Admont Abbey Library

This baroque baddie is for every Disney child and adult who covets Belle’s library. I can just imagine falling in love with the hairy beast who pays the taxes on this treasure. 20,000 books are nested underneath domed ceilings and frescos depicting the arts and sciences alongside Christianity. It’s easy to imagine full skirts swinging to a waltz, a Juliette on the balcony while Romeo waits below, any dream you’ve ever had now has the perfect backdrop. This is reality so good it inspires fantasy.

Read More: About Our Monastery Library

Stuttgart Library

Few cultures do orderly like the Germany people. Stuttgart imposes structure and order in every inch of its design, and yet it’s not imposing. It’s light and airy, communal but spacious. The natural light pouring in from above drenches the minimalist shelves and furniture, while the all white floors and stairs bounce the light and draw the eye. While a happy and inviting public space, given the right lighting direction and cinematography Stuttgart Library would be an amazing horror movie setting. No ankle-y bimbos would survive running up those stairs!

Read More: Stuttgart Library Wikipedia

Abbey Library of Saint Gall

Another Baroque baddie enters the villa! It’s easy to love the Abbey Library of Saint Gall, proclaimed with a Greek inscription above the door to be “The Healing Place of the Soul” for all those who enter. Thankfully over 160,000 books have been collected here and made available for public consumption both in person and digitally. This library has rare collections, medieval manuscripts, even a mummy. I want to smoke a cigar, drink a brandy, and look out a window of this library while I contemplate life.

Read More: Abbey Library of Saint Gall WIkipedia

The Uncensored Library

I YEARN FOR THE MINES! Minecraft is a beloved game for all ages, in large part for its accessibility and comfortable game play. I, however, like to play modded minecraft that spawns giant mobs during the Blood Moon! The ONLY thing that can pull me out of heavily modified Minecraft is The Uncensored Library, a neoclassical Minecraft build to house free, digital copies of censored materials from across the world. While the book content is often censored, Minecraft is a wholesome, family game that is rarely blocked from high-control cultures. The Uncensored Library allows users to read library content from in-game books housed in the library. Users interact with the books themselves, reading the content, turning pages, and consuming without any barriers.

Watch More: The Making of The Uncensored Library

Tianjin Binhai Library

Apparently “Book Mountain Atrium” is not a standard design option for modern library builds? Hmm… Strange… But a stunning atrium would be a necessary design piece for the highly conceptual Tianjin Binhai Library, a centerpiece to the Binhai cultural center. 1.2 million books do need somewhere to go, why not give the illusion of shelves up to the ceiling? Don’t worry, the structural design is actually made to house bound books at accessible level shelving only. Facsimiles of book spines fill the upper shelves, creating a fantasy world for readers in “The Eye” reading auditorium.

Read More: The Architectural Project Review for Tianjin Binhai Library

The Royal Portugese Cabinet of Reading

Even though this reading room is BYOB (Bring Your Own Books), it is still the shining jewel in this list. Or maybe a treasure chest full of multicolored gemstones. It’s easy to imagine the gold coins and blue sapphires that would inspire this bejeweled space. The lighting of each bookcase highlighting each book as another ruby tucked away. After adoring the stunning architecture and interiors, I encourage you to dive deeper into the history of this space. It was founded by Portuguese immigrants who wanted to create a Portuguese cultural base in the Brazilian capital city. The Reading Room currently houses over 350,000 books in Portuguese (the largest collection outside of Portugal) and offers courses on literature, Portuguese language, history, and anthropology. Mission accomplished founders!

Read More: Everything You Need to Know About the Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading

The Starfield Library

A contemporary book museum would be a better way to describe the Starfield experience. Books are groups into displays for inspiration, and while you can peruse the print books and magazines you cannot check them out of the library. Instead, guests are also offered eBooks and iPads for reading on site. In a society like Korea, where image and presentation are often more important than content, this library gives a K-drama worthy backdrop for all Bookish influencers. I can see a misunderstood rich boy yearning for the poverty stricken girl, looking up from his reading. The dramatic setting mirroring his emotional turmoil… Man… Meteor Garden (2018) was so good…

Read More: Starfield COEX Mall Wikipedia

Frame of Origin

Of course Dracula was a gender swap! Perhaps the slyest one of all, pretending to be the origin story we’ve always wanted. No! I rebuke you demon! Be gone Count Vlad - there’s a new bloodsucker in town. My love, Carmilla.

Published in 1872, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 20-odd years and the influence is obvious, many of the storytelling mechanism functioning exactly the same. Both stories offer us a gothic mystery, a titular monster vampire, and a cautionary tale told in first person. The vampires even love a similarly helpless waif, one named Laura, the other Lucy! The gender swap of the vampire in large part directs the nature of each story, engaging the audience in hunting this evil down and burning it to ash. Le Fanu’s evil is a beautiful lesbian. Stoker’s evil is a land owning man in England.

Carmilla is a wonderful example of a frame story, told by Laura after she’s survived the saga. We’re confronted with an unreliable narrator filling in gaps in her memory from other people. As she takes us through her ordeal we begin to see her psyche unravel as a seed of loneliness and isolation blooms into a thorny vine bleeding the life from her. What could Laura do but fall into Carmilla’s trap, like all the other fair maidens in town?

Laura’s narrow escape of the monstrous vampire is promised to the readers, being narrated by a safe, if not traumatized, version of Laura. Young woman in town begin to contract illness and fever, waste away in melancholy, and eventually fade into death. Soon Laura and her father are confronted with the awful truth - her beautiful and beguiling companion Carmilla is the predator they seek.

This story is a stake to my heart. I was once a young girl isolated in the country, my family home feeling like a castle built to keep me separate. The intense longing for friendship is certainly more than enough to wash away worries about local women mysteriously wasting away.

It’s Only Natural

Honestly - who doesn’t go through a phase of sapphic vampirism in their late teens? Well, Laura is your role model. She is the pinnacle of youth poised at the edge of a story where her pleasant, unassuming nature will be her biggest weakness. The audience is brought back time and time again to the themes of nature, natural cycles, the natural world, the human lifecycle. We are asked to decide what is natural and what is unnatural, and we are also warned against the dangers of monsters who look like beautiful women. They are here to steal your daughters. Is it the monster they fear, or the seduction?

I appreciate how utterly useless the men are in this novel. The father figure spends more time being a figurative father than a literal one, guiding, teaching, planning for his child’s future. Moreso, he is a content silly-billy ready to naysay the doctors and experts in town. But he was happy to ensure the superstitious peddle their trinkets and tokens as wards. If it is in the nature of monsters to prey on our children, is Laura’s father showing us that it is the nature of parents to distrust outside authority, in an attempt to infantilize their children for as long as humanly possible in life?

If it is in the nature of the vampire to prey, and the nature of our parents to be blind to risks, where does that leave Laura? Is it only natural for daughters to go through a lesbian phase with their female companions? Well, yes. And even moreso when Laura’s defining character trait is her loneliness and yearning for companionship. Approaching a same-sex relationship is less threatening, because it was simply so unthinkable that it wasn’t happening. Laura herself disbelieves her own romantic love for Carmilla, rationalizing while she retells the story.

Carmilla, Queen of the Vampires

I’ve long loved vampire tropes and characters, having proudly struggled through Bram Stoker’s Dracula at 13. It was a badge of honor to have gothic classics under my belt before Freshman year of High School. Someone call Oxford - we’ve got a scholar! Over time I kept returning to Dracula, and it’s become a favorite of mine for it’s never ceasing influence but also because I loved the storytelling structure. Carmilla, the book and the vampire, both have all the same strengths as Dracula but having consumed it so much later in life I appreciate it’s unseen influence even more. Like a true monster, Carmilla has been lurking in the shadows weaving a web, waiting to be found.

I read this in one afternoon on the beach, consuming it wholly alongside my Publix sub. Closing my eyes and blocking out the Carolina heat I imagined a colder, darker world. A world inhabited by real people like Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory, inspiring Irish writers like Le Fanu and Stoker to twist the fairy tales of their homeland with the tragic monsters of eastern Europe, inevitably creating vampire characters that change our modern relationship to these historical figures. I spent the afternoon bathing in the sun and daydreaming about monsters prowling in the dark.

I saw Carmilla rise to stand in the ranks of my favorite vampires. Dracula welcomes his predecessor. Lestat and Louis argue in the corner while Akasha waits, hungry. Spike takes a drag on his cigarette and looks her up and down, a wicked smile smeared across his slender face. But the Cullens watch wearily, knowing she will be no kind-hearted vegetarian. Count Orlok erupts in a fit of hacking coughs, his heart racing at her elegant movements. Eric Northman pretends not to notice, but even Mel Brook’s Dracula stops cracking jokes long enough for Carmilla to take her place as the undisputed Queen of all fictional vampires!

-Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls

BINGO! Uncertain Walls WINS!

If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll go viral or get a book deal. If you’re lucky and smart, maybe you’ll gain a cult following. If you’re Haruki Murakami, then you’re lucky, smart, have a cult following, and a dedicated version of BINGO for your writing tropes and themes.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls hits a Bingo x3! A teenage boy falls in love with a teenage girl, but one day she disappears. The only clue he has is her belief that she doesn’t even live in this world. She lives somewhere else, in a walled city with unicorns and very strict rules. She has split herself somewhere in her life, causing her true self and her physical self to be separated by a wall.

Needless to say, it wasn’t a typical break up. The boy never really healed. But time passed, the boy became a man. And the trauma lingered. Until one day he woke up in that very walled city and met the girl again. Now he has to decide, where is his future? In this walled city with its strange rules or in the physical world, full of cats and jazz and ghosts. Keep your Bingo dauber handy for this one!

More interesting than my 3 Bingo wins, are the near misses. I was so close on five additional Bingos. SO CLOSE! I could almost argue that the denial of sex in this story equates to “Weird Sex” but that’s a stretch just to get that 4th Bingo. There is also no “Faceless Villain” to speak of in this story, everyone being clearly identified and named (even if the names are ridiculous like ‘Yellow Submarine Boy’). There goes another Bingo. I lost out on more after double checking for “Running” and “Tokyo at Night” scenes. There’s walking scenes, there’s Tokyo scenes - but neither quite check these boxes in my opinion. Also, not a “Dried-Up Well” in sight! My Bingo card for The City and Its Uncertain Walls is complete and I’m feeling pretty confident with my 3x wins. How did yours end up?

Hard-Boiled Stoicism

Picking up The City and Its Uncertain Walls, I had no idea it was the continuation of an idea Murakami has been iterating on for forty years. In 1980 Murakami published a short story about a walled city but hated it so much he regretted it publication all together. Then, in 1985 Murakami published Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World where we once again see the walled city take shape. With the 2025 publication of The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Murakami has finally perfected this story of trauma, love, and depression.

Very quickly I began to recall the parallel tale of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Reaching for my old copy and opening up to the highlights I made in college. While some fans prefer the tone and structure of Hard-Boiled compared to Uncertain Walls, I absolutely prefer the latter. Murakami’s style may be bolder in his parallel story telling but he’s so much more sophisticated and thoughtful in Uncertain Walls. Perhaps it’s the time that has passed since my first reading, giving me a different perspective.

At 37 years old, I have experienced more than one dark night of the soul. Now I can appreciate Murakami’s ‘hard-boiled’ stoicism in a way that I couldn’t as a 20-something reading literary fiction for fun. I see the value in a calm outer shell, holding it all together in the face of boiling chaos.

Magic, Not Fantasy

If you’ve never read Murakami, I wouldn’t recommend you begin with The City and Its Uncertain Walls. New readers would appreciate Norwegian Wood or After Dark before wading into the darker waters of 1Q84 and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Magical realism is an acquired taste of a genre, but after you’ve fallen down that rabbit hole you’ll never quite see the world the same. I found this review from the Wind-Up Blog to be a great primer for understanding Murakami’s work in this genre:

“he is incredibly popular because he’s found a way of describing trauma that transcends culture and language. His characters are easy to emphasise with and their traumas tend to be ambiguous enough that we can project our own onto them. He then uses magical realist-like concepts to depict depression, isolation, and dissociation rather than use cold, clinical terms or hard realism.”

More than once I found myself remembering the ‘black wave’ Elizabeth Wurtzel describes in Prozac Nation. I even scribbled a note in the margins harkening back to The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I see in Murakami the same threads of recognition. He’s seen the dark, the depths. And he returned to weave a tale for us, cautionary but beautiful, told to us by our shadow selves. Cling to life and believe the universe will catch you when you fall!

Let the egg drop.

My local librarian was sick of me checking out Julie’s Wolfpack again and again and again. She finally put another book in my 11 year old hands, Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce. In the past 25 years, I have re-read Tamora Pierce’s entire body of work at least annually, sometimes starting again immediately after finishing. And I’m not the only one.

BookTok and I have hard launch our situationship in the form of 20+ lip syncs based on Tamora Pierce characters. Two BookTok creators, “@misfit.manuscript” and “@nikibthatsme”, are doing Tamora Pierce read throughs currently. Misfit Manuscript even hosts a discord server as a Tamora Pierce Book Club for her followers. I always put myself on an island when it comes to reading, but I’ve started piggy dippin’ in the BookTok waters, which seem to be full of friends with similar interests. Was it always this easy to just participate in ongoing conversations? At my grown age of 37, I’m starting to realize there’s enough space for all of us.

My new BookTok friends have shared with me some amazing news and resources for Tamora Pierce fans everywhere. Now is the perfect time to dive into Tortall, as the original cover artist for the Song of the Lioness quartet, Joyce Patti, has made the art available for sale on her personal website. Now you can have your own personalized cover! I’m always collecting Joyce Patti editions whenever I encounter them in the wild or in online resellers. Or if you prefer something fresh, you can get the new Illumicrate special edition of the Protector of the Small quartet going on sale at the end of the month! Now is your chance to acquire some truly legendary pieces of Pierce’s history.

Sorry for the cheese. Earnest sincerity is the only way I can approach Tamora Pierce. As a writer, she is as serious to me as Plato or Socrates. The reader bestows the value and I have decided her worth to my life. You get the chance to decide for you too.

My Tortall Favorites

To say this is my comfort reading is not enough - Tortall is the aesthesia by which I endure the operation of life. And this is my ranking of the different Tortallan series, all of which are perfection to me:

#6: Protector of the Small

Knight Kelandry is the first girl to follow Alanna’s steps and become a Page, crafting her path as a Commander in the upcoming Scanran war. Kel is a perfect follow-up to Alanna, who was notoriously private and temperamental. Instead Kel is a model of calm perseverance and determination. My favorite moment is when she finally discovers just how helpful Alanna has been during her training years!

#5: The Numair Chronicles

Getting the background on Numair seems natural, after how seeded the other tales are with his actions. He floats from series to series like Tom Bombadil in the forest, so I appreciate the origins story as a grounding to the character. I also love Carthak and getting a glimpse into the political landscape in a way that you don’t quite see in The Immortals series.

#4: Beka Cooper

Going all the way back in time to see the old town Corus was so fascinating! You can really feel Pierce peeling back the layers of the capital city to age it backwards for Beka and Pounce. Pierce sprinkles irony and foreshadowing like the master she is. I also adore Farmer Cape! This man deserves the world and I love that Beka, stoic and just, is so perfectly complemented by this absent-minded genius. In a world where names are chosen, he chooses her.

#3: The Immortals

Everyone wants to talk to their pet dog, to sing and have a bird land on your finger, or to whistle and call the woodland creatures from their hiding places. Daine is that wild woman full of magic, roaming the space between the Palace forest grounds and the Realm of the Gods. I particularly love her takedown of the Carthak empire, bringing her own special brand of Chaos to the Hag’s party.

#2: Song of the Lioness

This series is the archetype. Alanna is the blueprint for every girl-in-disguise character. This series is a must-read for any YA Fantasy readers. If you need a primer, a way in, a hook for younger readers - give them the gift of Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness quartet. This series is influencing all of your favorite fantasy writers right now, and will always be a favorite.

#1: Tricksters

My absolute favorite plot in all of Tortall has to be Alanna and George’s daughter Aly starting a revolution in the Copper Islands. This is the climax of my read-through, giving me everything I’ve ever wanted from a Tortallan saga and it’s not even set in Tortall! There’s a blood prophecy, misbehaving Gods and Goddesses, beautiful and mysterious Immortal creatures, and an underground conspiracy to put a 12 year old on the most contentious throne in the Emerald Sea. A masterpiece in world building!

My Emelan Favorites

Emelan is the land of my dreams, somehow more tangible and yet further away from Tortall. This is the home of The Winding Circle, a loving Duke, and four new magicians that come together to form an unbreakable circle of friendship. I rank The Circle series as follows:

#3: The Circle Reforged

This is the last series in the Emelan saga and it contains a prequel, an angry Empress, and some brand new magic introduced to the Circle. While I appreciate how it wraps up plotlines and fills holes, I do think it’s lacks the same cohesion the other series have.

#2: The Circle Opens

Each of our magicians have to leave the nest and use their powers out in the world. I love how they grow together, and even apart are able to learn from each other and feel connected. Their found family is strong in this one, even though they are apart. This series cracks open the possibilities and powers of these four new friends, creating a new and distinct world from Tortall.

#1: The Circle of Magic

We meet four unlikely magicians barely wielding their wild powers. They come from different corners of Emelan, but all end up at The Winding Circle to learn some Discipline. They also find in each other a family. Pierce’s ability to create grounded and emotive characters resonates in this series and takes me back to the first time I read Alanna.

My Preferred Read Order

1. Beka Cooper is a perfect introduction to Tortall as the characters travels to different cities in each book to perform their duties. We meet the ancestors to some of our favorites

2. The Numair Chronicles is next in chronological order, giving you background to the characters you meet in the Song of the Lioness and The Immortals series. You also learn the long-term goals of the Carthaki Emporer, Ozorne.

3. Song of the Lioness, while published first, is best read third in my opinion, as we follow Alanna’s journey we also see the coronation of a new Tortallan King and Queen.

4. The Immortals series resets the story of Tortall as the veil between the worldly and divine realms is torn. We follow Daine, a Wild Magic user born of Gods, as she navigates coming of age in King Jonathan’s Tortall.

5. Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales is a standalone collection of short stories that is a great break to the reading order. You can take the time to reflect on the changes the Immortals series has, as well as get a glimpse into some future characters. I love to whet my whistle!

6. The Protector of the Small brings me back into Tortallan politics, as we meet the next female knight to follow Alanna’s path, and begin to see the impact of living with the Immortal creatures.

7. Tortall: A Spy’s Guide is another standalone, but also the perfect bridge into the Daughter of the Lioness series. I love getting inside the mind of George, glimpses into Kel and Alanna, and I think it’s the best way to lead up to my personal favorite series.

8. Tricksters is the culmination of the Tortall universe, wrapping all the thread together and giving us the most beautiful tapestry of warriors, women, rebellion, and magic. I wish I could skip straight to this series but I love it so much I build the re-read around the world that Aly steps into, leaving me to wonder how she’ll shape it in the future.

9. The Circle of Magic keeps the Tamora Pierce magic rolling, even though we leave Tortall. After the highs of a favorite series like Daughter of the Lioness, I can’t just stop reading. I need a Tamora Pierce denouement if you will, an epilogue to her works. Enter: The Winding Circle, a world of unpredictable magics and strange Nuns!

10. The Circle Opens shows this strange new magic in all it’s true power! I love that we see our four friends growing into their powers fully, having independent adventures, but still keeping the circle strong.

11. The Circle Reforged is no gentle way to close out a Tamora Pierce read-through. This is the height of Emelan’s political power struggle, one our circle of friends have always been at the center of! This ending makes me long to start back at the beginning.

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What would you do to learn writing from Margaret Atwood? I made my husband buy me Masterclass, which costs roughly $100/year. That’s still cheaper than being a student at the University of Toronto and/or York University, where Atwood teaches creative writing! With over 40 titles to her name, students must be competing for a space in her classes.

I was once a naive English student signing up for random courses with no idea who would be the teacher, concerned only with time slots and schedules. What a luxury - to choose to learn under a contemporary master! At 19 I hadn’t read The Hand Maid’s Tale or Alias Grace, had I been given the privilege it probably would have been lost on me. I was only focused on critique of literature, not the process the authors go through to create the literature itself. Now, with a more open mind, I am deeply grateful for the access to her Masterclass.

This is one of the longest and most in-depth courses I’ve taken to date, and felt very much like an undergraduate level course distilled into major learning outcomes. Coming from a formal educator, this Masterclass was organized and robust. Atwood provided a true primer for learning the basics of creative writing - the Table of Contents feels like a 12-week syllabus. In this course she examines case studies using her own works, also providing examples from her own education or teaching. But the best part? She also assigns writing exercises as “homework” in the downloadable 92-page Class Guide. Now I can listen to the lecture, do the assignment, and fall asleep to nightmares of showing up to the test naked.

Learning from Myth

This Masterclass focuses on Atwood’s own brand of speculative fiction, her use of myth, and her values for storytelling. As you can see from the Assignment above, Atwood pushes her students and her readers to consider the foundational stories that are woven into our cultural consciousness.

Perhaps you remember another beloved Professor, C.S. Foster who teaches the importance of intertextuality to his students. He wants his students, readers or writers, to understand the building blocks of the “One Story” we are all telling. If the Brother’s Grimm use an archetype or symbol, be aware of it. Look to Shakespeare, The Bible - myth, religion, fairy tale. These inform the foundation that all new stories are built upon.

Atwood also wants her students and readers to consider the “Lego” blocks she has used in her work. A writer couldn’t create something like The Handmaid’s Tale without borrowing and building on the Christian religious texts and Abrahamic stories. Some of the essential Christian stories Atwood recommends are:

• Creation

• Cain and Abel

• The Flood

• The Exodus from Egypt

• Joseph and his Brethren and the aftermath

• Samson and Delilah

• The Book of Job

• David and Bathsheba

• Solomon and the Queen of Sheba

• The Babylonian Captivity

• Jonah and the Whale

Learning from Scheherazade

Atwood is truly an educator, because this course gave me the vocabulary I was missing to understand what I’ve already been doing and observing. She has giving some structure and form to the tools I have discovered intuitively. In order to transact upon any potential, I need the ability to articulate my intentions. Now I feel like a door has opened between reading and writing - this is what I was looking for!

As Atwood described the structure of One Thousand and One Nights, I felt like I was back in undergrad, listening to a master at work. It’s simple and easy to miss - start with structure. The story of Scheherazade is the story of a master using structure to their advantage. The structure is a frame story, telling one tale with multiple stories inside it. The Canterbury Tales or The Princess Bride were the frame stories I was familiar with, but I appreciate the example of One Thousand and One Nights as it pairs the structure of a frame story with the importance of pushing toward the conclusion. It builds tension and diversity. Noticing and critically analyzing the structure of a story helps me read it closer. I will be adding to my TBR, Peter Brook’s Reading for Plot, recommended from this section of the course.

After structure, I also particularly enjoyed the lessons on character building. Stories are events AND characters, not one or the other! Without the threat of Scheharazade’s impending death she would not have been put in the position to tell her Sultan stories over one thousand nights. She expands in this space to rise to the occasion and break the cycle of events. Her character is developed by the events, the structure of the story gives her the space to evolve as the plot progresses.

Interesting people in interesting conflicts - that’s the story you want! Action reveals the intention and beliefs of characters, as it did with Scheherazade. The best writers are SHOWing a character’s beliefs, not relying on TELLing audiences what they believe. Atwood recommends plotting a characters life on a timeline against pop culture, history, and political events. Track the influences at the macro and micro level that would build a whole, complex personality for your character.

Some of my favorite character building questions that Atwood poses are:

• Do they dress in a way that is age-appropriate? Or do they dress to look younger or older?

• Did they have a bad childhood? Or a good childhood suddenly ruined by tragedy?

• Do they have any pets?

• What are their friends like?

• What do they do in their spare time? Do they have spare time?

Learning, Myself

I will have to spend some time working through the exercises and assignments from this Masterclass, as I’m really excited to try these out. I love reading and will never stop, but I want to try more writing exercises that will help me appreciate the masterpieces contemporaries like Atwood are producing. Perhaps I’ll share them here, inspired by Atwood!

Stop looking for permission to begin. No one can teach you what you want to create. You must develop discipline to pull your creations into fruition. And this course was a step in that development, giving me the vocabulary I need to articulate my attempts. For so long I’ve spent my time the reader, the publisher. What will it feel like to dip a toe into the waters of creation?

“You become a writer by writing.” - Margaret Atwood

Oops, I accidentally read another YA Romantasy… My bad.

This is actually my second read of Laura Sebastian’s Ash Princess Series. The first time I read it, I didn’t like it but finished it out of sheer pride. I refuse to DNF if I’ve purchased something. In this second read-through I tried to keep my mind open and challenged myself to articulate the pieces that I don’t like instead of being a nay-sayer.

Allow me to provide brief (hyperbolic) context to each book in this series:

• Ash Princess (#1): Bad news, I’m a prisoner and my mom is dead. I stole my bestie’s man and I also have another side piece. Rescued af!

• Lady Smoke (#2): It’s raining men, but also assassinations. Let’s ope off with the refugees to liberate the mines. Oh no, my ex-bff poisoned me.

• Ember Queen (#3): Yay! I survived the poison. Oops - I’m astral projecting into the mean girl’s dreams. She has new friends, but so do I.

Am I being reductive? Yes. But is this the conversation I would have with anyone who asked me about this series? Yes. You can’t avoid the surface level with this series. If you’re reading as an adult for the first time, you will only find the surface level. In fact, this read through did wonders for me to better place this work in my head canon. I’m used to Romantasy being for the middle-aged millennials who seeking fairy smut and monster mashing. But this story is aimed younger, towards my inner teenager. When I looked through that lens, I began to appreciate Sebastian’s storytelling in a new light.

This is the story of two friends who hurt each other. There’s a love interest, a dystopian war, fantastical magical powers, pirates and assassins - but there is also a deep edit to this story. It is held back. It is age appropriate. It is NOT the slutty Princess story you were seeking, perhaps it is the story you need?

That First Person Feeling

In my first read through I was seeking a story that wasn’t there. I was eagerly awaiting the sex scenes that the audience deserves after doing the hard of reading. But in the first book the main character Theodosia is held captive, sometimes tortured physically, and even threatened with a violent marriage. However, no sexual violence ever occurs on-scene. For a story about a war-torn country ruled by foreign invader, there’s a surprising LACK of sexual violence.

There’s two reasons that I can gleam from this. Firstly, the reading level is for younger audiences. There’s no light-heartedness in raping refugees or prisoners of war. That conversation is not one to be introduced lightly to younger readers. Secondly, Sebastian uses the first person to tell this story. This is important, as it limits the narrator and makes them slightly unreliable. Our narrator spent her childhood as a privileged Princess, her adolescence as a captive, and her coming of age as a War Leader trying to re-establish her dominion. This narrator doesn’t know, doesn’t see, and cannot physically be at every battle.

I typically HATE first person Point of View. I hate having a feeling shoved down my throat. Often first person feels like Tell, instead of Show. The best emotional connections come from characters that I can relate to through observing their actions, the nuances of their decisions, how they evolve. Again, younger audiences need this spelled out a little more. There’s no gray area when Theodosia tells you how she feels, because no one could know it better than the character herself. However, she is traumatized and subject to the mistakes of being human. She cannot give a wholly objective perspective to the reader.

So much world building is lost in the first person. I don’t hate this decision as much on my second read-through, but I still think the story is limited and the reader loses a tether to the land of Astrea they are fighting to restore. I love a third person omniscient narrator in a fantasy world, especially during a war. Being able to zoom out and zoom in, discuss the details that move the needle, create the suspense between characters. But first person demands we focus, be introspective, feel our way through the story. This isn’t my strength in life, no wonder my tastes in literature follow.

Adult Readers Beware

Challenge your preferences for Sex over Self. This story doesn’t cater to your BookTok Boyfriend demands. Sebastian tells a story for the young female reader, not for Mrs. Robinson. Focusing the reader on finding yourself, fueling your determination, finding your grit. Theodosia tells her story directly to the reader, sharing her burdens of shame and guilt, confiding her secrets and fears of failure, growing into a diamond from the pressure of responsibility. While we discuss serious topics of colonialism, slavery, sexual abuse, war, violence - the reader is alongside their Ember Queen, creating the future of Astrea together.

This is an easy recommendation to the younger reader who perhaps should be shielded from sexual violence or even overtly sexual scenes. When Theodosia has sex it is respectfully ambiguous. Some of my favorite writers do this, Tamora Pierce wouldn’t write a back breaking scene and she’s one of my most beloved writers. But I discovered her when the reading level matched my skill. I was given a chance to grow alongside the storytelling.

This series is a friendly reminder that reading level and maturity levels are different. I often struggle with this conversation, as it appears I am alone in my opinions. When I talk to other Romantasy readers, they often want ALL the stories to be smutty and fantastical. But they don’t want the reading level to be harder, higher, or cause any labor on their adult minds. But you want adult content? There’s plenty of room for both.

Let us dismiss literature for literary reasons only, not because you want porn.

Sheldon Cooper is James Bond and Amy Farah Fowler is a very thirsty Moneypenny, except it’s Victorian England and pirates fly houses and witches fly on… well… everything else. Oh, and it’s the finale of the Dangerous Damsels series!

England’s Association of Undercover Note-Takers (A.U.N.T.) arrange Agent A (Alice Dearlove) and Agent B (Daniel Bixby) in a fake marriage - a cover act reminiscent of Agent Booth and Dr. Temperance Brennan’s recurring characters “Buck & Wanda”. Similarly, Agent A and Wanda are both a tad too direct, too scientific, too grounded to be a member of the Wisteria Society flying battlehouses and committing scandalous acts of piracy! Agent B and Agent Booth are hilariously similar with their stoic good looks, protecting their partners but not their hearts.

Whether it’s The Big Bang Theory or Bones, everyone loves a neurodivergent couple who are somehow the last people to learn that they’ve fallen in love. Then we’ll sprinkle in an assassination plot on Queen Victoria’s head, and watch as her majesty’s secret service of spies attempts to keep the crown (and the head it’s on) safe.

Ravishing Rakes

I loved this finale to the Dangerous Damsels series! It was a great way to keep building the world while giving readers a tidy conclusion. Tidy in the sense that Bixby has already been in here to do the housekeeping. My personal favorite part of this series was seeing the relationship develop between Cecelia, Charlotte, and Alice. All of our Dangerous Damsels have found their way to unlikely friendships by following their own (shaky) moral compasses.

It’s easy to see how Ceclia’s elegance, Charlotte’s bluntness, and Alice’s earnest confusion have created the perfect dynamics for a daring group of social outcasts to create their own rules. But my favorite friendships happens to actually be the menfolk! In Book 1 we meet Alex Lightbourne, who calls in the help of his only friend Alex O’Riley to rescue Cecelia. Then in Book 2 Alex happens upon Charlotte Pettifer and falls for the maddening witch, absconding into the night with his new love and trusty butler, Bixby. But Bixby is no mere butler, he is actually the top agent in A.U.N.T. Book 3 shows us the next A.U.N.T. assignment, where he meets his match in Agent A (Alice Dearlove). The connective tissue between couples is so rarely male friendship - how refreshing to see an example of secure and non-toxic Victorian men. Certainly a work of fiction.

A Victorian Escape

What a fun and witty world India Holt has created! This series was the escapism I have been craving. History through her lens is light, bright, and focused on personal freedoms that reality cruelly denied Victorian women.

Oh, what a world to let the men care for the children and the women handle the important matters of the day! In Holt’s world building we can lose ourselves in a countryside stroll to the library or on the peaks of a Scottish moor. This series does an excellent job of showing and telling, pushing and pulling the audience along. You can dance through the dialogue and savor the literary references sprinkled throughout each book. At first I scoffed at the literary misquotes, then I got the joke. Sorry for the snap judgement Holt!

If you haven’t read India Holt before let this be the time! In 2026 we all deserve some top tier escapism. The Dangerous Damsels series is a quick, fun read for the lover of historical romances, camp, and irony. My highest praise to the pacing and focus on character development, keeping readers connected to the female perspective without sacrificing steamy sex. If you are a fan of Victorian England, sex, and nonsense then this is a series for you. A fantastic addition to my historical romantasy list!

I would take advice from the British about exactly two things: 1) colonialism, and 2) the different types of rain. Those beans-on-toast-eatin’ motherfuckers cannot to be trusted with too terribly much! There was a shining period of time where British Literature dominated the English canon, and it’s why we’re inundated with BBC adaptations of every single Austen plot.

India Holt distills the nostalgia of the classic British canon throughout her Dangerous Damsels series. Where The Wisteria Society for Lady Scoundrels used the Bronte family for inspiration, in Book 2, The League of Gentlewomen Witches, we see Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and my personal favorite, Pride and Prejudice. Yet we’re in the same world as the Wisteria Society - English lady pirates flying battlehouses across the commonwealth.

But there’s more than just a Jane Austen retelling and a continuation of Book 1, right? Yes - now we have witches! And in England, the punishment for witchcraft has always been death by burning.

Heated Rivalry

If you’re expecting to follow Cecelia and Ned Lightbourne on their next adventure, you’ll be disappointed. But not for long. Holt constructs a wholly new story with a new female lead, Charlotte Pettifer, the prophesized heir to Beryl Black and the preeminent witch of her age. We see Charlotte meet Cecelia and Ned, though of course they aren’t friends. No proper witch would be cordial to a pirate, especially not the scandalous, and therefore aspirational, Cecelia Bassingwaite Lightbourne. Not one to be outdone by a pirate, Charlotte sets her eye on acquiring Beryl Black’s magic-cancelling amulet.

Unfortunately for Charlotte, a slew of familiar faces foil her plans. Irish rake Alex O’Riley is the only friend Ned Lightbourne has, other than his new wife Cecelia. Alex and Charlotte are instant enemies. Upon first meeting she attempted to rob him before escaping on flying bicycle, as any proper witch is want to do. The Wisteria Society is the natural enemies of The Wicken League. Alex and Charlotte are keen to keep the rivalry alive.

Pirates, nasty and uncivilized, use Beryl Black’s magic to levitate houses as a means to facilitate their piracy. Whereas witches clearly have the moral superiority, using Beryl Black’s magic only as a mere form of telekinesis to levitate and manipulate small objects, such as jewels or amulets (directly into their purses). While Alex detests witches with a burning passion, he finds himself suddenly in cahoots with Charlotte. They rush into hot pursuit of Beryl Black’s amulet, letting both the pursuit and the heat get the better of them.

I found this to be a delightful continuation of the universe Holt built in Book 1. Pithy and irconic, Holt gives us an enemies-to-lovers plot in the Victorian rom-com of your dreams. Charlotte and Alex’s verbal sparring felt physical and combative. A competition, a race, a game - the search for the amulet slowly becomes a pretense for their relationship to take root.

I swooned when Alex admitted his devotion to this prickly witch in Victorian combat boots, and burst out laughing when Charlotte told him to “Just do it already” in regards to breaking her hymen. I appreciate that unlike Book 1, we have a different sexual trajectory for this different relationship. Where Cecelia is prim and picturesque, Charlotte is pushy and demanding. She’s also very particular about thumbs. I totally get that.

Better Than Bridgerton?

I have never re-read Bridgerton, as I feel like the constant deflowering of Regency debs to be monotonous after Book 4 or 5. Though Bridgerton has highs and lows, I feel like the Dangerous Damsel series is giving us better relationship tropes and certainly more comedy. In fact, I think Holt creates the same magic here as Shonda Rhymes has for the Netflix adaptation of the Bridgerton series. Through the Shondaland lens, the Bridgerton story is irreverent, funny, modern, and smart. Holt carries that same metamodern approach in The League for Gentlewomen Witches.

My biggest critique is the re-use of some puns. It was hilarious, the first time I heard her playful take on rewriting the Pride and Prejudice opening line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” I have always loved this hook. It’s about as good as Ray Bradbury’s “It was a pleasure to burn.” opening for Farenheit 451. However, I found it downright lazy to make the same joke multiple times. Hold it back until you need it, don’t just keep rewriting it as a pre-package pun! What used to be a cheeky reference has become a sore spot with me. If you’re not emotionally attached to the opening lines of books, then none of this may matter to you.

While I may not have re-read the Bridgerton books, I am certainly prepping for Bridgerton Season 4 on Netflix. I’ll be trying to wrap up the Dangerous Damsels series before then. Holt’s world is set in the Victorian era, watching love stories unfold between pirates, witches, and maybe even some spies. The clever, quick storytelling will draw you in without any Regency balls and string quartets.

Judging Book Covers

“NO! I do NOT read James Patterson!” I would justify my judgement and jealousy as I check out yet another excited customer. I couldn’t see past my pretentious English degree. To be clear, it’s not the degree that was pretentious, it was me having that degree and working that job that made me behave like a righteous, pick me snob.

A commercial success in every way, James Patterson was the light in the dark for brick and mortar book stores during the early aughts. As Amazon slaughtered book retailers en masse, the publishing industry learned real quick how important a Profit & Loss statement was. But I was used to reading lofty literary idols - Plath, Shakespeare, Austen. And it was literally my job as Head Cashier to talk to every single buyer about their book selection.

“HELLO! What do we have here? Do you need the box set? Oh, and are you a Barnes & Noble member? Don’t you just love this cover art?!”

Often customers would tell you exactly why they bought something. Be it a book club, school assignment, or perhaps they’re a raging fangirl. Readers are ready to talk books. It seems I couldn’t complete a shift without checking out a slew of James Patterson books, or getting a new shipment of his latest title, or directing customers towards the few signed copies we would have. I loved the consistent sales, but hated the monotony.

I quite simply did not value his success. But I wasn’t a publisher then. Now, I have to re-examine my bias.

This masterclass stared me in the face and challenged me to press play. I didn’t want to listen to an old man tell me about books. I list my credentials to myself as a defense against my mounting curiosity. Now, educated and working in publishing, I marvel at the machine that is the James Patterson brand. So I listen in and start taking notes.

To my pleasant surprise, James Patterson is a doll! It’s like listening to Santa Claus talk about making enough toys for all the good girls and boys. The ideas flow out of him like Old Faithful, powerful yet on schedule. I quickly realized he has mastered the process of capitalizing on every viable idea. He is agile enough to develop multiple stories and has a process to synthesize his ideas into coherent plotlines that readers dive into. This is the James Patterson magic! Not only having good ideas, but being able to develop them quickly enough to move on to other good ideas.

We’ll try to avoid calling James Patterson a machine. Though that spade is awfully spade-shaped…

Move Forward, Not On

Theatre kids rejoice - for we shall now talk scene blocking. Patterson’s philosophy is simple: “each scene pushes the story forward.” There is simply no room in the story for anything else. This is profound and easy to gloss over.

Stop.

Sit with this.

Absolutely no scenes, whatsoever, that do not push the plotline towards climax or conclusion. None. Not one. There is NO space. I don’t care if the scene that you dreamt that inspired the entire series…. blahblahblah. Girl, keep it for the interviews. Write a poem. I don’t care. But keep it OUT of the outline, because we only have space for that which takes a step forward. Not back, not to the side, forward!

If you stick to this philosophy you can create a loop of scenes leading to an inevitable conclusion. This loop become the Outline. Once the Outline lives, drafting can begin. Patterson will rework the characters and plot until the Outline is slim and exciting, but still in scenes - not full chapters.

This is when Patterson can bring in ghost writers to help him draft and revise each scene and really flush them out. Their collaboration and communication is key. Patterson apparently doesn’t work in Word, only written manuscripts (a luxury of the classically educated man). This means there is a whole machine of people transcribing, printing, scanning, record-keeping, house-keeping, and generally making these gears go round.

James Patterson has no option but to be successful at this velocity. What he wants to create appeals to wide audiences, he can supply their demand, and what’s more - he wants to produce at this level! Publishers merely step in to appease the masses and operationalize his methods. Helping to scale his ways of working to their maximum. If there is a machine at work here, it is his publishing house.

5 Minute Man

I have always held that writing and reading is the same as math and music. A dance of ideas and reality. Once you learn the dance, you will be bobbing and weaving through paragraphs and motifs. Some dances are highly technical, others more intuitive. James Patterson is the bumblebee in flight - disciplined and quick, focused on producing pure gold.

I particularly resonated with his advice of regulating your emotions when it comes to decision making. Our emotions are helpful for brainstorming ideas or developing characters, but when it comes time to make decisions you need to have the ability to set your emotions aside and think clearly about the best course for your project. Don’t let your emotions lead you, bring them in where they are the most beneficial for your storytelling.

Another key Patterson dropped what his 5 minute rule. If a scene or an idea is taking longer than 5 minutes to crack he will put “TBD” in the Outline and move forward with the rest of the Outline! Four minutes and fifty-nine seconds is the amount of time we have to spend on this issue. When we hit the 5 minute mark we have to move forward. We’re not moving on, just circling back when we have other pieces flushed out. You may need to resolve other scenes or conflicts before the “TBD”s start to resolve themselves. This idea was actually first introduced to me when I was a Sales Rep, helping to qualify leads and chase money. But translating it to brainstorming makes so much sense! I actually use the 5 minute rule every time I open Outlook come to think of it…

A New Fan?

James Patterson seems a relic of a bygone era. But he’s more of a blueprint than I ever realized. As we see with modern content creators, collaboration is a way to scale yourself and your brand. James Patterson is creating YA and Adult content, working with authors and editors, and keeping real humans employed with his consistency.

As a publisher I am so pleased. I feel like I just drank a warm cup of cocoa by the fireplace, listening to this happy man discuss his lifetime of success. Where I used to judge him, and perhaps even project some jealousy, I now see past the booklist. As a person he is rather delightful. Again he reminded me of modern influencers with their quick wit and ability to see into the human condition so clearly. Well I don’t necessarily have any James Patterson on my TBR list right now, I think I will no longer immediately discredit them. I will lower the defenses and let down the drawbridge. Whether anything will actually get inside the fortress, that’s another story.

One of my girlfriends turns to me on the beach and asks, “What are you reading?”

Breaking the peaceful sound of surf and sun I exclaim, “PIRATES FLY HOUSES AROUND VICTORIAN ENGLAND!” We blink at each other, confused and a little taken aback by my response. Apparently I had been waiting for someone to ask me this question.

I composed myself. We passed out our chicken salad sandwiches, pretzels and hummus. I told her, politely, about my current read - The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels. We discussed lady pirates flying houses around Victorian England, sexy seduction schemes, and a paternity dispute between Charles Darwin and Branwell Bronte. We sipped our White Claws and let the Carolina breeze cool our sun tanned skin, our love for “the great peril” distinguishing our modern sensibilities from that of our Victorian foremothers.

A Pirate Princess Falls in Love

Cecelia Bassingwaite is heir apparent to the Wisteria Society, England’s premier pirate club. She lives in a world of proper lady scoundrels and as a right of passage, her first assassination attempt brings a particularly determined rake into her life. Ned Lightbourne, if that’s even his real name, is an Italian assassin, an Irish pirate, and an English agent to Queen Victoria. Or is he? In this world, no one is who they claim to be.

It’s a classic love at first sight tale, at least for Captain Lightbourne. Cecelia takes some time in deciding between duty and danger, more keen to destroy her father than secure a match. The notorious pirate Captain Morvath commands the battlehouse Northhanger Abbey and seeks to destroy the Wisteria Society. Thankfully, this is the reign of Queen Victoria and his dastardly plot to restore the patriarchy is met with the swift downfall of a weighted tiara. She is clearly not amused by your antics Captain Morvath!

A Victorian Romp

India Holt has camp down to a science in The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels. What a delightful Victorian romp! Holt celebrates the independent female mind by freeing the oppressed English aristocracy of their patriarchal constraints. Let the men and children stay at home while the woman deal with the business of the day!

I haven’t enjoyed verbal irony this much since Gilmore Girls if I’m going to be honest. This is just simply fucking fun, and the fucking is also fun. I read this in print and then immediate got the audiobook. I think I will continue this series in audiobook. The quick witted tongue lashings are narrated with perfect tone and I know this will be the start of a series I will be re-reading many times.

Perhaps the best part, in my humble opinion, is the care that Holt has taken to pull the themes from well-known English authors into her characters. It’s not that Cecelia is simply put-upon by the Bronte legacy, she is haunted by it. When the possible parentage of Charles Darwin is suggested our tone moves to the more scientific, Cecelia identifying with her innate observation skills. In the end it is a Byronic romance that turns Cecelia into the woman she was always destined to be.

Romance Readers Rejoice

Romantasy fans will adore the Wisteria Society for Lady Scoundrels, with its mix of feminism and historical irony. The steam is hot and toasty but never vulgar. In fact, I found this deflowering scene to be better than any a Bridgerton bride could wish for! It felt real and fun, the literal climax of Cecelia and Nate’s relationship. As a proper anti-hero, Cecelia’s real battle is with herself. Will she give into this hot, sticky love with Nate or tread the respectful path of the Wisteria Society?

If you’re a romantic who loved British Literature class too much, then this will be your new favorite series. It’s as if Holt’s caldron has overboiled with magic, romance, Victorian England, pirates, and the deep history of literature. Who wouldn’t be engaged to spend an afternoon flying through the English countryside, a rakish gentleman at your side?

An action movie promo rolls on screen. The narrator sounds like a cotton-mouthed surfer, “A non-stop, action packed thrill ride for the adrenaline junkie in your life! A must see!” Perhaps it’s a Marvel movie or a remake of a classic. Audiences love an action movie, especially when it ends in a righteous hero triumphing over evil. The hero is there in the subconscious of the audience, an archetype ready to leap into action whenever you need saving.

Bringing Greek heroes into the 21st century requires audiences to examine this archetype. Stephen Fry would have us challenge our preconceptions and truly listen to the source, the stories that formed the image of heroes in our mind. Are heroes tall and wide? Male or female? Are you thinking of Hercules or Heracles or maybe Achilles? Examine first your own mind, then read Fry’s Heroes with an ear towards the collective unconscious of the ancient Greeks. What would they want from their heroes? More importantly, who did they need their heroes to be?

A Pantheon of Heroes

Hot off the creation story laid in Mythos, our fledgling humans rise to fulfill Zeus’ prophecy. They are indeed filled with the fire of Prometheus! Humans would no longer need the Gods and heroes would prove it. Shaped by very human wants and needs, this set of eight Greek heroes push the limits of humanity and reveal the ideologies that the ancients idolized.

A quick recap of our Heroes:

1. Perseus: Monster slayer named after Zeus’ Golden Shower kink, killed Medusa and imprisoned her in Athena’s aegis (Versace thanks you), rescues Andromeda from a sea serpent, became King of Mycenae.

2. Heracles: Monster slayer named after Hera as a fucked up way to appease her because he was yet another bastard, murdered his wife and children, labored to complete just deeds as redemption, and eventually earned divinity in Olympus.

3. Bellerophon: Monster slayer, killed the chimera, rode Pegasus to Olympus.

4. Orpheus: Musician and muse, sailed with Jason and the Argonauts, traveled to the Underworld to bargain with Hades for the life of his wife Eurydice, and eventually ripped to pieces by Maenads.

5. Jason: Captain fuckboy of the Argonauts looking for the Golden Fleece, husband and betrayer to Medea, punished by Aphrodite.

6. Atalanta: Princess and hunter, devotee to Artemis, sailed on the Argo, and won her happy ending via a footrace.

7. Oedipus: The opposite of what Freud said, plaything of the Fates and the Oracles, answered the Sphinx’s riddle to become King of Thebes.

8. Theseus: Doer of all the stuff, monster slayer, killed the Minotaur, founder of Greco-Roman wrestling, owner of a never-rotting ship, King of Athens.

Fry clearly illustrates each hero’s fatal flaws, the foils to their strength, and how they overcome their shortcomings. Heracles isn’t the smartest, but his strategy is informed by age. Heracles shows us redemption, acceptance, strength by determination and discipline. Fry gives 21st century audiences a glimpse into how Greek culture engaged with these heroes. Readers can finally escape the oppression of Ovid’s aesthetics. While I may have studied Latin and love a truly epic poem, the average reader isn’t this invested. They want to know Heracles above and beyond Disney’s version, but they don’t want a lecture in translations.

Stephen Fry is always able to see you through the screen, speak to you through the machinery, and make you feel seen. He transports readers to classical antiquity in modern high definition. I am alongside Atalanta as she dedicates herself to Artemis and perpetual virginity. And yet also feel my heart flutter as the only female hero of the group finds true love - a respectful man that loves her for her strength, her loyalty, and her chastity. I hadn’t heard this myth before, or if I have it didn’t resonate with me that same as it did now that I’m married to a respectful man who truly values my strengths and loyalty. Vows of chastity though, we’ll let the ancients keep.

The Birth of Critical Review

Engaging in the Western canon means beginning with Greek and Roman mythology. The “classical education” I never received in Ohio still burns, sparking an eternal obsession with the classics and antiquity. It is with both a love of critical review and a deep, seething jealously that I listen to the Heroes audiobook. Fry, a classically educated Cambridge graduate, takes audiences to the very beginning of time in Mythos and Heroes carries this timeless thread, uncut by the Fates. While it could be read standalone, as a sequel Heroes dives into humanity where Mythos was concerned with the cosmos and the Gods.

In Heroes, the tone is accessible and the pacing is neat and tidy. Overall this is a fantastic and accessible read, making the parables and heroes seem relatable to 21st century audiences. Readers don’t want to struggle through pretentious and wordy explanations of the history and society ancient Greece. Fry’s storytelling approaches historicism but is always centered around humanism. He wants to tell you the story of the people and the human choices they made which turned them into Heroes. The history is made by the Heroes, they are the fulcrum upon which history is changed.

Annotate or Narrate? Your Choice!

Everyone will tell you to get the audiobook, and you should. Listening to Stephen Fry is always a transcendent experience. However, I found myself wanting to write in the margins, yearning for an underlined quote, and wanting to add this to my beloved bookshelves. Fry is so careful to craft his footnotes and I cannot wait to start marking up my own copies.

Typically I buy print books when I plan to annotate them and audiobooks for quick reads, Romantasy, or narrators I love listening to. Stephen Fry is certainly a beloved narrator and I plan to have this series playing on repeat when I need some soothing. Very rarely do I buy print books after listening to an audiobook. More often I’ll buy an audiobook after reading a print book that I want to revisit at my leisure.

Do I double dip? Break my own rules?! YES! For Fry’s Great Mythology series I will need to purchase the print books and do a listen along with the audio books. I do not do this type of deep reading often and I wouldn’t recommend it to most people, but I will be pausing this audiobook series until I acquire the print versions of Troy and The Odyssey.

My 12 year old niece has seemingly awakened her own classics fixation recently. Her Christmas gifts this year will be all of Fry’s Great Mythologies. As an academic publisher and lover of classics, I cannot imagine a better gift for a sharp young woman. I read Homer when I was her age, longing for a more human retelling. Fear not young ones - your childless Auntie is here to provide!

Vampires have dominated the YA and Romantasy markets since Twilight published in 2005. I remember fondly being a Sophomore and having my book club friends tell me the writing was horrible but the guys were sexy. A snob then, and a snob now, I have still never read Twilight. Though, I do love watching the movies on mute while I’m working from home. It fills a full work day with topless men and millennial fashions.

My literary pretension towards Twilight exists because I refuse to shift into the contemporary mindset for the vampire archetype. Edward is a hunky Romeo, not a sexual predator, even though he’s immortal and Bella is a minor. I’ve always applied too much logic to have fun. But the bandwagon ran me right over, new fictions and new fandoms popped up to support this new demand. In my boredom I have branched out to read some of the popular YA Vampire series - Vampire Academy and House of Night, but I don’t see a lot of literature in these books. It seems all that is needed to tell these stories is someone hot who also happens to literally be a vampire. No searching required, their vampirism is often a condition that simultaneously drives the plot and character development.

I said this once and I’ll say it many more times, publishers like money more than literature. In fact, only profitable literature is worth the risk to produce and protect it. I work in publishing. I have a degree in publishing. Sexy vampires are a sure bet. Sex sells, and traditional publishers still hold the keys to mainstream markets. And since we’re going to acknowledge our lust for the bad boys, let’s just make them the good guys, eh? Better for marketing our FMC if the bad boy isn’t morally corrupt.

Of course, countless academics would be frothing at the mouth to disagree with my summation of the contemporary Vampire in YA/Romantasy. I’m sure you are ready to defend these series as serious literature, rewriting the vampire archetype. Perhaps you agree more with this sentiment:

“In modern Gothic fiction, such as P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast’s House of Night series, traditional vampire myths are reconfigured to address contemporary concerns like empowerment, cultural diversity, and modernity.”1

And to be fair, this isn’t totally wrong. I do not think House of Night is serious gothic literature, but I acknowledge that the author is trying to address the contemporary concerns of her young adult audience. I would in fact argue that the vampires in this series suffer from this attempt, the aesthetics of the writing forsaken for need to create good role models. However this is necessary when you’re catering to an impressionable or temperamental audience. The YA audience being impressionable, and the Romantasy audience being temperamental as fuck.

While I’ve still never gotten back around to reading Twilight, maybe it would be a good audiobook. If I could avoid the close-read, skimp over the poorly constructed metaphors, find a way to ignore my “BAD WRITING” accusations. Maybe then I could enjoy what millions of other fans have been able to enjoy. But I suspect I will remain in this mindset, defending my highbrow archetypes from this onslaught of literal Vampires.

Vampire Hunting

What vampires should be is someone suffering from vampirism, not a literal fanged teenager following esoteric rules. As Thomas C. Foster put it in his book How To Read Literature Like a Professor, “It’s never ABOUT vampires, because they’re not real.”2 Preach my man! We shouldn’t need to see the fangs to spot a vampire! Put on your Van Helsing hat, it’s time for some sleuthing!

Foster educates his students and his readers to focus more closely on the pieces of the whole. What creates the archetype of a vampire in fiction? Since I continue to reject the new-fangled ideology of sexy bat boys, I will instead offer for your consideration Foster’s approach:

1. Vampires must be attractive.

2. Vampires must be older, and therefore corrupt.

3. Vampires are violators of youth, stealing and killing it in equal measure.

4. Vampires always leave a mark.

5. Vampires represent the loss of innocence.

6. Vampires represent death and destruction, as well as rebirth.

When you apply these conditions to Bram Stoker or Anne Rice we see an alignment between the literal vampire and the literary vampire archetype. Stoker helped to create and finalize this archetype, but I think Rice masters it in Lestat de Lioncourt. Lestat is a genius character to carry the gothic thread, more than House of Night’s entire cast could ever dream to. Lestat also serves as a canonical rival to Count Dracula. Both are literal and literary vampires, setting the standard for all those who follow this dark path.

Foster’s framework also helps us identify vampirism in all plots, outside of the realm of fantasy or science fiction. Most true crimes are going to have a few vampires lurking about. My favorite pop culture vampire who isn’t a vampire is Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight. Re-read that list above. He nails every single one. And yet, he is not a literal vampire. He is one of the best acted and most memorable characters of all time. Round up your favorite villains, serial killers, and zealots - then watch them topple like dominos into the vampire archetype.

Evolution of the Undead

A psychoanalytic review of the vampire archetype would have me change my mind about reading Twilight, insisting that the sexy Romeo type is indeed the proper contemporary adaptation of my beloved gothic Orlok! I consent to hear the case before me, as I am a firm believer in evolution.

I follow Carl Jung’s approach to id and ego, doing shadow work regularly in place of paying a trained psychologist to facilitate therapy. I like to play fast and loose with my subconscious. Jungian psychoanalysis is a perfect lens to view the vampire archetype because “the vampire evolves as we evolve.”3 As society changes so does our Shadow. Our subconscious needs and wants shift over time, which inherently changes our Shadow. The fears of the 19th century are not the same fears as the 21st century.

“Jung’s Shadow archetype is the dark side of the human psyche. This dark side gives birth to the subconscious monster myth, with the vampire myth being one manifestation of that monster myth. By moving from humankind’s subconscious to conscious mind—going from stories born of generalized fears to fictional literature meant to entertain—vampires moved from myth to archetype. In the same way, humans’ dark nature moved from unknown to known, or subconscious to conscious, or as Jung says, from the unconscious to the conscious.”4

The Shadow is a reflection of ourselves and our time, this dark nature that personifies all that is hidden beneath the surface. The 19th century Monster Vampire character was a direct reflection of the very real fear of human beings being transformed into monsters, evading death, and visiting carnage upon their victims. In the 19th century, these fears were very real. It seems ridiculous to us now, but information and misinformation were the same (then again, maybe not so ridiculous). Example? Safety coffins were all the rage in the 18th and 19th century!5 Victorians always be doing the absolute fucking most.

And Victorians especially loved their scary, monster stories. Evil for evil’s sake type of monsters. Monster Vampires are timeless. And it’s psychologically sound to create such monsters, so we can also invent the human hero to save us from such dangers.

“From the earliest to present-day vampire stories, these monsters are never completely invincible. If they were, there would be no hope for the human race. If vampires started as a myth that our subconscious mind created as the embodiment of our dark nature, then having the ability to overcome the vampire means that we also have the means to overcome our dark nature.”6

In the 20th century these monsters evolve into the Tragic Vampire character. By this time our Shadow has shifted and our fears have too. The Tragic Vampire is a pitiful character. Someone capable of change but tortured by their fated vampirism. Sad little Eeyore vampires going about their days whining about how nobody will love them, and then spending their nights unleashing monstrous hell upon society. There’s a push and pull between light and dark, conscious and subconscious, good and evil in the Tragic Vampire.

Anne Rice’s vampires are often tragic characters, straddling the dissonance of humanity and barbarism. Lestat doesn’t fight his dualistic nature, holding it is key to his character; “None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.”7 Lestat and Louis are both Tragic Vampires, locked in an internal struggle that often bursts forth into their reality.

MANDATORY PAUSE for the perfection that is AMC’s adaptation of Anne Rice’s Lestat:

AMC is currently producing a contemporary adaptation of Anne Rice, but I do think that they are sticking very closely to the Tragic Vampire character. When the show makers speak about Rice it is with total reverence for her relationship to tragedy and how it formed her characters. Though it’s being made presently (Season 2 just came out!) I do believe it to be a good representation of the 20th century view of the Tragic Vampire.

Which brings us to today, the 21st century author and audience. Our Shadow changes again, in reaction to the exponential changes of our world. No longer do we need parables to scare us indoors at night, staying far away and safe from prowling beasts. We’re also less concerned with tragic dualism, instead focusing on transforming the bad into the good. In the 21st century we want heroes, and we want them to come from the tragic monsters who have fought their way to the light. In short, we want salvation.

The 21st century author is creating a Romantic Vampire. This vampire should have a monsterous history, a conscious awakening that led him through the tragedy of their vampirism, and finally they should pull themselves up from their very sexy bootstraps and be the knight in shining armor we’ve always wanted. It’s a full circle of redemption for our vampire archetype in the 21st century!

This inverts some of Foster’s framework, but doesn’t negate it wholly. Edward may only be 17 years old physically, but that doesn’t mean he’s not old as fuck and in full awareness of his own corruption. Instead of letting it rule the psyche, as the Tragic Vampire would do, the Romantic Vampire uses this self-awareness to fuel their transformation into the hero. These romantics are not monsters, they are “the heroes who overcame their tarnished pasts, which makes this new era of vampires so seductive. Much like man, the modern vampire seeks salvation.”8

Oh great, I’ve gone and convinced myself that Twilight may actually be apart of the canon. Dammit, my snobbery lost again! Well, who could have seen that coming?

My high school offered Latin as a foreign language, and the course was always full of hot boys. So I studied Latin in High School. The curriculum was half the history of warfare and half the history of a culture of prostitutes and fem boys. Greek and Roman mythology was always going to be my sexual awakening, as it offers an intellectual guise to its pornographic nature. My Scorpio chart placements were always going to make me a Greek and Roman fangirl.

Our High School Latin curriculum consisted of reading a myth in English, translating portions from Latin, watching whatever pop culture adaptation existed, and then creating our own audio/visual project to accompany our written translations. Our teacher had tenure and the “curriculum” was loose considering Latin wasn’t being taught widely in rural Ohio in 2000. However we got the credit for completing our foreign language requirements and it was a tradition amongst my high school to give large allowances for the Latin program, doomed to closure with our teacher’s inevitable retirement.

I’ve never been able to speak any foreign language, though I do have a strong base in root words that I attribute largely to “learning” Latin. Moreso, I learned about social manipulation while directing a teenage retelling of the Rape of the Sabine Women story. We filmed at least 20 minutes of footage where I had teenage boys throw girls over their shoulders to “kidnap” them while I filmed it. I got an A.

Myth & Muse

My teenage dirtbag years are a pale imitation of the work Stephen Fry has done in Mythos, retelling the classic Greek myths that formed the foundations of our Western canon. Fry is not attempting to give us a spiritual, aesthetic, or historical interpretation. He is retelling these classic myths through his lens, viewing the Gods and their human playthings as characters in a play.

Every God has their own motivations, and Fry’s goal is not to give you a translation of these myths but to explain the drivers behind these characters. Why do these Gods persist throughout time? Get the audiobook for this one and let Stephen Fry tell you the why. Why we still need these lessons. Why these Gods are indeed immortal. Why their fame is seemingly endless.

It was easy to imagine Hades boom with faux jealousy, as Poseidon wins the seas and he dominion over the underworld. The sibling rivalry is palpable. When Sisyphus captures a confused and sniveling Thanatos, Fry tells it with easy omniscience. Even my favorite, the tale of Arachne and Athena, was brought to life as the true girlie pop drama that it always was! Fry pairs 21st century characterization with the cultural and etymological context required for a enjoyable read. Questions are answered before you need to ask, letting the audience enjoy the process of learning.

A New Classic

Every time I read Ovid I think to myself, “This could use more cuntiness.” This cannot be a unique experience. The Greek and Roman Gods are the definition of audacity! The Gods are cunts, dicks, assholes, douchebags, mean girls, and fuckboys. Gen Z and Gen Alpha will line up to turn this wholly flawed pantheon into the role models they so desperately need.

Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey was the key indicator for me, demonstrating the fervor of audiences for a new take on these classics. We have long been due for another wave of the Hellenistic pantheon. Certainly Madeline Miller was also a precursor, but it was the shift towards historicism which Emily Wilson represents which sparked my interest again. Now we see new tales and new translations of heavily sourced material. Immortal, indeed.

With Mythos, Fry represents a humanist approach to storytelling. We’re focused on bringing archetypal characters into the minds of 21st century readers. This is not a scholarly version of each tale. Fry let’s Wilson be the historicist, and Miller be the novelist. Fry gives us a sympathetic retelling, as if Fry was a bestie to each character. It feels like the Latin videos of me and my high school friends being silly but memorable. It’s accessible for the average reader. Everyone can enjoy Mythos - teens who need a first time primer or avid Ovid lovers like myself. It’s downright fun!

And thankfully the boulder keeps rolling, as Mythos is the fist of a four-part series. After the creation story of the world and the Hellenistic pantheon we can easily move into Heroes, Troy, and finally Odyssey. I whole heartedly recommend this series, and specifically these audiobooks, to anyone with a soft spot for classic Greek and Roman myths!

Big Brother Vous Regarde

Living in a surveillance state doesn’t feel so dystopian in 2025. This administration’s focus on “flooding the zone” helps to normalize the ideologies of far-right Americans.1 This comes straight from the totalitarian playbook.

Instead of dwelling in the here and now, let’s flip back a few chapters. The Sun Kin in Versailles, circa 1680. The Affair of the Poisons pushes Louis XIV to establish a surveillance state, assume control of the judiciary, and ultimately establish an official police force for France. It always starts small. Rumors. Gossip. Stories told around tea. But spies are everywhere, listening for dissent and disloyalty.

Aphrodisiacs & Alchemy

Probably once a month I find myself daydreaming about how short-sighted Louis XIV was not putting bathrooms in Versailles. How did he forget about drunk people peeing and puking? Anyone who has spent time at frat houses know that the bathroom is the fulcrum upon which all good parties turn. Since Mesopotamia we’ve been drinking, pissing, and partying. Plan accordingly Sun King!

The aristocrats that we stuck at Versailles were used to peeing in chamber pots but I know they still hated it there. Otherwise why was there a rise in “inheritance powders” to ensure the right people died and the right people lived? Chaos grows and the Sun King must establish control over these unruly courtiers before his authority is threatened.

A light in the dark, some of the quick witted women form a literary salon. To keep themselves out of the drinking and gambling dens they focus on creating “contes de fees” (fairy tales). They would gather as polite society, each taking turns sharing their stories, and discuss the moral that audiences should derive from their tale. While these women were often called on as objects of fashion and ornamentation, this salon offered them the opportunity to use their minds to create beauty.

But the Sun King is always watching. If he didn’t like what he saw his justice would be swift and exact. Women were accused of witchcraft and conducting black masses. Poisoners and their alchemists would be tortured for more names, more offenders. Ultimately 34 people were executed by Louis XIV’s Chambre Ardante, a court established by the king himself so he could exert more control over the verdicts and punishments.2

Often we credit the Sun King with the grandeur of the baroque period. His light created darkness, a place for shadows to hide and deepen. The seeds of totalitarianism are planted, the harvest planned.

The Return of Puck

Me? A petty Betty? Always. I’m picky about perspective. Selective with my snobbery. Annoyed when authors don’t conform to the mercurial standards of my individual preferences.

My deal breaker is point of view. The narrator and perspective is a large factor in deciding if I will even add it to the TBR. I adore a third party omniscient narrator, as it is simply the best experience for the reader. And this narrator? Honey they are omniscient and sassy. I haven’t loved a cunty narrator this much since Puck in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.

Sprinkled between chapters, and highlighting the hypocrisies, our narrator is obvious in their bias. It could be Puck narrating this adventure, if he stuck around the mortal realm for a century. In fact, I’m not convinced it’s not Puck. Who else could judge of our Modern Fairies? Certainly Titania and Oberon are busy ruling their courts, this is a story fit for a trickster who can see through the illusions and opulence.

Between the Sheets & Pages

Seemingly we’re inundated with fairy tales. Disney, the Brothers Grimm, Aesop’s Fables. In a world of grim tales, the Modern Fairies create parables as decadent as Versailles itself. Each fairy tale comes with its moral. Each reader gets their lesson. Except this isn’t a book of tales, it’s the tale of the authors and their morals.

In true postmodern form we take storytelling to the extreme here. We have a play within a play, an unreliable narrator, a queer subplot, and a society teetering between collapse and capital. 17th century France or 21st century America? Same, same, but different.

This isn’t for the average reader. It’s for the romance lover who wants to spend Sundays wrapped in their lover’s legs while eating last night’s pizza and discussing ways to create systemic change from a place of oppression. If you’re tired of this place and time and struggle, then linger in the literary salons of Versailles. Run off into the night if you must - perhaps a carriage is waiting in the dark!

“It’s not canon!” I shout, dismissing the hard work of the authors who had the impossible task of retconning George Lucas. I scoff at the Star Wars book series, even as my husband swears these books answer all of the movie plot holes. I largely discredit this argument because I want to. And because the canon has always been imaginary. I’ll use the canon as a sword and a shield in these circular arguments.

I know there’s no possible victory, but I can’t just let my husband win an argument that I started. So I double down; it’s only canon if this or that, dependent on form or genre, the success of the story. This rejects the love of the fans and the reader’s reaction. All of that I could suffer, as I am used to being insufferable. However, the truth permeates the thick fog of stubbornness I’ve shrouded my mind in.

Like a true Jedi, my husband knows that everything is connected. The genre or format do not negate the human experience. Readers of books and watchers of movies all experience Star Wars. It’s one universe in which these stories engage. Call it a ripple effect. The influence of one story will teach and inform the next story that comes. Even in a universe far far away, we do not exist in a vacuum.

Intertextuality 101

This is the word I’ve been looking for! How did I acquire two degrees in books and never hear the word “intertextuality” before? Oh yeah… the drugs… Anyways… First, let’s define some common terms here so we can share a vocabulary.

• Intertextuality: The relationship between texts.1

• Plagiarism: To steal, copy without credit, and assume ownership of another person’s original work.2

• Fair Use: Legal doctrine regarding the scenarios in which original work can be used without explicit permissions from the work’s creator/owner.3

Thomas C. Foster encourages his students to internalize the idea of “there’s only one story.”4 Writers become writers because they were readers. A writer is an observer and translator for the world around them. We’re all telling the same story because we’re all capturing what it means to be human in this world. Even Science Fiction writers inventing their own languages participate in intertextuality, as even to deny influence is to acknowledge it. A pessimist would view intertextuality as there being no wholly original thought. That’s true, but stunted in view. We build on the past to create the future.

The conflict of plagiarism and fair use is largely an issue for writers, not readers. Who copied who? Who gets the credit? WHO GETS PAID?! These are the concerns of the creator, having born their work into this world. Readers however, can consume wholly plagiarized content without even knowing the conflict they participate in. Students aren’t aware of the fair use their teacher’s engage in, yet their education benefits.

Fair use and plagiarism are a direct assumption of a quantifiable work. Whereas intertextuality explores how we learn from an example and reapply the principles to serve our own end. A writer is not copying and pasting Shakespeare if they allude to Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene. When a writer does this successfully we notice the shared themes between the two texts. We can see the parallels between the stories, and possibly even resolve new conflicts with past reasoning. Upholding intertextual standards allows us to clearly delineate where Fair Use laws can engage. We cannot merely copy the structure, verbiage, and plots without implicating plagiarism. But the intertextual writer doesn’t need to plagiarize! They can intake any work, learn from it, and build something unique from that foundation.

Nothing is Original

Calm down Nietzsche. I get it, we live in future and the wheel has already been invented. Boo-hoo you baby. Check your ego and carry on. You cannot let the anxiety of influence stop you from creating, so says Harold Bloom. That anxiety should push you to create better work, not cheap derivatives.5 But that anxiety does stop some creators, where it should inspire them to dig deeper into the canon and into their craft.

I rage against ACOTAR for being an obvious derivative of Disney’s Beauty & The Beast. But you won’t catch me talking shit about James Joyce.6 Why? Joyce has cemented his place in the canon through his mastery of intertextual story telling, whereas Maas is focused on cementing her place in the hearts and minds of the BookTok community. As a publisher, I love a bandwagon full of consumers ready to purchase everything in the franchise. As a literary critic, I rally on the side of aesthetics and intertextuality.

“In intertextual theory, the reader took the place of the author that was previously considered the source and owner of meaning”7

The mindset of the reader is paramount in intertextuality. If you’ve never read Homer or if you didn’t know anything about The Odyssey, you won’t understand Joyce’s success in Ulysses. The reader is the connection point between the two texts. Maas may have taken pains to distance Feyre from Belle, but the success of her attempt lies in the reader’s reception. For me, Maas is unsuccessful. I can’t unread the Beauty & The Beast of it all. The overall impression I’m left with is a derivative work pandering to YA audiences, assuming they cannot make these simple connections and will be more focused on the romance than on the rhetoric.

I’m not the average reader. I too hear “PICK ME! PICK ME!” but whatever. I have two degrees in literature and work in academic publishing. I am blatantly bias. I want the best of the best and I think audiences deserve that too. I tell all ACOTAR fans, I truly hope the live action adaptations are successful. Soft core Netflix porn is always on in the background of my house. I appreciate a cheap cult classic, but come to me with some badly written fairy smut? I’m not joining your book club.

Unless I’m the literary agent, in that case let’s go bigger! I’ll get you Times Square for your half naked bat boys.

I work in academic publishing, but in like boring real life where the subjects are HVAC and Economics. Imagine choosing courses from a Cambridge catalog full of subjects like Faerie Folklore and Dryadology. The pessimistic publisher in me knows that even in that fantastical world, academia is still a bitch. Emily may have successfully published a Faerie Encyclopaedia and an Atlas of the Faerie Outerlands, but you’re only as good as your upcoming publication my dear.

So, Professor Wilde. What’s next?

As Emily and Wendell take teaching sabbaticals to reclaim his Faerie realm, a new research project is born - a Compendium of Lost Tales! Now Emily has a chance to tell the stories, and teach the lessons, to illuminate the way for future Dryadologists. Readers get a masterclass in real Celtic and Irish folklore while we watch Emily create her own anthology of Faerie stories. She will indeed feed the academic beast but she will do it from a Faerie throne!

Emily Has Magic

Wendell goes full on Faerie King, frolicking and picnicking the days away, rejoicing in his return and his happy life with his future wife! As always our stalwart Emily finds her own way as a Faerie Queen who is 100% human scholar. She begins a survey of her work and tasks at hand. Wendell begins wedding plans.

As they learn the ropes of royalty a blight on the land reveals the curse of Wendell’s evil Stepmother. Through Emily’s lens she sees a world of parables - all informing her how to overcome or outsmart the blood sacrifice the curse demands. Who can’t relate? Despite being faced with insurmountable odds, we search for a way through. The tragic conflict is that Wendell wants to save his realm, but Emily wants to use her brain to figure out how to save Wendell.

Emily even goes back to the human world to consult her Cambridge resources. She pulls in colleague Farris Rose and his newly appointed Teaching Assistant, Emily’s niece, Ariadne. With their help Emily can go full Professor-mode, searching for a way to save the Silva Lupi, save Wendell, and unfortunately save her Mother-in-Law. We see yet again how Emily’s strength has always been her ability to think her way through a problem, finding a solution that no one had yet seen. Her intellect is her magic.

Not the Dog!

Finishing this series left me feeling the same way I feel when I read through Grimm’s fairy tales or even after a particularly emotional Disney movie rewatch. I was uplifted but also shattered at the themes of death, loss, sacrifice. All of the lessons learned do not undo the pain of mortality. Yes, they must go eventually and we must go on, but anything to get more time now. I found myself not wanting the book’s end to come, because each person’s life could end before the book did.

But Shadow?!?!?! My heart could hardly take it, as I thought we might experience his loss alongside Emily. Yet again, our Faerie King comes to the rescue. Thank you Fawcett for preserving the small shard of my heart that remains for pets.

Wendell and Emily’s wedding was one of my absolute favorite parts of the entire series. The simplicity of a forest ceremony gave Emily the privacy she needs to let her love shine outward. When she gives herself over to Wendell fully, she finds her love reciprocated and the world illuminated! There was life before and life after this ceremony. I never want to see this wedding in a movie adaptation and I never want to see it cheaply recreated on a Bride’s TikTok. Preserve that sacred space, keep it quiet and beautiful. It’s perfect.

Fairy Tales are for Adults

Heather Fawcett teaches her readers how to investigate folklore like a true Dryadologist. I loved this story the most, as it really delves into Emily’s motivations as a character. The stories! The tales! The tips and tricks she’s memorized from dusty books in cold corners of Cambridge.

Some authors are subtle with their literary parallels, leaving readers to form their own conclusions. Other authors will blatantly tell you the quote, author, title that they are sourcing conflicts or ideas from. Let’s make it simple - 10 Things I Hate About You is Taming of the Shrew. Except it’s not actually, and it’s technically it’s own intellectual property, and the conversation it is sparking is more about the timelessness of this conflict and the similarities of characters across time and space.

Heather Fawcett is doing this in Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales with Irish and Celtic folklore. The audience can learn the morals in each story Emily studies, at the same time they can apply them to Emily’s current predicament. The plot is literally intertextuality. FUCKING FABULOUS BITCH!!!! GO AWWWWFFFFF FAWCETT!!!!

I love when authors do this right. For an author to create from this space feels so authentic. Writers come from readers, and this book was a celebration of readership. Fawcett creates in Emily a small reflection of herself - reader, thinker, writer, Queen of the Faeries.

Don’t ignore folklore folks! Bone up on fairy tales. Crack open some mythos. Play with Grimm, Disney, Shakespeare, and Marvel. Connect your own dots and have fun doing it! Perhaps learning the lesson of a parable may help you to navigate your latest personal crucible. Myself? I love consulting a book and a friend for advice. I want to know how some medieval bitch dealt with a fuckboy AND how my homie would take care of that hoe.

This is the balance.

Within 30 minutes of meeting me I will let you know that I have a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature, a Master’s degree in Publishing, and I work for one of the largest academic publishers in the world. I will brag and flex. Who the fuck gets their dream job in the humanities? Apparently fools like me who are better at corporate vamping than any technical skill.

Feeling pressure from all of this academic and profession achievement, I’ve observed my personal reading lacking gravitas. I love romantasy and epic universes and love that wraps you up and makes you cry. But I also crave the big thinks of a subtle symbol. Thomas C. Foster’s How To Read Literature Like a Professor was such a great way for me to bridge the gap between personal, professional, and academic. I can love reading all day - but what am I doing to help progress the conversation or the artform? I can’t impact change until I understand how! Thankfully this book is created to help readers comprehend the deep valleys of plot tools and high peaks of literary references.

The reality is that I need to set aside my ego and accept what I don’t know, or what I don’t seem to remember even if I’ve learned it in the past. Degrees and resume candy don’t equal comprehension. I’ve talked the talk and led the way for the delusion. But now. Now we sit down, shut up, and buckle up Buttercup.

Education is a Vocation

Foster takes care to craft a book that reads like a quick chat during office hours. I’ve worked with professors and students for years and the best educators have a way of speaking to their audiences that is so special to witness. There’s an alchemy in the air when the right person hits the right tone and topic. Imagine if also the timing is right for the audience! Ahh — magic!

Each chapter walks us through a literary tool, device, or technique that writers will employ to drive their readers to certain conclusions. Foster gives us the checklist for a Quest storyline, how to identify Vampirism both figuratively and literally, and even dives deep into character archetypes like Heroes and Christ figures. With each chapter you are guided by Foster’s expert critical thinking skills, gently showing you how to recognize and understand different literary patterns.

Boomers are always asking me why I’m not a teacher. The reason is because I don’t have the patience to explain anything the way Foster does over and over again across ~30 chapters. I don’t care if you comprehend what I comprehend. Honestly getting myself there is hard enough, there’s just not enough GiveADamn in this wagon to haul us both Honey. I want to work in education and support it. But I prefer doing it from my Work From Home publishing job.

I’ve been selling and producing textbooks for almost a decade of my professional life. And in this time I’ve touched every segment, market, and geography that we do business in. But the single most beneficial experience I have is in using our educational technology and reading our bestselling textbooks. I understand the content, the changes between editions, and I am reading each title with my free employee eBook access.

I can best serve the educational community right here, out of the way of real educators like Foster. Reading this book affirms my choice everyday to pursue publishing and not education. I’m in awe of what a real teacher can do to a willing mind!

Criticism is Unasked for Advice

What a goody for the Literary Criticism vault! I’m brushing off my Norton Theory & Criticism too. Reviewing my notes from my Critical Theory courses. Once upon a time I built an entire English degree on literary criticism and philosophy. Then I did a lot of drugs and fucked a bunch of it out of my head (see: Dirtbag Diaries). I’ll reread my notes and wonder who highlighted these passages and what she knew that I don’t seem to understand any more.

I immediately ordered what I’m sure is another banger from Foster - How To Read Novels Like a Professor. Bitch yes! I have also been adding his reading recs to the TBR with a few already on order from Thriftbooks. I’m so glad I bought a used version of How To Read Literature Like a Professor because it has the notes of one Connor Carlson from Mr. Martin’s AP Lit & Comp course. No finer recommendation is needed for an academic publisher like me! It’s required reading yall!

I Didn’t Like Homework Either

This book isn’t for everyone, but it should be required for every monetized BookTok-er. I’m so sick of hearing tropes as plots and watching people push porn over cultural context. I get it - I’m the worst. I like it deep and weird and full of symbols and words that I gotta look up before I understand what that sentence says. I love the challenge. I am Sisyphus, but like if he was a masochist. It hurts in a good way, ya know?

So, is this for you? Well that depends on how much you want to work. While it’s an easy lift, the implications are heavy. Pick up this book when you’re ready to start getting it. Annotate every chapter, but only if you’re here to challenge the status quo in every comment section. I don’t care if you didn’t want homework, we need to do it. Learn how to read, and then learn again with every single story you engage with. After that let’s discuss it on a level playing field using the same language! Maybe we’ll get somewhere together.

Thomas C. Foster’s How To Read Literature Like a Professor is a fantastic primer for those who want to begin employing more analytic skills to their reading. Even the academic and professional Book Snob I am found this to be informative and fun! It made me realize the need for a deep dive into some of these topics, especially the common Quest.

We see it everywhere - in literature, movies, poetry. The Quest serves as a plot structure that allows us to force change upon a world and a set of characters. But how do we actually derive these observations? First we must be able to find where and when a Quest is being used. The why will come in time.

Foster’s simple and concise approach to identifying a Quest is a great way to start flexing the critical thinking muscles. Find in your reading the following mechanics at work:

1. A quester

2. A place to go

3. A stated reason to go to the place in #2

4. Challenges and trials along the route

5. The REAL reason to go on the quest

Another unifying trait Foster identifies is that when the REAL reason (#5) is revealed to the quester (#1), a new level of self knowledge will be the true reward at the end of the quest. Whatever the stated reason to go (#2) was, it will have become less important or no longer viable.1 Self knowledge is its own reward in the end.

Rewatch the Marvel Cinematic Universe and undoubtably you’ll find questers, places, reasons, challenges, and self knowledge in every origin story. Agatha Harkness’ trip down the Witch’s Road is my favorite recent MCU quest storyline. But when you think about it there’s no Ironman without the search for a sustainable heart replacement, no Hulk without the realization that accepting yourself is your greatest strength. Without these quests - how would we create Heroes?

Leveling Up Your Game

Now that you’ve mastered how to identify a quest in a story, let’s do a little case study to really bone up. Your next learning objective: Intertextuality - borrowing from the historic literary canon to draw parallels in a contemporary story. That’s a lotta words for ‘reboot a classic but with a modern twist’.

The easiest example I can provide is the relationship between classic Greek and Roman myths and the modern Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. The classic myths are ingrained in our collective memory. Without taking a single class you’ll somehow know that the word “arachnophobia” comes from some ye olde timey myth about spiders. This baseline understanding of myths is the string that Riordan pulls when he constructs the world of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. From a deconstructionist view of Percy Jackson:

“There are many intertextual elements in the novel. The intertextuality of certain works of postmodern fiction - the reliance on literary works that have been produced earlier, tries to comment on the situation in which both literature and society found themselves in the second half of the 20th century: existing, and fashioning themselves on the backs of those that had come before. Riordan has borrowed extensively from Greek mythology. In fact Greek mythology is the cultural matrix in which Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series has taken shape.”2

Now it’s not always gonna be so straightforward as Riordan’s use of myth to fuel the plot and character development of his world. But you’ve already participated in intertextual dialogue between old and new without actively engaging. You began to relate the source material to the modern adaptation when you read Chaucer and then watched it come to life through Paul Bettany in A Knight’s Tale. Find Shakespeare in 10 Things I Hate About You or Jane Austen in Clueless. This is intertextuality and it is sublime!

Next time you flex this muscle, pay attention to the quests! How do the quests and the Heroes stay the same? How do they change to meet the needs of the time or culture? Draw your own parallels and see what conclusions arise from there.

Advanced Adventurers Only

The creme de la creme of literary quests is The Hero’s Journey. It’s complex and beautiful like a cuckoo clock. Epics will typically have a whiff of the Hero’s Journey about them as it’s too tried and true to fail. Need a plot? Here’s the skeleton for the best plot you could ever write. Think Lord of the Rings while you read this outline and everything will start to make a lot of sense.

1. Act I

   1. Ordinary world

   2. Call to adventure

   3. Refusal of the call

   4. Meeting with the mentor

   5. Crossing the first threshold

2. Act II

   1. Tests, allies, and enemies

   2. Approach to the inmost cave

   3. The ordeal

   4. Reward

3. Act III

   1. The road back

   2. The resurrection

   3. Return with the elixir

This is a modern understanding of this type of story. There have been some variations of the Hero’s Journey over time, the first coming from Joseph Campbell in 1949 with his work The Hero with a Thousand Faces.3 Another must read for the TBR!

Now, I don’t see the word Quest anywhere. And also what does this have to do with the intertextuality stuff? Well, let’s layer it and build a scaffolding of understanding out of these layers.

Firstly, we can identify the basic plotline of a quest. Now we can find where a quester is engaging in these basic themes. Then, we learn how to connect literary references and draw parallels between the different quests. Past quests may inform us how to navigate our modern quests with more acuity. And lastly, we take a complicated saga and we align it to the basic premises of a quest. Now we’re breaking down the larger picture. Each piece of the Hero’s Journey also serves to get our quester closer and closer to that secret self knowledge that always lies at the end.

The Quest Masterclass

And now you’re a master. A QUEST MASTER! You can identify basic and complex plotlines relying on the quest paradigm. You can also start a dialogue between the classics and your modern favorites. You are officially a high brow bitch!

In addition to the titles I’ve cites above and below I wanted to share with you a Goodreads list of books that follow a quest storyline. I was excited to see so many titles I’ve already read on this list, but even better are all of the titles I’ve not yet heard of. While The Aeneid is staring me in my face I think I’ll check out #8 on the list The Cavalier. This will be a good fun read to help stretch my mind around identifying quests. I’ll work my way up to Virgil.

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“Hero’s Journey.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, last edited 19 Jul. 2025. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.

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If My Eyes Cause Me To Sin, Pluck Them Out and Feed Them to Faeries

Give me a map to Faerie a hoe would be GONE! Galloping off to the nearest mushroom circle or hidden door. Carelessly. “Reckless abandon” is my default speed. No warnings would keep me from wondering endlessly in a fog of confusion. No parable would be able to steer me away from eating the food and drinking the wine. I’m that type of self destructive. I must see, I must know. Even at the sake of my safety.

Curiosity would drive me and the map would guide me! At least until my mind was totally lost or my eyeballs plucked out by pixies. But oh - what wonders would await mine eyes before removal! Even as the food turned to ash in my mouth I could savor the memory of the magical lights and music. It’s such an easy choice - to be lost forever betwixt and between a world of wonder and the mundane or to live safely in the human world?

Maybe they’ll let me keep my eyes. Then I can wonder about forever consulting the precious map that got me into all this trouble in the first place.

Emily’s Chemistry Homework

In Book 2 we find Emily Wilde, now a tenured Cambridge professor of Dryadology, focusing on creating an accurate map of the Faerie courts and known boundaries. Her newly published encyclopedia has gained critical acclaim as well as the suspicion of Department Head Farris Rose. When faerie assassins run amuck on campus Emily and Wendell Bambleby take another field trip to search out the door to Faerie that can take Bambleby home. What a great opportunity for Emily to finalize her new map! Certainly more scholarly acclaim will follow.

Rose begrudgingly tags along, acting the nagging ninny. He warns Emily against her relationship with Bambleby every chance he gets. Again and again Rose tells Emily she is a fool to trust him, that she cannot resist the madness of Faerie, and that her work will be lost along with her mind if she continues searching. His clucking makes him sound like the chicken he is, and thankfully Emily doesn’t heed his warnings.

Meanwhile, Bambleby is still waiting to know if Emily will marry him! She’s more concerned with testing their physical chemistry before their relationship continues. Rightfully so girl! Inquiring minds like Emily need all the facts before she can agree to marrying a Faerie King. I’m so glad we finally got coitus! Emily is so scientific, girlie pop needs to make sure he can check every box. Hahaha… box…

But with more and more warnings about Wendell I have to wonder if Rose will be right? Is my favorite person the villain? Am I being Targaryen-ed?! But if Emily’s down for the ride then so am I. Screw Rose and his old man warnings! Throw caution to the wind and ride Wendell Bambleby into the future!

Fawcett is Making Emily a Human in a World of Faeries

The journal approach helped this book to feel like a true 19th field romp. We got to experience the process of taking field notes from the academic’s perspective. We see how an expert thinks about their subjects and what Emily needs to survive her time in Faerie. This is Darwin narrating his illustrations from the Galapagos, Napolean’s sharing notes about the Sphinx, hearing from Howard Carter the story of finding King Tut.

This sequel feels real and honest for the characters. Emily isn’t a cozy mama bear, and Wendell isn’t actually the main character. We see that to full effect in Book 2. The plot felt plausible for the characters and helped to focus audiences back on Emily’s emotional journey. She’s not a wholly static character, but her evolution is slow like a tortoise. Thankfully the plot moves at a hare pace to compensate for Emily’s hard outer shell.

I also appreciate that Fawcett takes the time to truly build a whole world. Book 2 feels grander than Book 1, even though both are telling the story of a field study. In Book 1 Emily is finalizing her Faerie encyclopaedia and the audience benefits from learning the basics of this world. But in Book 2 Fawcett is set free to build a world, an entire dimension, while Emily creates her Map of the Otherlands. I love how Fawcett expands Emily’s world view, and her heart, in Book 2. It is a perfect follow-up to her hesitance to engage at all in Book 1!

Fairies Have Always Been Villains

Reading this made me feel like I was a little kid a drawing a treasure map! You see I’ve hidden away all of my treasures and unfortunately when the map is lost, I will forget and lose my way. Maybe one day another brave soul will find my shinies squirreled away, marked with an X on a long lost map of my own little magical world.

This is for readers who want to feel the nostalgia of a fairy story but the tension of a Romantasy. If you read Midsummer Night’s Dream and thought, “too many characters, not enough chicanery” then this is the right series for you. Don’t you wish The Labrinth had more sexy time? Yeah, me too.

Even with the increase in heat, readers who are true fans of folklore and mythology will see in Fawcett’s faeries the dangerous origins we know to be the truth of “fairy tales”. In this world faeries are dangerous creatures unable to understand fully the human condition. Rose represents the voice of reason in the face of Emily’s total faith in Faerie.

Recently a fellow BookTok-er told me to watch out for Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands because it got “scary and horror story” like. Pardon? Please point me to where you got confused along the way Honey? I am shocked that she just wanted an cozy read. Then, why would you choose fairies? Their whole schtick is disruption. Tell me you’ve never read The Goblin Market without telling me, ammirrite? Cozy fairies? GTFO right now. Also, the author agrees with me. She recently wrote a SubStack essay specifically about this misconception - Fairies should be scary:

“The Emily Wilde series is often described as cozy fantasy. But, in my opinion, cozy fantasy about fairies can only be so cozy. Because fairy folklore is anything but.”

I loved this sequel and cannot wait to dive into the grand finale in Book 3. We’re inching towards something big. I can feel it!

Covid was the only hostage situation I’ve ever been apart of. Thus far I suppose. And since the entire world was being held hostage by a microbe I could hardly take it personal. Personal would be if my birthday party become the opportune place and time for guerillas to hold the Vice President, a world renown Opera soprano, a Catholic priest, and other powerful businessmen hostage. I might start to think it had something to do with me, if that happened.

However, Bel Canto was published in 2001 well before Covid was a twinkle in a conspiracy theorist’s eye. While this story was not a scathing critique on quarantine life, I think any story of isolationism and control will trigger this response in post-Covid audiences. We still remember what it is to be kept in a house against your will, news flowing in but no freedom to go out. We also know better than 2001 readers that those scenarios, those circumstances of seclusion and tension, shape us and change us deeply. We are not who we were before captivity. We were bred in the wild. And we will find our way back to freedom, even at the cost of our own lives.

Bella Diva & the Hostages

The hostages in Bel Canto are surviving month by month, held in the Vice Presidential mansion of an unmentioned South American country. The plot is simple. Hostages in place, demands not being met, and time ticking away.

The single most important hostage is THE DIVA Roxane Coss. The spelling alone is cunty. One “n” and no fucks given. She is a magnet and her aura drips off the page. Readers know that she is a force in and of herself before audience even hear her sing. In fact, her singing talent only legitimizes her natural command of a room. I wrote “DIVA” in the margins twenty different times! Patchett paints a portrait of Roxane through the eyes of a love-struck Opera aficionado. Readers have no choice but to swoon.

Patchett also makes a hopscotch game of language barriers, placing a translator as a key character among the guerillas, police negotiators, and hostages themselves. Our translator grows from being a mere mouthpiece for other people’s ideas, to using his voice to teach and connect. No language skills could have articulated the hope and the pain he experiences by falling in love with one of their captors.

Even the guerillas bloom from being faceless villains pointing guns into beautiful minds. A stunning young girl learns English in secret so she can read and write. A quiet boy learns his own singing voice has been hiding, waiting to resonate with our Opera soprano. Another learns chess or learns to pray. At the end, they all learn the same lesson. Surrender is the hardest thing we can do.

Character Development Through Abuse

Immediately I began to read on Stockholm Syndrome. As the hostages became endeared to their captors throughout Bel Canto, it was clear that Patchett was using this story as a way to play out the cycles of abuse seen in real kidnapping and hostage situations.1 This is the perfect setting for our characters to develop Stockholm Syndrome as we understand it today:2

1. Feeling Threatened: The guerillas entered via the air ducts with enough guns and ammo to control a Vice Presidential compound, and then promptly allowed Roxane’s pianist to go into a diabetic coma and die within the first 36 hours of their control. The hostages believe that the captors can and will harm them imminently.

2. Abuser Shows Kindness: With time the guerillas begin to trust the captives, start working alongside them, and even falling in love under the cover of night. A friendly game of chess between a General and a hostage seems inevitable with too much time and boredom.

3. Isolation: Regardless of moments of congeniality, hostages are still on eggshells around the Generals. Respect for the captor’s control eventually means the hostages will help keep themselves captive.

4. Escape is Impossible: Physically, they risk their safety and the safety of their fellow hostages. Emotionally, they risk the bonds they’ve formed. Mentally, they risk their hope.

Though we knew we were falling into the trap, I loved it all the way down. Every pitfall the characters fell into. Every time you want to tell them, “No. Don’t trust this.” But they can’t hear you. And they must continue down this path to find what lies in wait at the end. The tension is thick in every chapter, building slowly to a boiling point.

This tension is apart of the abuse cycle.3 It builds scene to scene, culminating in tragic incident. Slowly we’ll move on to reconciliation, but never quite forgiveness. Then the tension starts up again.

Through this cycle of tension, conflict, and reconciliation we see the characters grow and change. Roxane develops a vulnerability and egalitarian perspective that would have been alien to the diva pre-captivity. And Carmen, the kindest of the guerillas, finds her inner strength in this tension. It’s as if she is a rare flower, waiting for the greenhouse to reach this perfect time and temperature before she can bloom. Like most rare blooms, she was a fire of inspiration for a short time and only for those lucky enough to see her.

Landing A Leap of Faith

I can’t believe I have two degrees in books and hadn’t yet heard of Ann Patchett. I’m not much of a book club go-er and openly admit to a long-term reading slump when I was heavily medicated. It was the David Sedaris Masterclass that opened heart and mind to a new author. I’m so obtuse and hard to please that only a trusted favorite like Sedaris could persuade me to join contemporary society and leave behind my jaded attitude.

This experience has cracked my thick exoskeleton. My whistle has been whetted. And I feel alive again with literary zeal! I can’t believe this mastery was patiently sitting on shelves waiting for me to choose this adventure over yet another Romantasy series. Ann Patchett has refilled the cup I empty by working as an academic publisher, the cup I empty further by writing here or creating on TikTok, the cup I’ve let shatter so many times before. When I bear witness to talent like this, I strengthen my tether to literature.

Obviously I’m not alone in this sentiment. Bel Canto is a highly decorated novel and serves as a cornerstone in Patchett’s portfolio. Bel Canto won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, was adapted into an opera and a full length movie, and was parodied in a two episode stretch of FX’s Archer.4 I’ve seen every episode of Archer twice, but I’m just now discovering Patchett.

ATTN: Readers & Writers

This is a book for you - the readers and the writers. It made me a sharper reader, attuned to each character and focusing in on each exchange. I felt like I was hunting through an Agatha Christie novel that was being directed by Steven Spielberg. I never rushed the reading, I savored every word. Because the end felt inevitable I wanted to enjoy the meal.

Patchett is also making me a better writer. Seeing how she artfully constructs a scene, a conflict, the slow and steady rise in tension. I will be referencing Bel Canto for the rest of time! Any future reference to scene blocking and emotional character development will include Bel Canto. Luckily, Patchett published an annotated version specifically for readers who want to be better writers! You can go through the journey with her own notes on each page, observing and to a certain point deconstructing the process of writing such a masterpiece.

A Beautiful Song

You need to read this. I need you to read this. We need to discuss this.

The wedding at the end was so bittersweet. I didn’t feel a twist of a knife, only a sigh of sad truth. The abuse cycle continues. This reconciliation will not last. Tension will rise when remembering loved ones lost. Incidents will follow. But perhaps some bonds, some tethers, strengthen in this trauma. Perhaps they will live happily ever after. Listening to ‘bel canto’ forever in Italy.