#rainbow fantasy

I HAVE ANOTHER BOOK COMING OUT

MERCHANTS OF LIGHT AND BONE will be available on August 8th, 2023. ARCs will be available upon request one month prior.

Now, what even is this book about? Well, that’s a hard question. I think that for the most part, it’s a character driven story, or simply an immersion to a different universe, which the author clearly took their time to meticulously craft. If you’re not used to reading hardcore fantasies, you may struggle a little bit to catch up, as I did, because we don’t only learn about a few different changes from our world, this is a whole universe that is new. There’s different creatures that I’ve never heard of, new foods, new places, new cultures, new religions. So many things that at times it felt heavy.

One of the things that distracted me were the many footnotes that we had, I would have liked to learn about those things during the story and not have to be sidetracked looking for terms that I probably won’t remember soon. Maybe learning them in a more organic way would have been easier to read, as we are already having so much new information.

In this first book, we follow Calinthe and her partner Zakuro, as they go along in their lives, working hard for a calm retirement. One thing I found interesting and unique was the way that Calinthe (as part of her beliefs) is forbidden from using money, so her currency is secrets, so we go along the way finding many little ones that she will eventually use to buy herself a peaceful retirement. In a way, we encounter many religious topics, even though they can be quite different from the ones we are used to.

And even though all of this sounds fun, we do find that in this world, there are a lot of injustices. It’s a dark story with dark characters. Women are the ruling sex, and anyone other than that can have a hard time in life. And the story doesn’t shy away from showing us all the ways things can just go so wrong for these people.

I wouldn’t say it’s a relaxing read, but it is entertaining when you’re looking for something to take you to a completely different galaxy. I’ve heard it being described as a “Rainbow Fantasy”, and I would say that’s accurate, there is every bit of queerness in every single page, from what we know, and some other unexpected twists.

“If you knew that your children, and every child in Aloutia, had only a fifty percent chance of living in ten years, but you could stop it by killing a single child—a stranger’s child, not your own—would you do it?"… “I would… I would do anything for Beatrice."

Quote from MERCHANTS OF LIGHT AND BONE. The two lines come from different parts of a conversation, but I wanted to get them both in there! Both quotes are by Giorvi, spoken to Amiere.

Our house was made from materials that often needed repairing or replacing, but that was our way of life. Our clothes, too, made from leaves, grasses, and bones, didn’t often last more than a season. The people of Seabells and its villages, embraced the transient nature of life.

Machi was chewing on her fingernails. Did she even have fingernails? She chewed on the metal stubs acting as her fingers. When she noticed I was staring, she stopped. -from an unpublished book

"Merchants of Knowledge and Magic" by Erika McCorkle