skygiants | (no subject)

I just finished reading Vespertine off dhampyresa's rec -- this is a first-person YA fantasy about a Special Girl and although I often find myself allergic to those these days I enjoyed this one extremely.

The Special Girl in question is Artemisia, who has a traumatic past of having spent most of her childhood possessed by an evil spirit before being exorcised by helpful nuns. Now she is a nun in training herself with a pure heart, a sincere religious devotion, an extremely feral demeanor, and profound social anxiety who wants nothing more than to spend her whole life peacefully blessing corpses and interacting with other humans as little as possible. (This is a very haunted world where any un-blessed corpses are factually and inevitably going to rise again as ghosts.)

Alas for Artemisia, a surprise ghost attack results in her unexpectedly inheriting a saint's relic attached to an extremely powerful revenant and using it to save her convent. Most nuns who wield revenant relics are trained to ensure that they can't hear the voice of the revenant; however, since Artemisia is extremely untrained and perhaps even more anti-social than the thousand-year-old hungry ghost, she and the revenant find themselves kind of vibing!

Also, the revenant would much rather be possessing Artemisia than stuck back in a relic, so in between making ominous pronouncements and attempting to suck the life force out of other living beings it spends a lot of time nagging her to eat and take naps lest she die and ruin this whole sweet situation.

Artemisia and the revenant spend the rest of the book attempting to solve the conspiracy of Why There Are Just So Many Evil Spirits while dodging both the growing legend of her sainthood and the hot and ambiguously evil priest who wants to bring her in to church authorities. The latter is vaguely love interest shaped and I think if the book had ended up having its semi-planned sequels would probably have become more firmly so, but as of this text (which right now looks likely to be the only one) the most important relationship is definitely between Artemisia and the revenant, with a sideline on Artemisia's Reluctant New Midbook Friendship with her Very Femme Roommate and Enemy from Nun School, a trope which I do enjoy every time.

I also really enjoyed reading a book in which the heroine is very genuinely devout -- Artemisia believes wholeheartedly in the church and her experiences with it up to the point the story begins have been nothing but positive -- while the book around it does such a good job problematizing the religious worldbuilding and pushing at her to consider her faith in a more complex way.

dhampyresa called this "Joan of Arc meets Venom"; I, not remembering that, was thinking of it while I was reading as "Sabriel meets Venom" but I think

dhampyresa probably has more the right of it.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

happydork

This sounds utterly delightful! Would that we all had our own terrifying revenant to remind us to stay hydrated.

From:

skygiants

TRULY. Artemisia might prefer to go charging into danger and heroically save people rather than taking a break to eat a pastry, but the revenant would really like her to eat that pastry --

From:

lilysea

I really enjoyed Vespertine! ^_^

Do you know if the author has a sequel planned?

From:

chestnut_pod

Enemy from nun school!! I love it.

From:

kore

I LOVED this book. It is so totally not my thing but I just inhaled it. Artemisia and Revenant reminded me a little of Murderbot and ART. It's a great dynamic.

From:

sovay

The latter is vaguely love interest shaped and I think if the book had ended up having its semi-planned sequels would probably have become more firmly so, but as of this text (which right now looks likely to be the only one) the most important relationship is definitely between Artemisia and the revenant, with a sideline on Artemisia's Reluctant New Midbook Friendship with her Very Femme Roommate and Enemy from Nun School, a trope which I do enjoy every time.

Thanks for reminding me to wonder why I haven't read this novel already.

From:

goodbyebird

Oh this sounds interesting, thanks for the rec!

From:

kate_nepveu

so what I'm getting is this is like the fic where Lan Jingyi is possessed by the Yiling Patriarch and they become friends?

From:

sophia_sol

yes. YES. I am so glad you enjoyed this book just as much as I did!!! sooo fun and satisfying.

also I just went and double-checked my review and I name-check venom and joan of arc and sabriel all in the second paragraph. so! you and I and dhampyresa have it COVERED.

From:

larryhammer

Added to my (ever growing) holds list at my library.

From:

larryhammer

There's a sequel novella featuring what look like side characters, which my library is calling number 1.5 in the series ....

From:

whimsyful

I really enjoyed this book, for all the same reasons you did. Loved the relationship between the revenant and Artemis, especially whenever the revenant went "damn you live like this? take a nap, drink some water, eat something!", and Artemisia and Marguerite were delightful as well. Also how (spoilers) gur Ovt Onq raqrq hc orvat n zveebevat bs Negrzvfvn naq gur eriranag'f eryngvbafuvc, naq Negrzvfvn erpbtavmrf ubj fvzvyne gurl ner naq ubj *orpnhfr* bs gurve fvzvynevgl vg'f vzcbffvoyr gb pbaivapr ure gung Negrzvfvn vf abg gur bar orvat hfrq was really cool. I'm sad there won't be any sequels, but it works quite well as a standalone.

From:

skygiants

What I saw around the internet was that she'd originally had sequels planned, but the process/timeline of getting this book out during the pandemic kind of scuttled that and now she has no immediate intention of writing them. But perhaps someday!

From:

skygiants

oh, interesting! what's it called?

From:

skygiants

it's a classic "my high-femme roommate and I could NEVER understand each other! ... unless?" except much more fun (for me) because they've been resentful roommates for SIX YEARS before the plot kicks off! when Artemisia dropped a spider on Marguerite's arm she was really just trying to convince her that they weren't dangerous!

From:

skygiants

Yeah, I'm so glad I saw so many good reviews of it around DW because otherwise I never would have picked it up and I'm so glad I did!

From:

skygiants

I remembered seeing you in the comments of

dhampyresa's post and wondering if you had!

From:

skygiants

Hope you enjoy if you read!

From:

skygiants

yes, except Lan Jingyi has more social skills in the thumbnail of his pinky finger than Artemisia has in her whole body ... more like if post-zombie Wen Ning was possessed by the Yiling Patriarch tbh

From:

skygiants

aha, I KNEW I'd seen someone else posting about this but couldn't remember who, thank you for helping to lodge it enough in my brain that I remembered to check it out <3! and sorry for stealing all your name-checks with no memory of doing so asj;dlkfjd;l

From:

sovay

I remembered seeing you in the comments of dhampyresa's post and wondering if you had!

It was a disorganized year!

From:

skygiants

Good luck, godspeed, I hope you enjoy when it lands on you!

From:

skygiants

YES that was so good, both of them really genuinely like 'gunax Tbq gung Tbq frag zr guvf tbbq eriranag sevraq, funzr gung LBHE eriranag sevraq vf n ab-tbbq yvne' (naq gura gur nzovthvgl bs jung gur bgure eriranag qvq srry sbe naq nobhg ure!) huge chef's kiss