starspray | Snowflake Challenge 9

Challenge #9: In your own space, promote at least one canon that you adore (old, new, forever fandom).

Tolkien is obviously my forever fandom, and I could talk about all things Middle-earth forever--but I'm going to promote the Doctrine of Labyrinths series by Sarah Monette for this. It took me a long time to actually get the books to read because they're out of print and not at my library, but there are several people on my Tumblr dash who are big fans, and it's by the same author as The Goblin Emperor (though under a different name), which I also love, and so I eventually sat down and figured out how Interlibrary Loans work.

I was hooked from page one. There is a lot of very dark material--like, any content warning you can think of is probably applicable, and it gets very dark very fast--but it's so well written and all of the characters are incredibly compelling and complex. It's centered around two brothers, Felix Harrowgate and Mildmay the Fox. Felix is a wizard and Mildmay is an ex-assassin. There's magic and intrigue and insanity and the fourth book gets a bit steampunk-y. Tons of hurt/comfort of various kinds, and lots of deeply complicated and in many cases fucked-up relationships. Everyone is traumatized and most of them are not dealing with it well. Mildmay is my absolute favorite.

I still need to hunt down copies for myself, because these are definitely books I'm going to want to reread over and over again in the future.