Ever since she was a girl, Raliel Dark-Smile’s best friend has been the great demon that lives in the palace.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Tessa Gratton’s Moon Dark Smile, a lush YA fantasy out from Margaret K. McElderry Books on August 30th.
From the cover of Night Shine, courtesy Margaret K. McElderry Books
Content warning: body horror, implied self-harm.
I.
In my early twenties I had a reoccurring waking dream. Sometimes I saw it as I was trying to sleep, sometimes when my vision blurred from working too hard on an essay for class. Sometimes in class, or at lunch. I’d hold my left forearm before me and see a tiny cut at the wrist.
An orphan girl must face untold danger and an ancient evil to save her kingdom’s prince in Night Shine, a lush, romantic fantasy from author Tessa Gratton—available September 8th from Margaret K. McElderry Books. Read an excerpt below!
“Just get me to December 2019,” Mom told her oncologist on what would end up being her last appointment. She’d just finished a procedure to drain fluid from her chest that had caused her lung to partially collapse, and her doctor had asked if there was anything she could do for Mom.
At the answer, the doctor tilted her head, confused and unsure if Mom, whose sense of humor had not lessened over the course of eighteen months of mostly experimental treatments, was making a joke.
But I understood. Perched on the stool in the corner, with the cancer notebook on my lap for taking notes about medications or new drugs or treatment schedules, I stopped breathing. I lifted my eyes to see Mom’s bitter attempt at a cheerful smile. She didn’t have that long, and everybody in the room knew it.
“That’s when the next Star Wars movie comes out,” I explained, trying to sound lighthearted. The doctor laughed belatedly.
“I have to know what happens,” Mom said, laughing, too.
She died about two weeks later, on October 10th, 2018. And I didn’t think about Star Wars again for a while.
Strike fast, love hard, live forever.
This is the motto of the Lady Knights—sworn to fealty under a struggling kingdom, promised to defend the prospective heir, Banna Mora.
But when a fearsome rebellion overthrows the throne, Mora is faced with an agonizing choice: give up everything she’s been raised to love, and allow a king-killer to be rewarded—or retake the throne, and take up arms against the newest heir, Hal Bolingbrooke, Mora’s own childhood best friend and sworn head of the Lady Knights.
Hal loathes being a Prince; she’s much more comfortable instated on the Throne of Misrule, a racous underground nether-court where passion rules all. She yearns to live up to the wishes of everyone she loves best—but that means sacrificing her own heart, and so she will disappoint everyone until the moment she can rise to prove those expectations wrong.
And between these two fierce Princes is the woman who will decide all their fates—Lady Isarna Hotspur, the fiery and bold knight whose support will turn the tides of the coming war.
Tessa Gratton’s Lady Hotspur is a sweeping, heart-stopping Shakespearean novel of betrayal, battlefields, and destiny. Avaiable January 7th from Tor Books.
When I was young I didn’t know you could be queer. I lived in a small Catholic pocket of Kansas City, went to school with the same kids who I went to Mass with, mostly Irish Catholic and Latinx families, and heteronormativity was so deeply rooted in the foundations of my family, friends, education, and faith as to render it nearly invisible.
By the time I was eleven I’d read several books with queer characters and themes (Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner and The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, at least), but I easily read past anything that would force me to acknowledge my understanding of the world was expanding—the characters just loved each other, and tried to drink each others’ blood sometimes, and I certainly was good at ignoring anything too explicitly sexual no matter what parts were involved in what. To my school’s credit, I remember once the priest told us, probably when I was around second grade, that Jesus loves everybody no matter what, and all we have to do is love everybody in turn. I doubt Father Pat was thinking about the Vampire Lestat or Richard St. Vier but the lesson settled into my mind and I applied it to the world quite generously.
“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion.” —Edmund the Bastard, King Lear
When I set about creating a secondary world for my fantasy novel, The Queens of Innis Lear, I knew I wanted to use the metaphors of the natural world traditionally found in Elizabethan literature and which Shakespeare used to explore the deterioration of the eponymous lead in King Lear, the play that inspired my novel.
Innis Lear is an island where nature is magical, practically sentient itself. The trees speak, the rootwaters of the island have a basic will to thrive, and the distant stars hold power over people and the progress of modern civilization. There are two main philosophies: the religion of star prophecy, where priests worship through studying the stars and interpret their signs as behavioral guides, and the practice of wormwork, where wizards commune with the roots and waters of the earth to derive power and influence progress. While the philosophies can, in a healthy kingdom, weave together into a layered, complicated system of magic and belief, Innis Lear is no longer a healthy kingdom, having fallen into decay by only upholding the side of fanatical belief in the stars.
I don’t remember which of Shakespeare’s plays I read first, but I do remember the first performance I watched, start to finish: it was Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, playing on the TV when I was eleven and my dad was deployed in Desert Storm. I didn’t understand everything that was going on, and couldn’t have if I’d only read it. But because performance can energize and interpret the play for me, in specific ways, I was able to understand this play was about war, and it was about why men fight in wars. The monologue that made an unforgettable impression on small Tessa wasn’t from the Crispin’s Day speech. It was one spoken by a soldier with whom the king is conversing about the just nature of his war. Given the quagmire of wars American has been involved in since 2001, I could analyze this now with rather depressing politics, but as a child all I heard was why are we fighting this war? If my dad dies, what will it be for? The performance drew out the meaning of the speech even for my unprepared ears. I hadn’t thought to ask why before, and the performance taught that question.
I wish everyone were introduced to the Bard via great performance instead of being forced to read it, without the context of audience and energy, and usually by untrained voices. Because a capable performance changes everything.
Three Queens. One crown. All out war. Dynasties battle for the crown in Tessa Gratton’s debut adult epic fantasy, The Queens of Innis Lear—available March 27th from Tor Books.
Gaela, Ruthless Commander: I am the rightful heir of Innis Lear. No more will I wait in the shadows and watch my mother’s murderer bleed my island dry. The King’s hold on the crown must end—willingly or at the edge of my sword.
Regan, Master Manipulator: To secure my place on the throne, I must produce an heir. Countless times I have fed the island’s forests my blood. Yet, my ambition is cursed. No matter what or whom I must destroy, I will wield the magic of Innis Lear.
Elia, Star-blessed Priest: My sisters hide in the shadows like serpents, waiting to strike our ailing king. I must protect my father, even if it means marrying a stranger. We all have to make sacrifices. Love and freedom will be mine.
I don’t remember which of Shakespeare’s plays I read first, but I do remember the first performance I watched, start to finish: it was Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, playing on the TV when I was eleven and my dad was deployed in Desert Storm. I didn’t understand everything that was going on, and couldn’t have if I’d only read it. But because performance can energize and interpret the play for me, in specific ways, I was able to understand this play was about war, and it was about why men fight in wars. The monologue that made an unforgettable impression on small Tessa wasn’t from the Crispin’s Day speech. It was one spoken by a soldier with whom the king is conversing about the just nature of his war. Given the quagmire of wars American has been involved in since 2001, I could analyze this now with rather depressing politics, but as a child all I heard was why are we fighting this war? If my dad dies, what will it be for? The performance drew out the meaning of the speech even for my unprepared ears. I hadn’t thought to ask why before, and the performance taught that question.
I wish everyone were introduced to the Bard via great performance instead of being forced to read it, without the context of audience and energy, and usually by untrained voices. Because a capable performance changes everything.
