Wednesday Reads the Side Catalogue
Aug. 27th, 2025 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureMy recent reading features two short works by Tamsyn Muir, author of the Locked Tomb series.
I liked both of these books a lot: they seemed to me to feature Muir's strengths without some of the excesses of the Tomb books.
(I am aware that these excesses are precisely the source of delight for fans. I appreciate the meticulous artistry of the series; it's just that the particular qualities of deferral, substitution, and abrasion that are the formal and tonal preoccupation of these books, and that Muir wields so expertly and so persistently, are just not quite my tempo.)
The first book was Muir's 2022 novella, Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower.
This is a revisionist princess-in-the-tower story, so the pleasure comes not from a surprise twist but from seeing how the genre is executed. Very well, I thought.
(That said, there were two or three times I did exclaim out loud, "oh no!" etc. So it's not twistless.)
I liked it enough that when it was done I felt wistful about not being with the characters any more.
(Not in a sentimental way. Or yes, in a sentimental way, but not in a cute way. Or yes cute, but not cozy. Difficult and heartbroken and ridiculous. That way.)
ETA: I mean to say that genre-wise Princess Floralinda is solidly with Beagle's The Last Unicorn and Goldman's The Princess Bride as an anachronistic and self-reflexive take on the genre.
The second was a long short story, or maybe novelette? called Undercover, blurbed thus (in part): "A fresh-faced newcomer arrives in an isolated, gang-run town and soon finds herself taking a job nobody else wants: bodyguard to a ghoul. Not just your average mindless, half-rotted shuffler, though. Lucille is a dancer who can still put on her own lipstick and whose shows are half burlesque, half gladiator match."
What's more, I think it is better that that sounds.
sabotabby, I felt like you might enjoy both of these. Like you might start out thinking "Why did Frac think I would like this?" but then fairly rapidly think "OH" instead.
Anyway, that appears to be most of Muir's non-tomb catalogue, which is too bad. I wish there were more.
§rf§
I liked both of these books a lot: they seemed to me to feature Muir's strengths without some of the excesses of the Tomb books.
(I am aware that these excesses are precisely the source of delight for fans. I appreciate the meticulous artistry of the series; it's just that the particular qualities of deferral, substitution, and abrasion that are the formal and tonal preoccupation of these books, and that Muir wields so expertly and so persistently, are just not quite my tempo.)
The first book was Muir's 2022 novella, Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower.
This is a revisionist princess-in-the-tower story, so the pleasure comes not from a surprise twist but from seeing how the genre is executed. Very well, I thought.
(That said, there were two or three times I did exclaim out loud, "oh no!" etc. So it's not twistless.)
I liked it enough that when it was done I felt wistful about not being with the characters any more.
(Not in a sentimental way. Or yes, in a sentimental way, but not in a cute way. Or yes cute, but not cozy. Difficult and heartbroken and ridiculous. That way.)
ETA: I mean to say that genre-wise Princess Floralinda is solidly with Beagle's The Last Unicorn and Goldman's The Princess Bride as an anachronistic and self-reflexive take on the genre.
The second was a long short story, or maybe novelette? called Undercover, blurbed thus (in part): "A fresh-faced newcomer arrives in an isolated, gang-run town and soon finds herself taking a job nobody else wants: bodyguard to a ghoul. Not just your average mindless, half-rotted shuffler, though. Lucille is a dancer who can still put on her own lipstick and whose shows are half burlesque, half gladiator match."
What's more, I think it is better that that sounds.
sabotabby, I felt like you might enjoy both of these. Like you might start out thinking "Why did Frac think I would like this?" but then fairly rapidly think "OH" instead.Anyway, that appears to be most of Muir's non-tomb catalogue, which is too bad. I wish there were more.
§rf§
