In my first year of university, I was going through a very tumultuous time. There was all the many new things that come from leaving home, some good, some bad. There were the difficulties of a demanding if rewarding job, and I first became acquainted with the not-so-fondly-remembered and not yet fully un-internalized “student lifestyle.” Terrible food, awful sleep schedule, and this omnipresent sense of impending doom that was, at least in my case in Fall 2019, surprisingly prescient. Throughout all of this, I was not prepared to be struck by the warmth and depth and resonant Truth that cut through the noise and spoke to me with a certain book I picked up, by happenstance, because of its pretty cover. That book was A Conspiracy of Truths by @ariaste. You may have heard of them. https://www.alexandrarowland.net/a-conspiracy-of-truths

Now, needless to say I devoured aCoT, and subsequently its excellent sequel A Choir of Lies. I was sorrowfully disappointed to find out after finishing the absolute rollercoaster of Choir that there was in fact, no further reading yet to do. And so, profoundly affected as I was by this (for now) duology, which I will doubtless craft a dedicated and appropriately lengthy treatise at some point in the future, I set the books in a prime place upon my shelf and turned to face the rest of the year buoyed in my hopes for the brightness of Spring and the long lusty laughter of Summer. Alas, they were all of them deceived for another global epidemic was to begin. One (or two) life-altering years in a pandemic later… I returned to university, fully prepared to enjoy the hell out of an actual honest-to-gods academic institution that didn’t begin and end with a computer screen. It hit like a truck. Same awful student lifestyle, more bad habits piling up, and a rapidly growing sense of my own undiagnosed issue rearing its ugly head. I made one decision that saved me, probably. I kept buying and reading phenomenal books. I kept looking for stories to motivate, enervate, and inspire. Somewhere deep in my subconscious, I remembered that fateful message spoken by a Chant on a page three years past. To loosely paraphrase, “Stories [are] people, and the way people are.” I chose to focus on resilience, made it my motto, and sure I still had lots of work to do, but it helped. It gave me the push I needed to keep going.

That last long Winter that seemed so dark that the sun was never going to come back? I went a-wandering, and lo, a new instalment from @ariaste ‘s Mithalgeard universe! Not a Chant sequel as such, but I couldn’t get my hands on it fast enough. It was an oasis. A respite from the grind and dreary routines. It was also gay as… well as gay as a rainbow covered in gold, let’s say. And I cannot recommend A Taste of Gold and Iron fiercely enough, because although in many ways I managed to end my degree on a high note, that book drew me out of the darkness of the coldest part of the year. It gave me the sense to smell the flowers, to bask in the green and golden glow of a soon-to-be-attained victory, long overdue.

Alex had by this point also published several shorter works, (and a whole library’s worth of content on AO3, naturally) which I leapt to read whenever they crossed my radar. It helped that I joined their discord community which was leaps and bounds more reliable in terms of getting updates and also just having the chance to share in mutual fandom gushing. If you’re even remotely interested in learning more about what I’ve talked about here, you should join in! https://discord.gg/XHJ9Uy5gef Everybody there is absolutely lovely. So why do I bring all this up? To summarize a preamble that is, to put it mildly, not short, Alex’s writing sings to my soul. I love it more deeply than my non-existent children, and their body of work continues to evolve and grow and deliver on the themes and core messages that hooked me with that first book.

But wait, there’s more! Life carries on, and with it comes new stories! Specifically, Running Close to the Wind! It’s Our Flag Means Death meets Mithalgeard, which if I haven’t convinced you to go and read those other instalments, well just trust me when I say that is a potent and persuasive pairing! It’s also going to be dropping at an important time for me, what with convocation, another big move in my life, and a whole whack of uncertainty. Much like Avra, Teveri, and Julian though, I’ll just have to brave the rocky waters and hold on to those nearest to me, and that’s what I’d like to focus on at the end of this post. A Conspiracy of Truth taught me that stories are people, A Choir of Lies showed how stories can change people, and A Taste of Gold and Iron drove home that stories we tell ourselves are the hardest to rewrite, but also the most rewarding when we take ownership of them. I anticipate that with Running Close to the Wind, Alex will likely show us (with ample amounts of pomp and queer circumstances) how the story of ourselves can only ever be written by interweaving the tales of those closest to us. Perhaps, we’ll even discover how to navigate the often stormy seas of uncertainty that seem omnipresent these days, whenever we deign to pull our noses out from whichever books we’re currently nestled within. I know that’s certainly something I’ll be looking out for, come this June, and now hopefully you will be too! (This last link does go to the webpage for Running Close to the Wind, Tumblr’s just being weird I guess.)

So “A Taste of Gold and Iron” by Alexandra Rowland is an unmitigated delight.

I am not even kidding, I consumed this book in a haze and consciously made myself slow down while reading so I could better savour it. It’s unspeakably good. The world is so rich and detailed and woven into the characters’ personalities and quirks and how they experience their surroundings, it was a joy to read and I cannot stop thinking about it.

(I started writing this review after I read the advanced reader’s copy months ago. In March!! Rest assured I have not stopped thinking about it.)

In this fantasy romance novel with a limited though plot-relevant magic system, Kadou is the Prince of Arasht, struggles with chronic anxiety and his-sister-the-sultan’s annoying lover, and constantly tries his absolute best to do well by his kingdom and the people entrusted to him.

Evemer is a supremely capable bodyguard who gets assigned to Kadou in an effort to keep him out of trouble. He starts out being supremely unimpressed with Kadou. Take one look at the US cover of the book to see just how much he will become attached to his prince—

All of the characters are fleshed out and multidimensional, with realistic flaws and strengths and so much tangibility to them and the context in which they exist, I am absolutely FLASHED by the character work!

Do you like fealty?? Do you like Fealty with Feelings?? Do you like an achingly tender love story of growing devotion where they talk about their positions in each others’ lives long before they realise or admit they’re in love? You will love them. I love them.

Listen to me. Do you enjoy the liege/vassal dynamic but are particular about the power differentials in play? EXCELLENT NEWS the complications therein are addressed in the book, both in general ways relevant to the worldbuilding and relationships with side characters, and between the main couple themselves. Both of them broach the subject on several occasions! Laying open their expectations and fears in scenes most tender and caring and my god it is so well done.

Do you enjoy a world that is dealing intimately with mechanisms of fealty that is gorgeously constructed and thought through and then there is on-page deconstruction of that situation and dissection of what it means and what responsibilities come with it for both vassal and liege, and how the characters deal with that responsibility?? I know I do!!

Are you unsure about the fealty? Have you literally ever looked at fealty in fiction and thought to yourself, “This makes no damn sense—compels me though” ?? Rowland will make you look closer. They will hand you your own emotions and say, look at it. Hold it. Feel the weight of your own heart in your hands. You are allowed to have feelings about it. You are allowed to admit that this is intense, and it is not the same devotion as love is devotion, but it is just as Much, just as Heartwrenching, and NOW watch me add love to it and see how it transforms.

This author lays hands on this trope with absolute precision down to the molecular level and it is so. fucking. good.

And this is not even the only excellently executed and close relationship in the book. Kadou has family he loves, and who love him: the sibling relationship is politically strained and is immediately influenced by the plot. Another plot thread concerns a sexual relationship that ends, with the characters expending effort to transform it into a friendship, and it is not less valued for it.

The plot is gripping! There is a counterfeiting operation going on that threatens the kingdom’s economic stability, and our main characters are charged to investigate it. It flows seamlessly into the worldbuilding and character work. The world itself is queernormative, both regarding relationships and regarding gender, and nuances of it are discussed in narration and between various characters.

I cried about this book twice in one evening bc it has the ABSOLUTE AUDACITY to follow up an intense scene of fealty with an intense scene of the love that is developing underneath.

This book hits is like a needle-fine arrow directly into your heart.

The US edition came out today, the UK edition will be out in two days (September 1st), please read G&I, get it now, enjoy <3

no, no, I definitely haven’t been buying more books :D

I crocheted a star-in-the-marsh from Alexandra Rowland's A Choir of Lies!

Just wanted to pop in and express appreciation for your work! I started with a Conspiracy of Truths (after hearing about Choir of lies, and finding it was a sequel), then A Taste of Gold and Iron stole my heart and ran away with it (I’d preordered it and have since read it more than a few times. It’s amazing). And now I’m circling back to a Choir of Lies… I’m about halfway through, and I love it so far. The push and pull way you’ve handled narration is fascinating, and i feel like im watching a magic trick. Also, every time i see a mention of Araste I gasp and point and go, “I know those guys!”

The subtle interconnectedness and consistency of your stories (that I’ve read so far) are like looking at a gem from various angles. Thank you for sharing it all with the world! I can’t wait to read more of your published works in the future.

(Also, I’ve never sent an ask before, I hope this is the correct channel for this kind of thing)

Oh thank you so much, this is so lovely to hear!!! I am so delighted that you are enjoying the interconnectedness of the books, and you'll be happy to know that my next book, RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND (coming out next year) has even more of that kind of thing. ;) If you're interested, I have an official Discord server for fans of my work! Please feel welcome to join us if you'd like to! https://discord.gg/ftYnk8T42K

choir of lies GOOD

April books!

March

January/February

Ylfing drowning his name under the eye of Shuggwa

never once walked past a smelly shepherd boy by Mysana

https://archiveofourown.org/works/38686614/chapters/96725712

Some of the people who have met Ylfing, for just a short while.

Five drabble fics of people being part of Ylfing’s Slutty Adventures

Book #99 - A Choir Of Lies by Alexandra Rowland

(I- this- hng. It happened again.) I told you. I told you before, and it still holds: witchcraft This book has bewitched me, just like its predecessor did. It is echoing in my head, swinging back and forth in my skull like the pommel of a great bell, and I'm expecting a headache, but all I hear is wondrous music. The music sings of stories, of grief, of community and ruin and healing. And it sings of names - and as I listened, something moved into place. Something that had been sitting wrong for some time. Whoops, personal note incoming, but what else is new. ... Why do I have to have a name? No, serious question now. Like, fine ("not fine", says the inner punk), the bureaucracy needs to call me something, needs a definitive name to put on the eviction notice, but why do I need a name - one singular, solitary, defining name - for other people to call me? See, I realized, as Ylfing was contemplating names and Chants early on... I don't think I have a "real" name. I don't think I even want one. A legal name, sure, I can live with that, I guess. But a "real" one, one that's a fitting label to all of me? Yeah, no, fuck that. I like the internet, or at least this corner of it, in this regard. Here I call myself Dante, and no one, including myself, expects that to be my "actual" name, whatever that means. And yet it is as valid a name for me as anything. I like that. I like that a lot. Maybe this notion is a temporary thing. Maybe, one day, another piece will slot into place and render this feeling void. Maybe one day I'll find a name that feels the way Ylfing seems to feel about his. But "one day" isn't now, and a maybe can turn into a no just as well as into a yes. "Hi, I'm a dude. I don't really have a name - call me whatever you like." ... I had not intended to derail this post like this, but this blog exists, first and foremost, to chronicle my reading experience, and if that is made up of a bunch of weird epiphanies as of late, then I guess so fucking be it. [post script: If writing truly is a copy of one's mind, I might have to have some words with my past self about the multitude of characters in all the unfinished, never-to-see-the-sun stuff I write who have pretty flimsy relationships to their own names, and often only have a name at all because their found family issued them one on family-recruitment day. I might have spent ten minutes laughing hysterically when I realized this.]

when a flower bulb shows up in fantasy netherlands

"God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay-- Carlo, Romeo, please focus!"

They in fact, did not focus... but the show went well!

I saw over on my personal (@xbraveheartx) that @saikakin wanted to see tiny choir children and so I said I would deliver ♡ just a little doodle, but I couldn't let it go ♡

Also i know i’ve yammered about how much i loved it already, but really, check out this soundtrack if you haven’t

Will tumblr let me link three videos?? Let’s find out!

Castrati Stack by Tim Hecker (with The Icelandic Choir ensemble, arranged by Jóhann Jóhannsson) from the album Love Streams

Ok so uh just to clear up my tags from yesterday bc i overthink everything & don't want ppl to get the wrong idea fjhdhg; when i say "liking/hating things the wrong way" i mostly mean having bigoted reasons for opinions or being a dick about them or being weirdly performative with/invested in fictional activism (and those same ppl tend to be the ones who make dragon age opinions a morality race smh).

And overall of course everyone is entitled to simply Not Like a character! And there is lots of valid criticism that i might even agree with! But i am also entitled to blocking ppl who are being overly negative about them; not because you're not allowed to do that or because you're wrong, but bc i like to curate my fandom experience and not going insane bc of constant discourse. Highly recommend doing that btw; blacklists are there for a reason and your mental health is important✌

Hi! I just finished reading "a choir of lies" for the second time and im discovering shrimp emotions not known to man, the book hits wayb too close to home and is cathartic in the best possible way, and its stylistically so well done! Your character voices are impeccable and it's a delight to experience how this recontextualizes the first book, and what the voice of that character hid from the story. Did you always know you wanted two unreliable narrators, or did you come up with the story first and the diary/footnote storytelling second? And I love what you did to the Heyrlandische setting, it feels incredibly strange to have your country turned inside out so accurately and I'm pestering my friends to read this as well because I Need to talk about the intentional and accidental references and Everything, like how shipwreck translates to "wrak" which rhymes with a dutch accented way of saying "fuck", was that intentional? How did you come up with the gender system? The words sound so accurate, did you base them on any existing words or did you just combine sounds very accurately?

so many great questions!! First of all thank you so much for all the compliments <3 Secondly, you might enjoy my Discord server if you want to hang out and talk to other fans of the book! Link here: https://discord.gg/ftYnk8T42K Putting the answers to the questions behind a cut:

Did you always know you wanted two unreliable narrators, or did you come up with the story first and the diary/footnote storytelling second?

As soon as I knew I wanted to write a book from Ylfing's POV, I started tinkering about how I wanted to approach the unreliability of first-person narration for him, and how it would be different than Chant's in A CONSPIRACY OF TRUTHS. I THINK the general idea for the story came first, but by the time I actually started writing it, I'd hashed out the diary/footnotes two unreliable narrators thing with a friend :)

like how shipwreck translates to "wrak" which rhymes with a dutch accented way of saying "fuck", was that intentional?

Hah! Nope, that was a lucky accident, I am literally just learning about this now. I... tend to have extraordinary luck for these kinds of things. ;)

How did you come up with the gender system?

I, a queer nonbinary person, was like "yo let's fuck some shit up, let's get WILD" and then I just went hogwild on it lol Okay but as a more serious answer -- the binary view of gender is a very Western sort of thing. There are cultures all over the world today that recognize the existence of more than two genders! So as a queer person, gender is just one of the things I like to think about with my worldbuilding, rather than blithely accepting the default, and I like to build cultures that have lots and lots of different ways of looking at the issue. All my fantasy novels are set in the same world; some of the cultures have a gender binary, some SUPER don't, some have a third gender but it is reserved for people in religious/spiritual roles.... In general, I just try to do worldbuilding in ways that are fun for me to think about, because that probably means other people will have fun with them too :)

The words sound so accurate, did you base them on any existing words or did you just combine sounds very accurately?

I did base a lot of the gender words and terms of address on existing ones! A couple of them, I combined sounds to make something that sounded like a Dutch-ish word -- I minored in linguistics, so I know a little bit about what I'm looking for in that regard. Afterwards, I had a Dutch-speaking acquaintance glance over them just to double-check that they sounded like words to their ear as well. I think they had tweaks on one of the words, but I don't remember which one at this point.

Hope that answered all your questions! :)))) Thanks so much, glad you liked the book!