It's Bone Magic Time!
I am SICK of seeing the term SPOOKY SEASON even though I happen to LOVE this season of SPOOKY THINGS
Hi! I tried to send this last night, but absolutely tuckered myself out before I could. So, I hope you had a nice Sunday Roast while you waited for my newsletter. Might I recommend the one at Jones Wood Foundry, followed by their decadent sticky toffee pudding, for next time?
After recently reading several literary whoppers in a row, I let myself have a mental breather by experiencing the marvels of the outside world. I took a windswept road trip to Montauk for pumpkinnery and seaside bluff exploration; binge-watched Derry Girls; visited a Chelsea gallery to see colorful, fabric-made replicas of everyday objects by Do Ho Suh; witnessed a raccoon entering my local subway stop; went back uptown for art exhibits on the Tudors and kimonos; reprised my role as the ~investigation freak~ in Paradise Killer, my favorite murder mystery game that runs entirely on vaporwave vibes; drank the greatest grape juice of my young life at the farmers market; stomped around the newly-fashionable Brooklyn Heights (lol); and more, which I realize is a shock to those of you accustomed to my sin of sloth.
Today's newsletter, however is brought to you by the power of delicious buttermilk biscuits from Sundays Only, bodega coffee, and a few babybels. I came back inside to convince you to read something creepy ahead of Halloween.
A Moment on Genre
In case you haven't noticed, I've been having a bit of a sci-fi and fantasy moment. (Don’t know the difference between the two genres? Let me clear that up for you.) Many of my recent reads have been set in bizzare fantasias, dominated by magic mirrors or portal worlds or time travel, and populated by weirdos of all denominations. I have no genre-based fidelity in this newsletter, but I think it is fair to say that my favorite books are generally about well-written characters who ~endure~ until it all goes off the rails. At the moment, this manifests by reading books in which the basis of reality is up for debate from the get-go, and things get even more off-kilter from there.
For those of you hoping for some commentary on some classics anytime soon, I can only say that I promise to have done my time reading the so-called Western canon—I was an English major, after all. While you might consider my dalliance with sci-fi and fantasy a distraction from Great Literature, I would like to remind you that Shakespeare's best plays are full of expository ghosts! Toni Morrison's Pulitzer prize-winning Beloved is a textbook example of magical realism (and is, like, EXTREMELY haunted)! Mary Shelley, who probably lost her virginity in a graveyard, got famous for writing about a monster who gets cobbled together from spare body parts and shocked into sentience! If you want to read books in which the most dramatic thing is a dark family secret or a social commentary on the times, then bully for you. But perhaps, with Halloween just around the corner, you'll indulge my current interest in the spectral and strange—and remember that many of the Big Important Writers of Yore dabbled in them too.
Anyway. With that in mind, let's get to the lesbian necromancer books.
The Locked Tomb Series
I finally started Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series, which I have been fondly calling the lesbian necromancer books since the first came out in 2019. Another way to describe the first installment, Gideon The Ninth, would be the book about bitches and bones, because all the characters are nasty to each other and there are skeletons everywhere. Eight necromancers and their sworn knights compete to serve as "necrosaints" for their solar system's Emperor Undying, the Necrolord Prime. Each duo hails from a different planet, or "House," which in turn has its own system of necromantic magic (you know, bewitching guts or sucking out spirits or controlling other bodily ephemera). Gideon Nav, an unwilling swordfighter of the Ninth House, gets harangued into accompanying her lifelong nemesis and genius bone witch, Lady Harrowhark Nonagesimus, to the off-planet competition, where chaos obviously ensues. Can you think of a better series to start in the weeks approaching Halloween? I simply cannot.
I mainlined this book and all its oddities—a lot of hair-chewing and nose-bleeding and ickiness of bodily magic, set in a decaying gothic palace reminiscent of an Evanescence music video fried in gristle with a messy dollop of gay pining—with nary a single fuck of an idea what was going on most of the time. If you go in knowing anything at all, know that this is a series notorious for being both extremely detailed in its world-building and woefully unforgiving if you’re not willing to keep up with it. It's fair to say that Muir "provides just enough exposition to more or less give the gist of what’s going on at any given moment, and her grasp on the narrative is so sure that you can relax as you read." I had to re-read a few sections once or twice, but re-reading through Gideon's voice is a treat anyway: She’s a "smart, foul-mouthed, queer swordfighter with a skull painted on her face, and the inside-her-brain POV that Muir has chosen here means we get full access to every panting, furious, childish, bloodthirsty and impure thought that crosses Gideon's mind—which is fantastic, because I wanted to be her best friend by the end of the first page anyway, and everything that came after was just candy." There are bone puns galore and utter dumbassery to cushion the gooey bits of necromancy, which are pretty brutal and feral. Even the book's pronounciation guide has a slew of stupid jokes interspersed through Very Serious Explanations of Lore. I just became immediately obsessed with the way Muir walks the line of utter seriousness and absolute horseplay.
I can't say much about the second installment, Harrow The Ninth, without spoiling quite a bit about the first. Rest assured that it is darker and more arcane than Gideon, but still maintains a sense of humor and is a worthy sequel. I will start the third installment, Nona The Ninth, this week. These books embody the whimsy and menace of a well-carved jack-o-lantern, and I do not care that this is a cheesy seasonal tie-in ahead of October 31. These books are cheesy in the way only a space opera with death-y magic can be.
RIYL: My Chemical Romance (Gerard Way stans STAND UP); being goth; Beetlejuice, both the movie and the musical (the "screamingly good fun" will be on Broadway until January 2023); bad puns; tales in which the enemies are in fact lovers, but also still FIRMLY hate each other; The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey; creepy Catholic art; the Monster Mash; the aesthetics of Edgar Allan Poe, including his gutter.
Other than these books, my mind is singularly focused on the upcoming Halloween impalement of carved pumpkins in my neighborhood. Dozens of little carved pumpkins will be soon be stabbed through for display on a fence surrounding this tiny townhouse that I pass on my daily constitutional, and the pumpkins will remain impaled there until they rot off. It is a baller celebration of All Hallows' Eve, and every seasonal decoration I see in the meantime is a harbinger of this delightfully deranged display. Again, a healthy dose of whimsy and menace for the soul.
With that in mind, I’ll leave you to think about what you did. Bye!