A Season of Monstrous Conceptions by Lina Rather

TL;DR: A dark novella about strange births and a woman caught between worlds. Not my favorite novella but nothing offensive or upsetting? Just okay.
Source: NetGalley – thank you so much to the publisher!

Plot: A young girl caught between arrogance, men and women and the power she holds. Pretty standard fair unfortunately.
Characters: Fairly cold, I really didn’t connect to our characters. Which is sad considering the main character is a fellow Sarah
Setting: Dark and cold London, fairly basic with not a lot of description or building of the world
Magic: Vague and soft, no real detail on how it worked

Thoughts:

It’s hard to drum up much of any feeling on this one – I can’t tell you why. It was okay? Nothing too wildly fun or wildly bothersome. It follows Sarah, a young midwife’s apprentice, in London during the 17th century. A spat of strange births, children born strange with gills, tails, horns, etc has plagued the city. Sarah herself was born strange, a tail that marked her out. As such she seems to have a connection to the Other Plane, which seems to be looming closer and closer to mankind’s Realm.

The story has some very familiar beats. A young woman, heady and full of herself trapped in a bad position, a man willing to take advantage of her and a vast well of power she holds and must use to save everyone. By no means was this bad, but the story was fairly predictable in it’s steps and I’m going to be honest, midwifery and childbirth is not a topic I enjoy reading about.

Again, this one is simply not one up my alley, but if those things sound appealing this is something well written and interesting and could be right up someone else’s alley! I gave this one 3 out of 5 and I will definitely continue to pick up Lina Rather.

3 out of 5 strange babes