Lina Rather’s A Season of Monstrous Conceptions is a genre-bending novella set in an 18th-century London full of unnatural, monstrous children. It’s a story bursting with cosmic terror, midwife witchcraft, female desire, and the failings of ill-prepared and incompetent men.

The Blurb:

“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.”

Review:

While A Season of Monstrous Conceptions is an evocative tale of otherworldly horror, the novella also has plenty to say about class differences, the male gaze, and the secrets women must keep from well-intentioned men. The book opens with scenes of body horror and maternal fright, but Rather’s prose grows and shifts to create a story that is equal parts queer historical fiction and speculative horror.

The protagonist, Sarah, is a midwife in training in London, where a frightening amount of babies are being born with horrific, unnatural afflictions. Sarah is all too familiar with these otherworldly disfigurements and lives in fear of any one of her many secrets escaping. When she meets the pregnant Lady Wren and becomes engaged as her midwife, Sarah also becomes enmeshed in the schemes of Wren’s occult-obsessed husband, Lord Christopher. The story that follows is grand and about saving the world, but it’s also small and precious, with Sarah learning to craft the world in which she wants to live.

I read this book through audiobook, which I highly recommend. Amy Scanlon narrates the novella and does a remarkable job capturing Sarah’s voice. She performs dialogue exceedingly well, particularly that of the harsh Mrs. June and the lovely Margaret. As with the prose, the narration grows and shifts as the novella progresses; both the prose and narration are masterful and work beautifully together.

Final Thoughts: A Season of Monstrous Conceptions is exactly the kind of weird fiction I love to read. It’s genuinely stellar in every way. This is definitely going on my list of Favorite Tordotcom Novellas Ever, and I’m already scoping out everything on Lina Rather’s backlist.

Rating: 5/5 stars.

You can find A Season of Monstrous Conceptions on Amazon and Goodreads; you can find the audiobook on Audible or Kobo.

Thanks to Recorded Books for a review copy of the audiobook. All the above thoughts are my own.