Review: 'A Season of Monstrous Conceptions' by Lina Rather
Pub. Date: 10/31/2023
Publisher: Tordotcom
In 17th-century London, unnatural babies are being born, with eyes made for the dark and webbed digits suited to the sea.
Sarah Davis is intimately familiar with such strangeness—having hidden her uncanny nature all her life and fled to London under suspicious circumstances, Sarah starts over as a midwife’s apprentice to a member of the illegal Worshipful Company of Midwives, hoping to carve out for herself an independent life. But with each new unnatural birth, the fear in London grows of the Devil's work.
When the wealthy Lady Wren hires her to see her through her pregnancy, Sarah quickly becomes a favorite of her husband, the famous architect Lord Christopher Wren, whose interest in the uncanny borders on obsession. Sarah soon finds herself caught in a web of magic and intrigue created by those who want to use her power for themselves, and whose pursuits threaten to unmake the earth itself.
Set shortly after the Great Fire of London, Sarah finds herself hired by the Lady Wren to ensure the safe birth of her child as London has seen more and more unnatural births in recent weeks. Her husband, Christopher Wren, is an architect with a broad array of scientific interests and Sarah quickly catches his eye. Not for creepy reasons per se, but because there is something to midwifery in this world which is just a little... uncanny. Sarah finds herself pulled between what her fellow-midwives want of her and what Wren offers, all while being shown a world of potential freedom by a lover. Considering that A Season of Monstrous Conceptions is a novella, it packs a whole lot of things in. I really enjoyed the character of Sarah, the way her backstory is sketched, and how she finds herself at a crossroads. The characters around her aren't as fully developed, but for the length and format that really isn't an issue. Throughout the story the scales between horror and mystery on the one hand, and romance and character growth on the other hand are balanced very well, and both hands come together in the service of the plot.
I hadn't read anything by Lina Rather before, but I immediately found myself drawn in by her writing. The flow of her writing is incredibly smooth and she very capably sets up her characters and plot pieces for the reader. The novella format, much like the short story, can be quite tricky because the writer does have less space to do what needs to be done. Just because the tale is short(er) than a novel does not mean it does not require the same grounding in a storyworld or the same attention to character. Rather does all of that very well and I felt like I immediately knew Sarah. I also loved the descriptions of seventeenth-century London and how Rather creates magic with this backdrop. In the last third, A Season of Monstrous Conceptions really expands on its world as it gets closer to the climax and while I very happily followed Rather towards her conclusion, I did have to slow down my reading a bit to catch what exactly was happening. What I appreciated most about this novella was how Rather centralised the question of who we turn into an outsider, of how we, as a society, judge difference. While this comes through very clearly with the "monstrous conceptions" themselves, the uncanny babies, it echoes very strongly in Sarah's character as well.
I give this novella...
4 Universes!
I very much enjoyed reading A Season of Monstrous Conceptions and think the novella format fits the story it wants to tell perfectly. With just the right tinge of horror and romance, Lina Rather strikes a great balance. I'm also determined to find myself a copy of Lina Rather's Sisters of the Vast Black, the first book in her Our Lady of Endless Worlds duology.
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