The book
Anyone could have a grimling: a monster born to human parents. Mercy is understandable, inevitable, and catastrophic. For centuries, it stayed manageable. Now it's not. And stories of how humanity survived the last crisis were lost—or erased.
But Leana Weaver has fragments. She recovers the story of a discipline of curiosity that once held the monsters back. Twice a refugee, she has found a new home in a city that's really trying—free libraries, an elected council, and perfect cheese bread—and friends she'd do anything for, except the one thing they want her to do: hide her magic.
All her life, she's heard the old stories of what people like her did. Every atrocity is another reason her kind were hunted down, and perhaps deserved to be. But that was a century ago, so she thinks the hunters must be long gone. Spell by spell, siege by siege, she and her friends grow strong enough to matter. And to be noticed.
For readers of
- The City Watch novels — Terry Pratchett For the love of imperfect civic institutions, the brazen metafiction, and a fraction of the humor.
- The Broken Earth trilogy — N.K. Jemisin For persecuted magic-users, revelations about censored history, and an unreliable narrator, but more optimistic and less literary.
- Legends & Lattes — Travis Baldree For the warmth: found family, a city worth settling in, and love of/as food, but with much higher stakes and a darker world. Defiantly cozy.
Content notes
- Children born as monsters, and what families do about them—including infanticide carried out as official policy in the book's history
- Persecution, internalized shame, and historical genocide of a magic-using minority
- Refugee displacement and grief.
- Siege warfare and moderately graphic violence.
Tone is hopeful throughout. Happy to answer specific questions before you commit.
The author
R.J. Pingree is a political communication professor at Louisiana State University. Like this debut novel, his research is earnest and hopeful about dark subjects: media effects on democracy, the role of facts and policy reasoning in politics, how societies prioritize problems, and trust in truth-seeking institutions.
Originally from Madison, Wisconsin, he has sailed competitively, designed games, stubbornly played disc golf for years without improvement, written embarrassingly gushing fan emails to authors, and found his greatest happiness in fatherhood.
Why I wrote it
It's a social science take on fantasy. An action story about how stories can matter more than actions. A love letter to science and to magic, in a world where they're not opposites.
And above all, it's a story I need right now. It's about how to find hope in dark times—not by worshipping shiny heroes or attributing all evil to some archvillain, but by doing the hard work of understanding broken systems well enough to change them.
Praise
Review quotes will be added here as they arrive.
Also available
Beyond review copies, I'd be glad to provide an author interview, a guest post, etc.—whatever suits you.