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eggcatsreads 's review for:
A Season of Monstrous Conceptions
by Lina Rather
A huge thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Tor Publishing Group for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book is perfect if you wanted something with slight cosmic and body horror with a queer main character - and you wanted a quick read.
This book is set in a slightly alternate reality London in 1675, where a slew of babies are being born with strange appearances - extra body parts, webbed fingers, gills, etc - in an almost endemic fashion. Our main character, Sarah, has escaped her previous life after her husband mysteriously died and has taken on a midwifery apprenticeship to a Mrs. June, and sees firsthand the increase in these strange births.
Sarah, however, has a secret - she was also one of these “strange” babies, as she was born with a tail and has magic and powers she doesn’t fully understand, nor can she use consistently. She is able to masquerade as a normal woman as her tail was removed as an infant after she was born, before anyone could see it. It happens to be that this is the exact reason Mrs. June had hired her - as she is part of a secret and unofficial Midwife’s Guild who focus on using magic - through a connection to a universe they don’t fully understand, called “The Other Place”. And this guild wants to use Sarah’s unique power to connect with The Other Place to remake the current one for themselves.
Sarah also meets the enigmatic Sir Wren who also wants to use Sarah’s power to change the world, but he wishes to use it to remove any guesswork from day-to-day life. He believes that by using the power of The Other Place, Sarah can remake the world so people can be in complete control - without any tragedies or deaths or any variables at all. And when Sarah and Mrs. June are hired to be the midwives for his pregnant wife, it’s revealed he’ll do anything to accomplish this goal - even if he has to use his own newborn strange son.
Sarah has a romance with a woman named Margaret, who also has a connection to The Other Place and possesses two horns on her head. And in contrast to Mrs. June and Sir Wren, Margaret only wishes for what’s best for Sarah and wants Sarah to do whatever would make her the happiest - and allow them to be together.
Sarah must make a choice on who she wishes to use her powers to help - Mrs. June or Sir Wren. The issue arises when she realizes that neither see her as her own unique individual, and instead only as a tool to use for their own means. Sarah must see her own self-worth to decide if she can make her choices for herself, instead of only what others want of her.
It’s also interesting how the book makes a parallel to the prejudice Sarah faces as having her “strangeness,” and the prejudice and inequality Sarah faces for being a queer woman in the 1600s. The danger of being discovered in a relationship with Margaret is both dangerous because they are both “strange” but also because they are both women. This is even more explicitly shown when Margaret takes Sarah to the kind of underground brothel that has both women and men being together - where it’s explicitly stated that while the people there might not be other in the same exact way as them, but that they are still all outcasts just the same.
This book is great as a short novella of under 200 pages with both cosmic and body horror elements. However, if you wished for a more in-depth look into the issues or characters in this book, you might want to choose another novel. While I think this book could easily be adapted to a much longer piece and fleshed out, currently it’s a very fast-paced book without too much of a deeper look past stating the issues and then solving them.
This book is perfect if you wanted something with slight cosmic and body horror with a queer main character - and you wanted a quick read.
This book is set in a slightly alternate reality London in 1675, where a slew of babies are being born with strange appearances - extra body parts, webbed fingers, gills, etc - in an almost endemic fashion. Our main character, Sarah, has escaped her previous life after her husband mysteriously died and has taken on a midwifery apprenticeship to a Mrs. June, and sees firsthand the increase in these strange births.
Sarah, however, has a secret - she was also one of these “strange” babies, as she was born with a tail and has magic and powers she doesn’t fully understand, nor can she use consistently. She is able to masquerade as a normal woman as her tail was removed as an infant after she was born, before anyone could see it. It happens to be that this is the exact reason Mrs. June had hired her - as she is part of a secret and unofficial Midwife’s Guild who focus on using magic - through a connection to a universe they don’t fully understand, called “The Other Place”. And this guild wants to use Sarah’s unique power to connect with The Other Place to remake the current one for themselves.
Sarah also meets the enigmatic Sir Wren who also wants to use Sarah’s power to change the world, but he wishes to use it to remove any guesswork from day-to-day life. He believes that by using the power of The Other Place, Sarah can remake the world so people can be in complete control - without any tragedies or deaths or any variables at all. And when Sarah and Mrs. June are hired to be the midwives for his pregnant wife, it’s revealed he’ll do anything to accomplish this goal - even if he has to use his own newborn strange son.
Sarah has a romance with a woman named Margaret, who also has a connection to The Other Place and possesses two horns on her head. And in contrast to Mrs. June and Sir Wren, Margaret only wishes for what’s best for Sarah and wants Sarah to do whatever would make her the happiest - and allow them to be together.
Sarah must make a choice on who she wishes to use her powers to help - Mrs. June or Sir Wren. The issue arises when she realizes that neither see her as her own unique individual, and instead only as a tool to use for their own means. Sarah must see her own self-worth to decide if she can make her choices for herself, instead of only what others want of her.
It’s also interesting how the book makes a parallel to the prejudice Sarah faces as having her “strangeness,” and the prejudice and inequality Sarah faces for being a queer woman in the 1600s. The danger of being discovered in a relationship with Margaret is both dangerous because they are both “strange” but also because they are both women. This is even more explicitly shown when Margaret takes Sarah to the kind of underground brothel that has both women and men being together - where it’s explicitly stated that while the people there might not be other in the same exact way as them, but that they are still all outcasts just the same.
This book is great as a short novella of under 200 pages with both cosmic and body horror elements. However, if you wished for a more in-depth look into the issues or characters in this book, you might want to choose another novel. While I think this book could easily be adapted to a much longer piece and fleshed out, currently it’s a very fast-paced book without too much of a deeper look past stating the issues and then solving them.