After a gap during which I quit following numerous friends, acquaintances, fellow writers, etc. due to a collapse of my RSS feed reader, I have gotten set up with a new feed reader, and am beginning to catch up with some of those feeds. By pure good fortune, one of the first posts by Marissa Lingen after I got back to her feed was the announcement of her new novella A Dubious Clamor.
What a glorious book! It is dense with charm, whimsy, fantasy, song, excitement, danger, and more modest amounts of intrigue and sword fighting.
Our heroine Jules, mostly recovered after breaking a terrible curse, is helping an old friend with a problem: a “cursed murderous saber in the umbrella stand.”
Sadly, that is nearly all I can say about the events of the book without spoilers. The curse, the sword, the old friend—to say much of anything about any of them would be to reveal too much.
I can say that magic in this universe is complex (as it should be). There is text, there are runes, there is song, and there is talent. Reading between the lines as best I can, I gather that someone can do magic without needing each one of these things, which means that people of small talent but much knowledge can be effective, as can people of great talent but less knowledge. There is no indication that there are going to be more stories written in this universe, but the book certainly leaves the door wide open for that, and I would certainly enjoy seeing an exploration of the diverse range of works that can be done by people with diverse mixes of knowledge, talent, musical ability, and other abilities that clearly provide an avenue for magical works, such as smithing.
Rather than try to talk yet more around possible spoilers, let me just say this is a wonderful, wonderful book, and if you like fantasy adventure stories about diverse people trying to do the important work of protecting us all, you will undoubtedly like it.
Oh, and I wanted to give a shout-out to Tempered Mettle Historical Fencing, my own local HEMA group. With plenty of gay, trans, and non-binary folk, along with allies, my experiences there meant I could just read Marissa’s book without stumbling over things like they/them pronouns. (I also know more about sword fighting than Jules, although none of my swords are magic as far as I know.)
A Dubious Clamor, by Marissa Lingen. Highly recommended.
