ethaisa

After disliking both The Hollow Places and The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher, and for similar reasons (idiot heroine who refused to believe in magic when it was happening right in front of her; annoying tone), I gave up on her works. But since lots of my customers like her, I ordered this book. And when it arrived, it was so beautiful that I had to pick it up and examine it. And then I figured I'd read a couple pages, just to get an idea of what it was about. Those couple pages quickly turned into the first chapter. Then the second. The next thing I knew, I was actually enjoying the book, and finished it with great pleasure.

Anja is a scientist specializing in poisons and antidotes, who regularly takes small doses of poison to understand their effects and test out antidotes. She saves the lives of poisoned people, sometimes. This gets her enough fame that one day the king shows up, asking her to save his daughter, Snow, who he believes is being poisoned...

This is a very loose retelling of "Snow White," making clever use of elements like the apple, the mirror, and the poison.

Like the other books of hers I read, this one is set in an unambiguously magical world and/or has a portal to an unambiguously magical world, and has a heroine who doesn't believe in magic. I guess this is an obligatory Kingfisher thing? At least in this one, Anja doesn't deny that things are happening when they're clearly happening, she just thinks that maybe there is some underlying scientific explanation. This makes at least some sense, as she's a scientist. (Though in my opinion, science is basically a framework and a worldview, and a scientist in a magical world would be doing experiments to figure out how magic works, not denying its existence.) In any case, Anja does not act like an idiot or a flat earther, but pursues the clues she finds and doesn't deny what they suggest. She's kind of monomaniacal, but in a fun way.

Hemlock & Silver meshes multiple genres. It's not a horror novel or even particularly dark for a fantasy, but it has some genuinely scary moments. It's often very funny. And one aspect of the story, while technically fantasy, is so methodically worked out and involves so much science (optics) that it feels like science fiction. There's also a murder mystery, a romance, a surprisingly agreeable rooster, and a talking cat. It all works together quite nicely.

 

"Giant" is their description, not mine, but they tout 1,500 books on sale.

Note that you can select different retailers in the top drop-down menu, and specific genres in the list to the left.

Sale ends at "midnight." They never say which midnight, but I suspect it's one of the U.S timezones, which are UTC-5 to UTC-8.

Pass this on wherever you like.

 

Serafina, a woman of Ethiopian ancestry, has come to Alpennia in hopes of developing her gift of mystical vision. She has left behind an increasingly loveless marriage to a man who has come to prefer traveling Europe in support of his own professional interests. But although Serafina manages to secure the interest of Margerit Sovitre, now the royal thaumaturge, the nature of Serafina's own powers remains frustratingly elusive: although she can see visions and vividly describe them, she does not seem to be able to manipulate the energies she sees. Serafina becomes disappointed with her own lack of utility and feels increasingly that she will always be the outsider in the society of Alpennia.

While she works with Margerit, Serafina lodges with Luzie Valorin, a widowed music teacher who has hopes of becoming a composer and who rents rooms to help support her two young sons. As the two women become close, Serafina begins to wonder whether there is something more than just musical talent in Luzie's compositions.

Meanwhile, Margerit and her inner circle continue their lives and their work. Margerit starts to make her dreams of a university that accepts women as equals a reality, Antuniet starts a Great Work that is not what it seems, and Barbara earnestly pursues the responsibilities of a baroness — until a near-tragedy interrupts her new routine.

Providing an uneasy background to all this activity is the condition of the nation of Alpennia itself. The principal river is running low and not flooding as expected. The more sensitive of this group of adepts start to suspect that this situation is not natural.

These disparate elements come together for a very interesting climax. I enjoyed this one.

Some reviewers have noted that the previous Alpennia books focus on the lives of women of wealth and position who have the resources of money and status to enable them to lead the lives of their choices. Here, Jones starts to focus on women who do not have such great advantages. Serafina and Luzie are leading comfortable-enough lives, but they are both very much dependent on their current somewhat-precarious sources of income: Serafina on a stipend from her husband, who assumes that she is back home in Rome, and Luzie on her pupils and the musical odd jobs (transcription and such) that she does for a well-known composer.

Posted by Nicola Griffith

https://nicolagriffith.com/2025/08/25/anothe-screwfly-solution-and-other-snippets/

http://nicolagriffith.com/?p=86982

It’s been a while since I did a snippets post. So for this sunny August Monday here in Seattle, some fun facts.

Flying flesh-eating maggots

First, for those who are familiar with the work of Alice Sheldon (aka James tiptree, Jr, aka Raccoona Sheldon), specifically “The Screwfly Solution,” I woke to a little frisson, a shiver down the spine at the news that the New World Screwfly is advancing rapidly towards the US. (Okay, it’s not exactly new news, but I’m just catching up.) Think flying, flesh-eating maggots, except of course it’s the flies that fly, and the maggots that scarf down the flesh, and you get the general idea. They can infect people—and the resulting wounds can be life-threatening, requiring surgery—though that’s rare. Best not to let it happen. The real worry is that, if these nasties reach the herds of Texas and California, the price of beef and diary products will sky-rocket. The USDA’s latest figures suggest the economic losses in Texas alone would be over $1.8 bn ($1,828,293,838 to be precise).

How do we know? Because it’s happened before. Officially eradicated in the 60s, but with occasional outbreaks, such as one in 1976. How did the USDA beat it then? Well, you could go read the USDA’s latest plan, or you could scare the spit out of yourself on several different levels by reading Sheldon’s story. You’re welcome.

Our squirrel-like ancestors of the frozen north

What is actually much more interesting, and certainly more pleasant to contemplate over lunch, is the recent suggestion that primates—y’know, the order we belong to—didn’t evolve in a warm climate like Africa but in a much harsher environment, one with temperature swings of nearly 40 degrees Celsius (over 70 degrees Fahrenheit), such as North America.

Here’s the abstract from the original paper:

One of the most influential hypotheses about primate evolution postulates that their origin, radiation, and major dispersals were associated with exceptionally warm conditions in tropical forests at northern latitudes (henceforth the warm tropical forest hypothesis). However, this notion has proven difficult to test given the overall uncertainty about both geographic locations and paleoclimates of ancestral species. By the resolution of both challenges, we reveal that early primates dispersed and radiated in higher latitudes, through diverse climates, including cold, arid, and temperate conditions. Contrary to expectations of the warm tropical forest hypothesis, warmer global temperatures had no effect on dispersal distances or the speciation rate. Rather, the amount of change in local temperature and precipitation substantially predicted geographic and species diversity. Our results suggest that nontropical, changeable environments exerted strong selective pressures on primates with higher dispersal ability – promoting the primate radiation and their subsequent colonization of tropical climates millions of years after their origin.

J. Avaria-Llautureo, T.A. Püschel, A. Meade, J. Baker, S.L. Nicholson, & C. Venditti, The radiation and geographic expansion of primates through diverse climates, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (32) e2423833122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2423833122 (2025).

But if, like me, you prefer your Monday afternoon reading to be a bit more digestible, there’s a better-than-average write-up on Earth.com. Basically, fossil evidence and statistical models using the Köppen-Geiger climate system that sorts environments by average heat and rain, point to a “70% chance that the first crown primates lived in what is now North America, with 30% pointing to Western Europe – territories then sitting near 45° N before plate motion.” So there you have it: we come from little squirrel-sized beasties roaming the northern forests 66 million years ago. At least they wouldn’t have had to worry about screwflies because unlike our tough little ancestors, they couldn’t have survived that climate.

Brid flu and Covid

I don’t really have anything new to say—things are just trundling along as they usually do.

Bird flu is both everywhere and in decline. There are several reasons, most prominently that it’s summer: flu doesn’t do well in summer, and migratory birds are not currently migrating. There’s also the fact that there’s not a lot of testing going on. But don’t be fooled—no news is not good news; it’s still out there, still circulating in the wild. It’s very possible it will come surging back at some point with a roar and a bag of dangerous reassortants, and if it does it could be fast, but right now, nothing to worry about. As always, though, keep an eye on your cats, don’t let them kill and/or eat birds, and never feed them unpasteurised raw food of any kind, especially dairy.

Covid-19 continues to evolve. We’re in the middle of the expected summer wave—with those most affected being the old, those with co-morbidities, and the under-4s. If you aren’t already, please start masking in crowded places, and very definitely when travelling, whether on municipal mass transit or planes. Rules for vaccination are changing all the time—but do remember, even if official recommendations imply you can’t get vaccinated if you’re under 65 without a comorbidity, doctors are often will to prescribe shots off-label. Just ask your healthcare provider. I had a Moderna booster shot before the Nebulas, and assuming I can find a Novavax shot in autumn I’ll get the next in November. (Novavax for two reasons: fewer side-effects for those who are sensitive to such things, and longer-lasting immunity.) There’s more and more data on Long Covid, and every single new study while adding to our understanding of its aetiology also confirms what we all know if we’re willing to admit it to ourselves: Long Covid is devastating; it lasts a very long time, often forever; and the odds of developing it increase with every infection. Wear that mask.

https://nicolagriffith.com/2025/08/25/anothe-screwfly-solution-and-other-snippets/

http://nicolagriffith.com/?p=86982

Full letter to come!

Thank you for writing for me! If you have any questions, please check with the mods. I am a very easy recipient and will be delighted with whatever you write for me. I have no special requirements beyond what's specifically stated in my DNWs. I'm fine with all POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, story lengths, etc.

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I like hurt-comfort, action/adventure, horror, domestic life, worldbuilding, evocative descriptions, camaraderie, loyalty, trauma recovery, difficult choices, survival situations, mysterious places and weird alien technology, food, plants, animals, landscape, X-Men type powers, learning to love again or trust again or enjoy life again, miniature things or beings, magic, strange rituals, unknowable things, epistolary fiction, found footage/art/creepy movies/etc, canon divergence AUs anf alternate versions of characters. I particularly love deadly/horrifying yet weirdly beautiful settings, especially if there's elements of space/time/reality warping as well. And many other things, too, of course! That list is just in case something sparks an idea.

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From August 23-25, Narratess is hosting an Indie Book Sale featuring HUNDREDS of fantasy, sci fi and horror titles!

Every book will be $2 OR LESS and there are also bundles on itch.io.

Browse the sale at https://indiebook.sale

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