Sarah Monette (born November 25, 1974)

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Sarah Monette is an American novelist and short story author writing mostly in the genres of fantasy and horror. She was born and raised in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and she began writing at the age of 12. In 2004 she earned a PhD in English literature, specializing in Renaissance Drama and writing her dissertation on ghosts in English Renaissance revenge tragedy. She double-majored in Classics and Literature (a cross-departmental program between French, English, and Comparative Literature) in college. She is currently teaching a course on 17th century literature and lives in Wisconsin.

She won the Spectrum award in 2003 for her short story "Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland." Her first novel, Mélusine was published by Ace Books in August 2005, earning starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist and a place in Locus's Recommended Reading list for 2005. The sequel, The Virtu, followed in July 2006, also earning starred reviews and making Locus's Recommended Reading lists for 2006. Her short stories have been published in Strange Horizons, Alchemy, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, among other venues, and have received four Honorable Mentions from The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow, Gavin Grant, and Kelly Link. Her poem "Night Train: Heading West" appeared in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror XIX, and a story she co-wrote with 2005 Campbell winner Elizabeth Bear, "The Ile of Dogges," appeared in The Year's Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois, in 2007. She also has been published in the award-winning Postscripts.

In 2007, she donated her archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.


The Virtue - Cover Art by Judy York


Melusine - Cover Art by Judy York

In November 2009 it was announced on her weblog that her forthcoming work, The Goblin Emperor, would be released under the pseudonym Katherine Addison.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Monette

Sarah Monette´s Mélusine quartet is easily the very best series I´ve read this year. These are dark, labyrinthine novels, packed to the rafters with deliciously damaged, morally ambiguous characters. Monette´s worldbuilding is astonishingly complex, but her crystalline prose assures our clarity of understanding. A good thing, too: competing magical systems, political intrigues, cultural and personal histories abound and the stakes, high when the first book, Mélusine, opens, only rise through the subsequent three books (The Virtu, The Mirador, and Corambis). The central characters - `ganymede´ wizard Felix Harrowgate and his assassin half-brother Mildmay the Fox -- are wondrous creatures and the supporting cast is at once populous and intimate, thanks to Monette´s skilled strokes with the characterization brush. But the greatest joy of Monette´s series, for me, is her light, almost giddy, touch with language (my enduring favorite: sexual submissives and dominants are described as `martyrs´ and `tarquins´). --Lee Benoit

Further Readings:

Melusine by Sarah Monette
Series: Melusine
Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Ace Hardcover (August 2, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0441012868
ISBN-13: 978-0441012862
Amazon: Melusine

Mélusine-a city of secrets and lies, pleasure and pain, magic and corruption, and destinies lost and found...

Felix Harrowgate is a dashing, highly respected wizard. But the horrors of his past as an abused slave have returned, and threaten to destroy all he has since become.

As a cat burglar, Mildmay the Fox is used to being hunted. But now he has been caught by a wizard. And yet the wizard was looking not for Mildmay, but for Felix Harrowgate...

Thrown together by fate, these unlikely allies will uncover a shocking secret that will link them inexorably together.

More Spotlights at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Lists/Gay Novels

Comments

[megaranight.livejournal.com]

Monette is on my reading list for a while but I was wondering if it's a gay story with a fantasy background or fantasy with gay background. I don't especially mean sex (indeed, yes lol) but is there a real love story in Melusine?

The first picture is really beautiful. The man, the lights in the city are really the elements that would make buy the book if I had to choose by cover art.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

We are very similar :-) I have your same problems with these books, it's a bit that I'm wondering if buy them or not. For what I could understood, there isn't a real love story between the two men, they are more "special" friends. If someone of my other friends know better, please correct me. Elisa

[pandorasvase.livejournal.com]

*there isn't a real love story between the two men, they are more "special" friends*

Yeah. In Melusine, there are hints of gay relationship, not between Felix and Mildmay.Even if Felix feels something. In the second book seems more pronounced but I want more. :P [I'm reading The Virtu, so I continue to have hope]
It's more a fantasy with gay background.

p.s. sorry for my bad english. I'm better read than write U/////U

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info

> p.s. sorry for my bad english. I'm better read than write U/////U

I'm the last person you should say you are sorry, my English is a lot worst than my reading skills!

Elisa