A Season of Monstrous Conceptions - a Beautiful Sapphic Victorian Novella
“Strange visions tumbled through her mind, of landscapes twisting upon themselves and a fractured storm-racked sky, and she could not say if it was a dark imagining or a window opened from this street to a terrible, sideways world.”
Set in seventeenth-century London, babies are being born with strange bodies like extra eyes, sharp teeth, and fur. The city is in a panic, believing this to be the work of a demon. Sarah Davis is a young woman working as a midwife’s apprentice, she was born with a tail and so is intimately familiar with these strange goings-on. When she takes on a new client, she begins to work with the husband to investigate what kind of magic is causing these births, and how it can be stopped. But Sarah will be forced to reckon with her own power and her own body as she begins to integrate herself more into a society filled with strange magical individuals.
A Season of Monstrous Conceptions by Lina Rather was published October 31st and is a beautiful sapphic victorian novella.
“What must it be to have a life that was not on loan to you?”
Here’s what I loved:
The writing in this story is on a whole nother level. Lina Rather has an incredible way with words and has created this sort of dreamy, dark, magical world that feels so incredibly real. Mixing real history with the fantastical seamlessly, she builds a world that is really unique.
I thoroughly enjoyed the magic system and the idea of worlds bordering one another causing magic to spill over. Despite this story only being slightly over 100 pages long, the world feels fully complete and incredibly large. There’s some really shocking and violent moments in this book involving female rage and magic that I really loved.
The characters are incredible. Sarah is our lead and her inner monologue is a fascinating one to follow. She is so complex, yet also innocent, and it creates a lot of beautiful and sad moments as she navigates the harsh world around her. Mrs. June is her mentor and has some incredible one liners that would have me shaking in my boots if I had to face her. And as her real motivations begin to come through, I grew to really fear Mrs. June. Another standout is Margaret, the love interest of Sarah. Margaret is this beautifully free soul who has learned to dance around a world that wasn’t meant for her and is so inspiring to read. The love story between herself and Sarah is so gentle and kind, a polar opposite to the outer factors affecting the two of them.
Overall, A Season of Monstrous Conceptions is a deliciously dark and beautiful story that I devoured in a few hours. I just couldn’t put it down. I highly recommend picking up a copy of your own! A big thank you to Tor for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.
“So many if-onlys. If only this were a different world. If only she had been born the kind of man rich enough to buy respectability or noble enough to demand it. If only she were a different woman, who did not desire so strongly so many wrong things.”
