#caethari

Once they settle at Ravethae, Cae and Vel soon find themselves custodians to a litter of kittens sired by Son of Spoons. One kitten in particular becomes so enamoured of Cae that she starts using his braid as a ladder to climb up and sit on his head, clinging on contentedly for as long as he'll allow it or until she gets bored. For this feat, Vel names the kitten Chamois, after the silk chamois that scale cliffs in the mountains, and so it becomes a not-uncommon sight at Ravethae for Cae to be seen walking around with Chamois riding him like the tiny, furry captain of an ambulatory ship. Cae, in turn, makes a game of pretending the kitten isn't there, to the bafflement of adult guests and the particular delight of various children.

When Yasa Kithadi comes to visit them and asks, somewhat exasperatedly, why there's a kitten on Caethari's head, the whole estate holds its breath to see if the heir apparent will commit to the bit, or break character in the face of his grandmother's judgement.

"What kitten," Cae says blandly.

Caethari: Why are you following me?

Velasin: Because we’re married now.

Carthari: Okay…what about Markel?

Velasin: We’re a package deal.

Asrien: Everyone is addicted to my fun and flirty personality.

Asrien: Lives have been destroyed.

Carthari the moment politics are involved: If anyone has experience with anything or knows anything about something please let me know 🙏

Markel: Look, the only person who can fix this mess is-

Velasin, whispering: Please don’t say me, please don’t say me

Markel: -you

Velasin: [sighs]

Markel: I left instructions for everyone while I’m gone.

Velasin: Mine just says “Vel no.”

Markel: You should apply it to every possible situation.

Velasin: You have thirty seconds to run, and I’ve already started counting.

Asrien: What-

Velasin: [lunges]

Asrien: [screaming]

Carthari: I can’t believe you assassinated our father!

Laecia: “Assassinated” implies it was politically motivated. I killed him because he was a dick, so it was murder.

Riya: That doesn’t make it any better!

Tiern Halithar: If you got arrested, what would it be for?

Riya: Theft

Velasin: Disturbing the peace.

Carthari: Aggravated assault.

Markel: Arson.

Laecia: All of the above, it that order, and more.

5/5 ⭐️

CW: Spoilers, SA, Suicidal Ideation, Family Death

Okay so I started this back in June and just finished (was busy) and omg it was so good. Like, it thew you right into the deep end with Vel being SA’d by Killic and like, I know it was gonna happen and I was still like, wtf? But also I was about ready to dispose of Killic myself. And Cae? Omg he’s so fucking sweet and cares so much about Vel and it’s so cute! Vel has some issues, very clear trauma from Killic and he doesn’t want to live and has some pretty bad problems with self deprivation but Cae stays with him and helps him and doesn’t pressure him and it’s amazing!

The main plot is amazing too, trying to figure out who’s trying to kill them and stuff it’s amazing. There’s romance (obviously) but it’s done so well and it meshes amazingly with the plot and there’s so much representation. Ok the topic of that, Liran is so amazing and I love that they included a trans character and he’s so fucking hot. Also, still friends with an ex but share no jealous traits or try and cause problems? We love that here. There’s also multiple nonbinary people and it’s amazing.

It was a little spicy, not fade to black but also not super in depth if that makes sense? Mostly emotions and omg it was amazing because Vel trusted Cae so much even after Killic (it was also after Vel killed Killic so you know, there’s that too). My favourite part though had to be the fact end. Laecia being the person against them, and then Vel and Cae using sign language to create a plan was so cool and then Vel just lighting her on fire? So badass. And Markel, who was out injured for most of the book, got a super badass action moment shooting Laecia. It was amazing.

I also really liked the world building and depth even in side characters who weren’t mentioned much. They had connections to people and it was so cool. There was also the social aspect where it was built so well, with the nobles and politics and how those influenced decisions and impacted what the characters had to do was so cool. Honestly another one of my favourite parts.

*excuse me for being dead so long oof, I’m slowly getting back into reading and writing*

This book stood out to me as I was browsing for the first time in several years in my local library. On a standing, glimmering, begging for it to be read. I took a gamble, all my eggs in one basket. Picking up the from its place on the stand. The weight of the book almost perfect in my hand. A magic spell cast itself onto my fingers eyes when I finally opened it. The spine of the book singing to me. Reading the summary of the book on the jacket was no mistake. Instantly I became hooked. I immediately went home after the trip to the library. The first chapter with Velasin and Markel had been so well written I couldn’t place the book down for the rest of the evening. Too infatuated with the plot. My fingers curled over the next page, anticipating what lied after it. The Romance with Caethari put me on the edge of my seat everything the two gentlemen interacted. By halfway into the book I was reeling in my seat for them to make out already. I highly recommend this for anyone searching for a good heart filled story. An addition to being LGBTQ+, the book made me feel more at home in my own skin. I was able to guess who the villain was early on in the story. But everything surrounding the character were so new and I hardly but the book down in my spare time.

My thanks to Foz for writing this wonderful romance. Like I said, this was my first book to read after, years and years of being unable to checkout from the library. I feel a little refreshed from my troubles of the world 💙.

I can't wait to finish the duology! I was wondering if you had any specific race/POC rep in mind when writing Vel and Cae, because just based on description, I've been picturing Vel as potentially South Asian and Cae as perhaps East Asian? I'm not completely sure. Would love to hear your thought process!

This is an interesting question, because while representation of all kinds is relevant to SFF stories, I don't think it makes sense to analyze secondary settings in quite the same way we do those which, by whatever logic, are considered an extension of the real world. In the case of racial representation, the reason for this is that race is foremost a social construct rather than an immutable biological category: it's a word we've looped around the (predominantly visual) expression of certain traits with reference to a (perceived) shared cultural, religious, geographic and/or historical framework, and as such, even when a given fictional realm is (arguably or explicitly) based on a real-world setting, I'd argue that the act of redrawing the cultural context means implicitly reconsidering our associated racial assumptions, too. For instance: Cae is described as having bronze skin, brown eyes and straight black hair. In the real world, this could plausibly describe a person from any number of backgrounds, because none of these traits, either singly or collectively, is unique to a given group. But for precisely that reason, if I gave Cae's description to a character from a story set in the real world, there'd be a reasonable expectation that I specify their heritage, not just so the reader could picture them better, but because knowing whether they were Thai or Native American or Turkish would impact other aspects of their characterisation. Cae, however, is Tithenai, and Tithena is neither a real place nor based on a specific real-world culture, which means that, regardless of whether you picture him as resembling someone who's Thai or Native American or Turkish or any other thing, the cultural underpinnings of those racial categories are irrelevant to the text, except inasmuch as you might also choose to imagine other aspects of Tithena - the clothes, the food, the architecture - as being similar to that particular real-world culture. But, by the same token, you might just as easily choose to imagine these things as disjunct, or to forgo overt real world comparisons entirely. How you build the visuals of the story in your mind palace is up to you! But what I'm trying to get at is that "specific race/POC rep" is not a given in this milieu, because the relevant categories are all ultimately derived, not from immutable biological separatism, but real-world social distinctions born of centuries of geopolitics, migration and cultural intermingling that don't necessarily have meaningful analogues in an invented setting. Even highly oversimplified terms like "white" and "black" are ultimately products of a specific cultural discourse, and while we might employ them of necessity, we should still keep in mind the fact that their parameters are no more fixed than their implications are neutral or their usage universal.

At the same time, however, there are unequivocally many instances where authors intend the inhabitants of their secondary worlds to be firmly associated with specific real world analogues, even at a granular level. Whether by overt implication or authorial word of god, these are stories and settings which, despite having no in-world connection to any version of our Earth, are still presented as spiritually deriving from it, as though possessed of a sort of cultural haecceity. Which is, I hasten to add, entirely fair; and particularly given the strong historical bias towards white Eurocentrism within fantasy as a genre, the more recent boom of stories that take their inspiration elsewhere is entirely justified, to say nothing of being wonderful. It's just that, as a general point of principle, I think it's important to acknowledge that race, by virtue of being socially constructed, does not have to retain the same boundaries and categorizations in a secondary world that it does on Earth. While readers and creators alike are still inevitably influenced by and thus beholden to the real world optics of race - meaning, to give just one example, that "But it's a fantasy world!" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for uncritically replicating a pernicious racial stereotype - it doesn't therefore follow that all secondary world fantasy characters and cultures must have a set real world analogue; that we cannot ever imagine them fluidly. All that being so, therefore, you're absolutely free to imagine Vel as South Asian and Cae as East Asian! I do not have any immutable facecasts for either of them, and am delighted with all permutations. However, when A Strange and Stubborn Endurance was first released, Tor commissioned this gorgeous artwork of Cae and Vel by Nicole Deal, for which I was asked to provide some vibes-based visual references for the artist. My choices for Vel were Mika Zibanejad,

Damiano David

and Riz Ahmed;

for Cae, it was Booboo Stewart

and Paing Takhon.