Are fairy creatures really aliens from another universe?
Imagine a world where fairy creatures aren’t just myths, but hostile aliens from a parallel universe. This is the brilliantly bizarre reality of Mercedes Lackey’s “Hunter Trilogy,” a page-turning blend of fantasy and young adult post-apocalyptic fiction. This concept of fairies, elves, mages, and other magical creatures being from the “Otherlands” should be familiar to anyone who is a fan of portal fantasy and multiverse parallel universe fantasy. Mercedes Lackey adds an interesting spin to it by setting her story in post-apocalyptic America.
This series would especially appeal readers who liked Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games and Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series, as it has a similar dystopian flavor.
In the Hunter series, which includes Hunter, Elite, and Apex, Lackey introduces us to a dystopian Earth where the boundaries between worlds have thinned, unleashing a horde of mythological creatures intent on eating humans and kidnapping their children.
In this chaos, Hunters, elite warriors with magical abilities, are humanity’s last line of defense in protecting the dwindling human population from invading magical beasts.
The protagonist, Joyeaux Charmand, is a teenage Hunter who navigates this dangerous new world with a mix of bravery, practicality, and wisdom. Through her eyes, we experience the thrill and terror of combating otherworldly beings, while also grappling with the backstabbing politics of her ratings-driven society.
For readers who aren’t yet familiar with Mercedes Lackey’s work, I definitely recommend the Hunter series as an entry-point.
Diving into Mercedes Lackey’s extensive bibliography, it’s clear why she has been called one of the most prolific fantasy authors of all time.
As I perused her backlist, I was surprised to find a bunch of books I had read as a teenager, including Elvenbane, which was co-written with Andre Norton, and Lackey’s hugely popular Valdemar universe, which is a cornerstone of the fantasy genre. Lackey’s ability to continuously produce compelling, diverse narratives is a testament to her unwavering creativity and dedication to the fantasy genre.
Even though Mercedes Lackey will write many books in a fantasy world, she will often write in trilogies, so you can dip your toe into one of her worlds, enjoy a complete series arc in three books, and if you decide you like it there are plenty more in that world to enjoy.
One of her series that I’m looking forward to reading more of is her Elemental Masters series, which are historical fantasy re-telling of fairy tales, but set during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
For those interested in exploring more of her imaginative universe, a visit to her website offers a gateway to her literary world.
If you would like more book recommendations like this, consider signing up for my Reader’s Club. As a thank you gift, you will receive a free short story from me, along with updates on my works in progress every month or so.
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UPDATE — This blog post includes text and images generated with the assistance of OpenAI’s models. I provided detailed prompts, curated the outputs, and made edits, but the majority of the content was created with AI assistance. This disclosure aligns with my commitment to transparency under the EU AI Act. Disclosure added on November 18, 2024 to align with transparency requirements under the EU AI Act.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Portions of this content were generated using OpenAI’s models, with significant curation, editing, and creative input by E. S. O. Martin. AI-generated portions may not be subject to copyright under current laws.
The first time I saw these books was when I was about 12 or 13 years old, in a Barnes & Noble.
Going to a Barnes & Noble was a major treat for me. I would head straight to the back shelf to the fantasy and science fiction section. I was super into witches and sword and sorcery fantasy back then. (I still am.)
I remember distinctly the cover with the red dragon, and the two hooded witches riding their horses. I opened the book and fell in love from the very first paragraph, where we learn about Isabeau, the young apprentice witch growing up talking to animals in her hidden valley. She had to learn witchcraft in secret because magic has been made illegal in the Scots-inspired alternate universe of Eileanan.
The concept behind the magical world of Eileanan is that the witches, fairies, and other mystical creatures of Celtic Scotland had magically created a portal through space and time and landed in a world with two moons, which happened to have its own tribes of indigenous fairies and mer-folk.
The book is written using a lot of Scottish idioms like “augh!” and “ken” and the characters swagger about wearing kilts and tam-o-shanters. The Scottish dialect is a little bit silly at first, but you quickly get used to it.
When I was a teenager, I absolutely fell in love with this world. For years, whenever I would go to a bookstore, I would race to the back shelves to see if there was another book in the series.
Back in the ye-olde-days of the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was hard for brick-and-mortar stores to carry an entire fantasy series. Alas, I never finished the series as a teenager because the books never seemed to be on the shelf. (I think I was only ever able to find the first three books: The Witches of Eileanan, The Pool of Two Moons, and The Cursed Towers.)
Even so, the world that Kate Forsyth built had a huge impact on my worldview because it was so feminist.
I loved that the female characters were fully-developed, major players in this world. I loved that much of the book was built around female relationships—friendships, mentor-mentees, colleagues.
And there were so many different types of women: old, young, power-hungry, naive, athletic, femme, tom-boyish, motherly…it felt like there was a huge spectrum of the female experience that got represented in this book.
It really mattered to me that I was getting to see a representation of women that was as complex as all the women I knew in real life.
Fast forward fifteen years later and I was a mother in my late twenties up in the middle of the night nursing a little baby. My mind started to wander and all of the sudden I remembered Kate Forsyth’s name.
I looked her up on Amazon and OMG, the entire series was available!
Book 1: The Witches of Eileanan (The title in America. Outside the USA, the book was titled Dragonclaw.
I downloaded the entire series and immediately started binge-reading every spare moment I had, thumbing through the pages on the Kindle app on my phone. I read while pushing my son in a swing. I read while nursing. I read in the middle of the night, with the white text glowing against the black background.
What a delight it was to finally find out what happened to Isabeau. After more than a decade of waiting, I finally got to complete the series!
Now I’m in my late thirties, and my son has recently begun to fall in love with sword and sorcery and heroic fantasy books. His love of fantasy started with the Dragon Masters series of chapter books by Tracey West, and has continued with the Eragon, Inheritance Cycle series by Christopher Paolini.
I recently downloaded the audiobook editions of the Witches of Eileanan series, and I have begun re-listening to the books to remind myself of the story before I introduce the series to my son.
I love listening to the audiobook-version of this series, because I’m actually hearing the Scottish pronunciation and noting how it differed from the other two times I read this series and I only had my mind to sound out the words.
It is incredibly rare to find a series of books that holds up over time—a world you can enjoy in multiple decades of your life. I loved the The Witches of Eileanan series as a teenager, as a young mother, and now as a grown woman nearing my forties.
This is my third time through and Eileanan is still one of my top favorite fantasy worlds. I love how feminist the world is. I love all of the folklore, and the magic system, and the relationships between the characters are still solid. These books pass the Bechtel test over and over again.
I definitely recommend the series to anyone who loves sword and sorcery and heroic fantasy. I’m so glad that Kate Forsyth wrote it. I can’t wait to read some of her other books, which re-imagine fairy tales from a feminist perspective.
If you’re looking for something good to read, here’s a list of my favorite books that I read this year.
Realistic Fiction
The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade—Amadeo Padilla is a thirty-three year old layabout who is hoping to turn his life around by taking on the role of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. But when his fifteen year old pregnant daughter turns up on his doorstep, his imaginary redemption story turns into a real one as he helps his daughter adjust to parenthood, and he helps his mother deal with a terminal illness. While the premise of this book sounds like a downer, there were so many bright moments of insight and humor and resilience that I thought this was one of the best books I read last year.
The Risk of Us by Rachel Howard—When a middle-aged couple adopts an eight year old foster girl, they find themselves tested in unexpected ways.
Motherhood by Sheila Heti—In this autobiographical novel, Sheila Heti examines what is lost when women chose motherhood over their artistic pursuits.
The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray—This is a multi-generational story of siblings raising each other, and the power of family in overcoming personal suffering.
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson—This haunting young adult novel is about Lia and Cassie, two friends bound by a twisted and competitive friendship to be the skinniest girls in school. But when Cassie dies, Lia is haunted by her friend’s ghost as she, too, must decide whether to join her dead friend, or choose life and recovery.
Vessels by L. L. Rose—When retiree Olivero Russo buys some clay pots from a yard sale and bakes bread in them, the taste of the bread awakens a sensual pleasure in life he hadn’t experienced since he was a boy. This is a delightful story written by a friend of mine. It’s available for free for people who sign up for her newsletter.
Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson—A fatal heat wave sweeps across the globe, killing many in a wet-bulb effect. A political agency based in Switzerland, called “The Ministry of the Future,” takes it upon itself to shift economic engines that have caused global warming toward a new economic system based on environmental restoration, economic equality, and sustainability.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia—The Yellow Wallpaper meets Wuthering Heights in Mexico. This spooky story of a haunted house in the Mexican highlands will satisfy anyone who loves gothic haunted houses, feisty heroines, intergenerational insanity, and masterful writing.
How Long ‘Till Black Future Month? by N. K. Jemisin—I’ve been a fan of N. K. Jemisin’s work ever since I heard her short story “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints in the City Beneath the Still Waters” on Podcastle back in 2011. This short story collection gathers some of the early work of one of the best minds working in sci-fi/fantasy today.
Minecraft: The Island by Max Brooks—This is a tie-in horror novel based in the Minecraft video game world. I’m not a Minecraft player, but I thought this book was an excellent and entertaining introduction to what this whole Minecraft universe is all about. In case you missed it, the author is MAX BROOKS! The guy who wrote World War Z. I highly recommend the audiobook, which is narrated by Jack Black.
Mystery
A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult—Jodi Picoult is a fantastic issues writer. In A Spark of Light she takes on the issue of abortion and women’s reproductive rights with compassion, humanity, and nuance.
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty—When the matriarch of a tennis family disappears, the siblings take sides on whether or not they think their father has something to do with her disappearance.
Historical Fiction
Restraint by Anne Hawley—The passionate and forbidden M/M romance between a Viscount and a painter, set in Victorian England.
Warrior and Weaver by K. S. Barton—Astrid and Bjorn come from rival Viking tribes whose hatred runs deep. When these star-crossed lovers are forced into an arranged marriage in order to bring peace to their two tribes, they must each decide whether their desires to protect the living is stronger than their desires to avenge their dead.
Memoir
Theft by Finding: Diaries, Volume One by David Sedaris—Humor writer David Sedaris collects his edited diaries from 1977 (before he was famous) to 2002. I highly recommend the audiobook version, as David Sedaris reads his own work.
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung—Nicole Chung is a Korean American, raised by white adopted parents in an isolated, and mostly white, area in Oregon. As she grows to adulthood and is on the cusp of motherhood herself, she goes on a quest to reconnect with her biological family and re-examine her identity as an adoptee and as a Korean American.
And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready by Meaghan O’Connell—In this humorous and heartbreaking memoir, Meaghan O’Connell unpacks her and her fiancé’s experiences of becoming parents in their late twenties, when most of their NYC peers were still single and fancy-free. This wonderful book is great for new parents, and for anyone who enjoyed the parenting podcast “The Longest Shortest Time.”
Women’s Work: A Reckoning with Work and Home by Megan K. Stack—Megan K. Stack is an award-winning journalist who managed her “work-life-balance” by living the colonial ex-pat life in Beijing and India. In this memoir, Stack turns her sharp and unflinching journalistic eye towards the ethics of white entitlement feminism…starting with her own conflicted relationship with the housekeepers, cooks, and nannies she employed (all of whom were also working mothers) in order to keep her own career afloat.
Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America by Nefertiti Austin—Say the words “mother” and “adoption” and what mostly comes to mind in America is the image of a married white woman. In this memoir, Nefertiti Austin discusses her experience as a single, adoptive, black mother living in a society that mostly behaves as if she didn’t exist. She also describes the love and overwhelmingly positive experience she had as the adoptive mother of two foster children. A wonderful book. Highly recommend.
The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Non-Binary Parenthood by Krys Malcolm Belc—Krys Belc discusses his experience as a man going through pregnancy and childbirth.
Empty by Susan Burton—Susan Burton’s memoir about her anorexia reads like a passionate Dear John letter to her conflicted relationship with food and her body.
Reserve the Right by Yume Kim—I’m not normally into poetry, but I absolutely loved this collection by my friend Yume Kim because each one feels like a powerful story.
Older, Faster, Stronger: What Women Runners Can Teach Us All About Living Younger, Longer by Margaret Webb—Margaret Webb is a writer and marathon-runner who sets out on a quest to get in the best shape of her life, as a woman in her sixties. This book was an incredible resource on female athleticism, and on what it takes to age well.
Strong Like Her: A Celebration of Rule Breakers, History Makers, and Unstoppable Athletes by Haley Shapley—This is a historical survey of female athletes throughout time. From the first woman to swim the English Channel to the Great Sandwina to Babe Didrikson Zaharias, one of the greatest all-around athletes of all time. This book was inspiring and totally enlightening because I’d never heard of most of these women. Strong Like Her is a hidden history of female athletes, and the role they play in securing physical agency for all women. I highly recommend the hardback or paperback versions because of all the incredible photographs by Sophy Holland of modern female athletes.
Women Warriors: An Unexpected History by Pamela D. Toler—A hidden history of warrior women throughout time. I’d never heard of most of these warriors.
Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition by T. Colin Campbell, PhD with Howard Jacobson, PhD—In this follow-up to The China Study, T. Colin Campbell writes about how most of the discussion of nutrition with it’s obsession with micronutrients, ignores the big picture importance of whole foods and the whole diet…much to our physical peril.
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben—Before reading this book, I looked at trees like they were all the same. After reading this book, I started seeing the trees as individuals, who sleep and communicate and live in family groups on a timescale much longer than my lifetime. This books has totally changed the way I see nature. I also recommend the children’s book version, as it’s very engaging for kids and adults alike: Can You Hear the Trees Talking?: Discover the Hidden Life of the Forest.
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Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life is an inspiring, crass, and hilarious memoir by Ali Wong, the stand-up comedian who performed both of her mega-successful Netflix specials, Baby Cobra and Hard-Knock Wife, while 7-months pregnant. Baby Cobra was filmed in 2015 while she was pregnant with her daughter, Mari, and Hard-Knock Wife was filmed in 2017 when she was pregnant with her daughter Nikki. In Dear Girls, Ali Wong unpacks her life, her rise to fame, and she offers wisdom on broader questions about working motherhood.
Each of the chapters in Dear Girls, is addressed to her daughters (as adults) as she tries to pass on the wisdom she has learned about work, family, studying abroad, love, motherhood, and all the work she has done to increase the representation of the Asian-American community within the American mainstream. Ali Wong’s greatest weapon against intolerance, misogyny, and racism is to make people laugh.
Large portions of Dear Girls is specific advice for female and Asian-American stand-up comedians (in case her daughters decide to become comedians). The parts of her book I enjoyed and related to the most were when she talks about connecting with her roots through studying abroad and how she met and “trapped” her husband, Justin Hakuta, into marrying her.
The courtship between Ali Wong and Justin Hakuta is especially is delightful to read about because the final chapter of the memoir is written by Justin Hakuta himself. In it, he discusses his decision to set his work aside to be the primary caregiver for their daughters, so that the children could have a stable home life while their mother continues to kick down doors, take names, and lift their entire community. Justin Hakuta’s motivation is informed by his experience of having a nurturing, stay-at-home mother who grounded the family while his famous father—Ken Hakuta, also known as “Dr. Fad,” who is an inventor and famous TV personality—was out in the world increasing Asian-American representation.
Dr. Fad
Justin writes this to his daughters:
“Famous parents are part of the family, but they are also part of a much wider tapestry of relationships made of the people they impact. We have to share them. Your mother, like your grandfather and all other pop culture celebrities, often struggles with balancing the pursuit of her career and craft and spending time with us, and she’s right—it’s tough. I know how to be your mother’s balancing half, and how to be your father, because of how I was raised.”
Justin Hakuta, Dear Girls
He goes on to discuss how his mother, Mari and Nikki’s “lola,” is the inspiration for the father he wants to be, and how he views his marriage with the famous Ali Wong.
“It was crucial for your uncles and me that your lola was a consistent parental presence who helped ground the family. […] Because someone needs to ground a family when fame is so intoxicating. I learned how to navigate the limelight of your mother’s fame from growing up in my house where your lola was the grounding force.”
Justin Hakuta, Dear Girls
This is wise and straightforward advice, especially for men who are married to notable, successful women. Justin Hakuta does not seethe with jealousy, compete with, try to undermine, or try to cannibalize his wife’s success—as, say, Richard Burton did with Elizabeth Taylor; or Paul Newman with Joanne Woodward; or Dezi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Instead, Justin Hakuta mans-up by being the partner she needs to help her reach international success, lift their community, and provide a stable household for their children. Justin understands that the more women and people of color are given space to shine, the brighter the world is for all of us.
Here is what Ali Wong writes about how important it was for her to return to work. Partly it was out of financial necessity (more than once in her stand-up and in her memoir she refers to the prenup Justin’s family made her sign as the best thing that ever happened to her because it forced her to keep working or risk financial destitution if they ever got divorced), and partly out of a sense of injustice for how invisible women still are in the world.
“I really began to rethink my plans of being a stay-at-home mom after I saw that movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It’s an acclaimed documentary about the Steve Jobs of sushi in Japan. He is extremely anal about the temperature of rice and the texture of the fish. He has two sons that are his proteges, but it’s very hard for them to live up to their father’s legacy. Because Jiro is so dedicated to the craft of sushi, at night he dreams of sushi. Everybody watched that documentary in awe of Jiro and his singular commitment to the art of fish. I watched that film and thought, Where the fuck is Mrs. Jiro? She isn’t even mentioned in the goddamn documentary. Somebody had to raise those two sons while Father Jiro was busy being a sushi hero. […] What does Mrs. Jiro dream of? Freedom. Recognition. Divorce. I saw that movie and decided that I wasn’t gonna go out like that.”
Ali Wong, Dear Girls
Women are still under-represented in positions of power and influence. Men are under-represented in the domestic sphere. I loved reading Dear Girls because both partners are leaders in their community and role models for all of us. Ali Wong is a leader by shattering stereotypes. Justin Hakuta is also a leader by showing how to be a good father and a supportive spouse to a famous woman. Ali Wong is a role model for purpose-driven women and girls, and Justin Hakuta is a role model for men and boys who want a holistic life that isn’t just a treadmill of work. Sharing their marriage-story in Dear Girls is an incredible act of generosity.
We all know what traditional-marriages look like, but seeing the reverse-traditional marriage celebrated in popular culture is a wonderful, brave new frontier.
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The setup for The Elegant Out: A Novel by Elizabeth Bartasius is that Elizabeth, the main character, already has a 10-year-old son from a previous relationship. Now her son is doing well in school, she has a stable career as a grant writer, and she is in a happy relationship with a man who loves her and is a good step-father to her son.
But now she is thirty-six years old. Her IUD is about to expire. She is under the clock to decide whether to have it taken out for one last chance at a second baby, or get a new IUD put in, thus ending the chapter of her childbearing years and freeing her up to pursue her long lost dream of being a writer.
For Elizabeth, it’s a zero-sum choice—either have a second baby, or become a novelist—both are labors of love that involve tremendous acts of patience, creativity, time, and effort. She feels equally drawn to both choices, but in the math of her life, she only has enough time and energy for one. Which will it be? The delight of a second child? Or the pride of fulfilling her own long-forgotten dreams.
Throughout this slim and lyrically written book, Elizabeth’s conflicting desires slowly ratchet up in intensity. When a female friend (who vowed to never have kids) gets pregnant, Elizabeth feels a flush of desire for a second baby that is so strong readers can almost taste it. When another friend convinces Elizabeth to start a blog, Elizabeth experiences a roller coaster of emotions that slingshots between freedom, joy, vulnerability, playfulness, creativity, guilt, greediness for time, self-doubt, self-censorship, and self-sabotage.
When I read The Elegant Out, I was doing the final edits on my first novel, Candid Family Portrait. (Full disclosure: I loved The Elegant Out so much I asked Bartasius to write a blurb for my book.) In my book, my main character, June, also goes through an existential crisis where she too is striving to regain her creative career after having a child, but she experiences a fair amount of social pressure to have more children…
As I was reading The Elegant Out, I couldn’t help but feel a deep recognition of the Catch-22 Bartasius describes Elizabeth going through—how the censorship (and absence) of female voices in all levels of society is inextricably tied to those early motherhood years effort involved with rearing small children. In a patriarchal society, a woman has no worth until she is a mother. In a consumption-based economy dependent on constant growth, a mother isn’t a Mother until she has 2.5 children. There are so many sanctions put on female bodies and time that it can be hard to get out from under all that.
In the Bad Old Days (before safe, reliable birth control) women had very few choices. Their options were basically to become nuns, or to have baby after baby until they died. Now, thankfully, there are more choices available. Through delaying parenthood, gaining education and work skills, and limiting the number of children they have, women are starting to achieve self-actualization on a historic level rarely seen before this time.
This is wonderful! But it can also bring about an existential crisis. If the average female life expectancy is 78 years, and she spends 18 years being a child, and another 18-25 years as a mother (if she chooses to be a mother at all) then that still leaves about 35+ adult years she can spend living for herself, in pursuit of own happiness. The largest chunk of a woman’s life is spent Not-mothering. How to spend this precious time?
Bartasius speaks to something true in the female experience when it comes to that question of “If I’m not 100 percent mother all the time, what am I?” Is female creative power limited to making babies, or can that same generative energy be put toward other things outside the home?
Child-free women face this question. Mothers of only-children face this question. Women who are one-and-done face this question. Mothers who raised eight children and are now facing the new experience of being empty-nesters face this question. Parenting small children is so all-encompassing that when the volume of work eases off, there is avoid. Looking into that void is scary. Do I, as a woman, fill that void with another child—and thus delay (or give up on) my dreams with a socially accepted form of self-abnegation? Or should I face that void and fill it with something else? Something for me. Am I a bad mother/woman if I am anything other than a self-sacrificing martyr? Am I allowed to pursue my dreams? At what point does a woman say “Enough is enough,” and put her fulfilment on the agenda?
I loved that The Elegant Out book goes into this territory.
I also loved the voices of the other characters in Bartasius’s book—especially of Elizabeth’s son, Jack, and her partner, Gabe. These two male voices (one a child, one an adult) act as a lighthouse, guiding her through the darkness.
Throughout the book, Gabe is consistent in that he does not want a biological child of his own.
“We’ve already got a child to take care of,” he explained, “and I believe there are going to be very limited world resources in our lifetime. I want to make sure we can care for us and Jack.”
Gabe comes across as solid, rational, practical, and responsible. His voice in Elizabeth’s life has a delightful flavor of male-entitlement. He can say things that Elizabeth, as a woman, isn’t allowed to say herself. We are enough, just the way we are, he seems to say. Let’s quit while we’re ahead and enjoy the bounty of what we already have. Each time he rebuffs her attempt to discuss having another child, she seems disappointed—but also palpably relieved. She wonders “if I too was actually craving less responsibility, not more.”
And then there is her son, Jack, who has started doing creative writing at school. As she sits at his bedside, encouraging him to find his voice, it hits her how hollow her encouragements sound when she had given up on her own voice. It’s through the mirror of her son’s gaze—and through the steadfast support of her partner, Gabe—that Elizabeth realizes she needs to take ownership of her own life, reclaim her voice, and ask for what she truly wants.
