination of buoyancy and the unfamiliar length of my body turned the motion into a somersault, fins flashing past my face just before I broke the surface.
Dianda watched me expectantly, waiting for my reaction. The Selkie archers were doing much the same. At least they'd lowered their bows when given the command to stand down. I pushed the hair out of my eyes, tucking it behind my ears. My pointed ears―I guess there's no point in wearing a human disguise if you're going to run around being a fish from the waist down.
"Well," I said, "that's different."
I've read so much Fae fiction at this point, I'm rarely surprised, jaded even (always coming back for more, though, because I love the trickster-y little fucks), but Toby never disappoints.
I can't quite put my finger on why because it's actually a story which forces the narrative along, reveals things about Toby (her new abilities and what they could mean), brings some storylines to an end (Connor *cries forever*, Rayseline - ish *fist pump*, Gillian *frowny face*), and begins new ones (holy cryptic starfish, what was all that at the end with the Luidaeg?).
It's an important book in the grand scheme of whatever the fuckety fucking fuck is going on, and I had an awesome time, but I felt almost... underwhelmed.
Or, maybe, just... whelmed?
(I'm Scottish/Irish/Belgian, so I'm taking the sage wisdom of Bianca Stratford as a yes)
With all that was happening, I felt like I should have been more engaged, on tenterhooks, losing my absolute mind, and in many a moment, I was.
The rage-y cry-fest at the start of this review is evidence enough, but maybe that loss, that heartbreak I can't forgive has overshadowed just how good this story is.
I haven't even talked about Tybalt in detail!
Fawned over his flirty nature, put my bid out into the universe for him and Toby to get their act together because for Titania's sake, how many times does he need to kiss her and swear he'll come back to her before she gets the bloody message.
...he lunged, grabbing me around the middle and hauling us both backward, away from the closest tier of Goblins. An arrow zipped through the spot where I'd been standing only seconds before.
"What are you―" I began.
"Save your breath," he hissed. "I'll come for you." Then his mouth was covering mine in a kiss as heated as the battle cries of the Goblins rushing up behind us. Everything seemed to slow for that one brief second, and I was all too aware of the heat from his skin, the press of his chest against mine, the faint pennyroyal scent of him. I started to kiss him back―
―and then he was shoving me, hard, into the shadows. As I fell, I saw Tybalt wheel to launch himself at the Goblins, already snarling. Then the shadows closed around me, and I found myself in the endless dark and crushing cold of the Shadow Roads . . . alone.
"Tybalt!"
Allow me to be Toby's answering phone for a sec:
HE'S INTO YOU, STUPID!
"Tybalt―" I stopped, swallowing, and finished, "If you don't find anything, come back to the apartment?"
"Little fish." He reached out to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear, and smiled. "As if you could prevent it?"
I'm going to go insane if it doesn't happen soon.
Tybalt [allowed] his eyes to travel the length of my [dress-clad] body.
I snorted, spreading my arms to give him the best possible view. "Go ahead and laugh, because this is your only shot. You're staying out here while I get some pants on."
"I had no intention of mocking you. I think you look lovely." He hesitated a moment before adding, in a softer tone, "Whether you believe me or not, your mother was never as fair a child of Faerie as you are right now."
"I . . ." The blush raced up my cheeks and the edges of my ears, leaving them burning. I let my arms drop to my sides, barely keeping myself from folding them over my chest. "I have to go change." I managed, and turned to scurry down the hall.
My cheeks stayed hot even after I was in my bedroom with the door closed.
Genuinely lose my fucking mind.
"I did not pause. I did not hesitate. Your life was in danger, and while I knew the Shadow Roads would be less than hospitable, I also knew they wouldn't kill you. I'm sorry to have harmed you. I'm sorry to have caused you distress. But what I did, I did to save you, and I would do it again, were the same moment set before me."
But I can't even think about it rationally right now because everything hurts.
I'm in pain.
So much bloody pain.
I can't see through it, past it, around it, it's just everywhere and reducing me to this incomprehensible, rambling emotion-monster, which isn't fun for anybody.
My only hope right now, at this exact moment, is that when I once again go through the beloved ritual of opening the first page of the next book, that it hurts a little less, that Connor's absence isn't such an affront to the senses, that I don't feel like crying simply thinking of him, and that Toby and I can move on.
Remember, always remember, but go forward, even just a little bit.
"I miss him," I said. The waves almost swallowed the sound of my voice.
The Luidaeg looked at me gravely, her irises shading back to dusty driftglass blue. It looked right on her; it looked real, like I was seeing her eyes without a mask for the first time. "That doesn't go away. But it gets better."
[...]
Nothing stays the same for long, not in Faerie, not in the human world, not anywhere. [...] I wouldn't have Connor anymore. But someone would wear his [seal]skin, and if that was enough to keep the Roane a little bit alive, maybe it was enough to keep him a little bit alive, too.
The Luidaeg put a hand on my shoulder. I glanced at her, startled, before nodding and putting my own hand over it. We stayed there for a long time, listening to the distant music drifting from the house behind us, and watched as the tide rolled out. She didn't say anything about my tears. I didn't say anything about hers.
Persephone’s turn 🥰💗💖 When you’re laying down on the love of your life husband 🥰 and you gotta wake up your wife lol it’s the companion to my old drawing. pic.twitter.com/TxtY3p8XAC
...never, never, upon pain of misery beyond measure, trust the sea-witch, or take her bargains, or risk her anger. These are the things every Selkie-child knows.
But they never tell us that the sea-witch can be kind, when she wants to. They never tell us that she cried at night like a lost child, or that the ocean loves her, or that she's lonely, or that she's alone.
They never tell us not to love her.
I thought reading this short prequel to One Salt Sea would act as some form of balm to the agony I'm stilling feeling days after finishing.
Answer some of those cryptic storyline bombs Seanan McGuire unleashed on us with no warning at all.
Perhaps even lend some comfort to my fractured, goblin heart.
But alas, instead of soothing the unsavoury little beast sobbing inside of me, she made it worse.
She tricked me with a story about my beloved Luidaeg.
The character I excitedly, phonetically chant to in my head whenever she appears:
Who I thought would bring me some snarky peace, but instead brought me betrayal, an ill-fated love story, and a broken heart.
"I missed you."
[...]
"I buried you."
And then there's my broken heart.
Still sore, still confused, and now even more worse for wear.
My chant when the Luidaeg appears will be a little softer now, a little quieter:
Lou-sha-k...
Lou-sha-k...
Lou-sha-k...
Always my beloved ditch-witch, Her Surliness, the grumpiest little starfish that ever did live, who I've always known possesses a bigger heart than she allows anyone to see, and In Sea-Salt Tears proves it.
But it might just hurt a little to look at her from now on, to have context to her fury, toknow.
These are the things every Selkie-child knows: that the sea does not love us, that we are finite and flawed, and that we must never, never truth the sea-witch. I know all these things to be true. Because I made the greatest mistake of all, a mistake that may well be unique in all our world: I loved her, and she loved me. I broke her heart.
[...]
Now the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of my beautiful Annanel Lee. . . and I suppose, in its way, that's no more than I deserve.
My poor, salty blorbo.
Why Seanan? Whyyyyy are you doing this to me?!
Someone throw the dumbest, happiest book they know at me, right this second, before I pull an Alice and flood the house in tears.
I beg of you.
If only for the furniture.
May Oberon forgive me for all that I've done, but Annie, my darling Annie. . . I am still not sorry.
I'd genuinely forgotten how the party "betrayal" moment hits me like a monster truck on apocalypse diesel.
Completely blocked it out.
Put the furious need to slap the stupid out of Levi away in a tightly sealed box; bolted it, air-sealed it, wrapped it in thorny twine like the good little emo brat I remain to this day, and buried it deep, deep down in the memory dungeon.
So deep that I entombed it a little too well and it ceased to exist at all until Rainbow Rowell took it upon herself (and Gabi Nam) to illustratively re-immortalise it forever in my repressive brainpan.
Burned it right into the retinas and made a pretty border with the irises, like a fucking plaque of betrayal forever emblazoned on my eyeballs.
...
Gah.
I'm figuratively bleeding all over the place and I'm not over the initial blood loss from almost exactly two years ago yet!
Boys! Stupid fucking boys!
Being all sweet and adorable, cosying up with The Outsiders← if you know, you know, and then RUINING IT WITH HIS STUPID MOUTH.
...
Yeah, no, I'm still not okay.
Not even the obscene adorableness of this graphic novel can soften that particular death-blow.
Levi's floppity hair might help a little, however...
So floppity...
Bonus Charlie-bear while I was taking photos:
Helping.
Helping distantly.
Helping the most.
I recently learned that tuxedo cats are supposed to have divine energy and are naturally dramatic.
...
I'm living with the reincarnation of Bastet, aren't I?
Ps. This illustration by Katie Rosemary has mad Charlie energy:
Biopics make me nervous, especially ones featuring such societally absorbed and adored personas like Freddie Mercury.
I wasn't even born yet when Live Aid happened, but it's ingrained in my subconscious, there before I knew to look for it, and it's the same with Queen's music.
The controversial beat of Radio Ga Gathumping away like a sympathetic heartbeat long before I learned the word for the rhythm in my chest.
The same beat that happily soared whilst watching Rami Malek disappear inside the familiar and beloved form of Freddie Mercury.
Ostentatious, delicate, complicated Freddie.
No sycophancy, just the perfect amount of hero worship and respect for the infinite complexities of a human being we all "knew" and the affection we all still hold for.
An affection that reminds us that we know just how to clap our hands and how to thump our feet from the first the very first bar of We Will Rock You.
Swearing, cursing, cussing, blaspheming, whatever you want to call it, I love it all so fucking dearly.
Love it in all forms, love that it provides the precise, atavistic punch I need to express frustration, anger, joy, and so on.
Emotions I can't find any satisfaction in conveying through 'sugar's or 'darn's.
The mere fact that 'fuck', a single word, has so many different meanings depending on how you use it is kind of extraordinary:
Fuck it.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Fuck right off.
Fucking hell.
What the fuck?
I've fucked up.
Fuckity, fuck, fuck fuck.
And if you change the tone of any of these usages, the meaning changes entirely.
'Fuck me', a cry of frustration one moment, a sexual demand the next, and situation dependent, possibly both.
All because of a rearrangement of the tongue and vocal cords.
...
Isn't that insane? Fucking magical?!
It's four letters long and it has that power?!
Crazy.
And I can't think of another word in the English language that behaves so chameleon-like, that bears so many meanings, and I can't help but find that incredibly beautiful, the word and the behaviour.
And it's not the only one with an ancient origin: 'c*nt'(censored because it's still a difficult one for most) has yet to have any definitive etymology but has been attributed to the Hindu Goddess, Kunti, a representation of the beauty and power of the female body, which connects to the Anglo Saxon word 'Cu', one of the oldest words which evolved into many other words, but the one I like the most is 'queen'.
So, any time someone hurls the c-word at me (this isn't a thing, I'm not often on the receiving end of abuse that isn't from my sisters, and that's just affection), they're not insulting me, they're calling me a goddamn monarch.
...
This is why I love words.
Why I love swearing.
And why I'm always happy to see it in fiction.
(And honestly, I read a lot of Urban Fantasy and if the PI protagonist isn't dropping some salty f-bombs on the regular, then they're probably not being worked hard enough)
If you want a true masterclass in how beautiful and lyrical cursing can be, read Glen Duncan's, Bloodlines Trilogy.
I don't have the vocabulary to explain to you how a story about a suicidal werewolf falling in love whilst on the run from hunters, and every fifth word a curse word left me sobbing from its astounding grace.
I can't do it.
But it is a perfect example of the beauty of profanity.
And it's not that I need it, I can read/watch/listen/live without swearing but I appreciate the emotion it carries, I appreciate its base honesty.
Although, I have become increasingly fond of authors creating their own profane dialect.
Seanan McGuire(review above) is a prime example; in her October Daye series, the eponymous, Fae main character straddles the line between a San Franciscan reality and the ethereality of Faerie.
So, within the story Toby does in fact 'shit', 'fuck', and 'bloody' to her heart's content but smattered throughout her colourful displays of cussing are the Fae equivalents:
Root and branch! - has the same tone as 'oh, for fuck's sake'
Oak and ash! - 'bloody hell'
Maeve's Tits! - 'fuck!'
And they all feel authentic, perhaps because they're linked back to their progenitors, or their trees of worship, or from the scared oaths they take, so by referencing something personal, the curse becomes personal, thus authenticating it.
Because it wouldn't be believable that the Fae hadn't linguistically evolved in a different, more personalised manner from their human counterparts.
Their culture is different, their history is different, they are fundamentally different.
So, instead of the author either forcing our curse words exclusively on them or even shying away from cursing completely, they use a profane patois to drive home the feeling of being not in the Kansas anymore.
And in the case of Toby, because she's of both our world and the Fae's, the combination of 'fuck' and 'oak and ash' becomes a more immersive, complete experience.
We become both human and Fae during the simple act of Toby crying out in frustration: 'Oberon's balls!'
s
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