Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night

by Katherine Fabian, Iona Datt Sharma

The world you know is underneath the substance of another, with cracks in the firmament that let the light of its magic in…

Layla and Nat have nothing in common but their boyfriend – enigmatic, brilliant Meraud – and their deep mutual dislike. But when Meraud disappears after an ambitious magical experiment goes wrong, they may be the only ones who can follow the trail of cryptic clues that will bring him safely home.

To return Meraud to this world, the two of them will confront every obstacle: the magic of the wild unknowable, a friendly vicar who's only concerned for their spiritual wellbeing, and even the Thames Water helpline. All of which would be doable, if only they didn’t have to do it together.

But the winter solstice is fast approaching – and once the year turns, Meraud will be lost forever. In this joyously queer novella, Nat and Layla must find a way to overcome their differences before it’s too late.

Genres: Fantasy, Queer, Novella, LGBT, Polyamory, Fiction, Romance

110 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 7, 2018

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

A strange and thoughtful story of found family and memories and queerness in many forms, set in a London touched by magic but otherwise strongly ours--diverse, grubby, suburban, bleak. The search for the missing magician is intriguing in a very old-English-magic sort of way--it has the weird ancient quality of Susan Cooper's magic writing--and contrasts with the very contemporary setup of genderfluid Nat and bi married Layla who have nothing in common but their missing boyfriend, and need to get over their mutual dislike to have a chance of finding him, and making themselves happier. Points of utter genius, like the involvement of the Thames Water helpline (can I just say, the fact they got anything useful off calling this is by far the most fantastical and unlikely aspect of the book).

Personal bugbear: I do wish this hadn't been written in present tense, because that makes any sort of flashback or reference to past events clumsy, and this story has so much past and hinterland, and I cannot see what benefit present tense confers to make up. That grumble aside it's very well written and edited and I enjoyed it a lot.

I had an ARC from the author.

[Cat M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ADORED this book. OMG did I adore this book. It's a queer, poly, found-family story about two people who have absolutely nothing in common - except for their complete chaos muppet of a boyfriend, who has gone missing.

Layla is a sensible, married pathologist with a wife, two small children, and a comfortable place within her local community. Nat is a blue-haired, genderqueer musician with a decidedly non-normative queer community, and no interest in marriage, children, or assimilation into mainstream society.

The only thing they have in common is Meraud. Brilliant, enigmatic, magical Meraud. A human who spent the first five years of his life in Fey, Meraud is beloved and exasperating to our two narrators in equal measure. I suspect anyone who's ever fallen in love with a natural chaos-agent will recognize themself in this book. I certainly did.

But as the only two people capable of rescuing Meraud from his own stupid mistake, Layla and Nat will have to work together, find common ground, spend some time pretending to be engaged to be married, and maybe, hesitantly, forge a simply lovely, complicated friendship that's not dependent on their mutual relationships with Meraud.

I loved the setting of this book, which is very much our present only with small, everyday magic. Our heroes are ear-wormed by catchy secular Christmas carols (a delightful running joke), contend with overly-friendly Anglican ministers and church busy-bodies, and search for magical information on Reddit. It feels just wonderfully lived in and alive. And part of that was the people, there is a real community of people in this story, and they are so richly and diversely characterized every one of them feels like they have their own richly complex story just waiting to be told.

[Zen Cho · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this unusual novella -- contemporary fantasy set in a London illuminated by the light of another world. Elegant, tender and funny, it's a perfect book to curl up with on a winter's night, along with your favourite seasonal accessories (mug of hot drink, festive jumper, pet cat or loved one, etc).

[Freya Marske · Rating 4 out of 5]

I explained this to someone on Twitter as "a sensible gay-married pathologist and a blue-haired nonbinary composer have to bicker their way through a magical quest when their mutual boyfriend goes missing" and really, that's it in a nutshell. I love Layla. I love Nat. I love EVERYONE.

This is a funny and cosy and utterly charming novella, full of found family and quietly wrenching emotions which sneak up on you and wrap themselves around your heart. Deeply human, deeply queer, and deeply magical.

[Punk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novella reads like Connie Willis if Connie Willis were aggressively queer:

* set in London
* during the Christmas season
* magical scavenger hunt
* a church
* an old busybody
* an unexpected ally

All that and poly relationships, a married same-sex couple with kids, and three genderqueer characters. Unfortunately, there's not enough done to distinguish between the two thems, Ari and Kay, which is frustrating because they're a big part of the story but feel very samey, despite Ari being Jewish and doing magic and Kay...not. They also live and work together and are almost always in the same room, which does not help matters.

The two narrators are quite different, though, and don't like each other much at the beginning. Lydia's sensible and established and Nat's more of a free spirit. I always love it when two people who don't get along have to work together, in this case to find their missing magical boyfriend who has left a series of clues behind for them to find. And I love that they have a quest but they also still have lives—families and jobs—and they can't just drop everything because they've got this important task. They have to work the quest in in between the rest of their stuff, which is realistic and a little hilarious. The story is infused with magic, but is also very grounded, and I enjoyed the rules of the magic system and that it was something you could learn rather than something you were born with.

This is full of warmth, love, chosen family, Jewish spirituality, and two really awesome descriptions of a theremin solo. The Christmas atmosphere is light, and well balanced by representations of other religions. And it's just really, really queer. I had a great time. Recommended.

Contains: Two Jewish characters, a Hindu, at least one woman of color, and a lot of overlap where gender/sexuality/religion/race intersect; polyamorous relationships; passing references to bondage; a few inadvertent misgenderings (one is easily corrected, but at least two go uncorrected due to being undercover as a het couple).

[Skye Kilaen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Iona Datt Sharma is an auto-buy author for me so I had to pick up this polyam magical mystery book they co-authored with Katherine Fabian. I cannot review or describe this lovely diverse book any better than Cat M did, so hop on over there for the full details: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The only thing I will add is that it’s so FUNNY at times, and I really appreciated how Fabian and Datt Sharma balanced that with the tension of the characters having to solve the mystery and save their mutual boyfriend.

[Kathrin Passig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gelesen wegen dieser Goodreads-Rezension, die mit dem Satz beginnt "This novella reads like Connie Willis if Connie Willis were aggressively queer". Genau so ist es auch. Ich würde sehr gern mehr Bücher sehen, in denen Poly-Beziehungen normal und nicht das Thema sind, aber das hier war mir ein bisschen zu "Queer Nat took a queer sip of queer tea from his queer mug". Ich habe eine Weile darüber nachgedacht, ob ich den üblichen Fehler mache, sichtbare Queerness viel zu sichtbar zu finden und über Cis-Hetero-Angelegenheiten, die andere Texte auf genauso aufdringliche Weise durchziehen, einfach wegzulesen, und ich kann das nicht ganz ausschließen. Aber ich glaube, das Problem ist vor allem, dass ich es generell nicht mag, wenn man mir in Büchern irgendwas überdeutlich sagt. Ich muss mehr Bücher lesen, in denen queerer Tee aus queeren Tassen getrunken wird, dann kann ich das besser einschätzen.

[X · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent! KJ Charles’ review mentions Susan Cooper, I think that’s pretty much the best comparison - that esoteric magic side by side with real British life. The way the authors give equal time to the magical details and the modern details made both feel very natural. And I liked that it’s a Christmas-y (and solstice-y) story about two characters who are in fact not Christian (or witches!) at all. Sweet, practical, soothing, hopeful.

[Charlotte (Romansdegare)]

This was an enchanting queer polyam novella, with an unusual structure and approach to a romance narrative. I spent a thoroughly charming solstice evening reading it (it's very short) and while not everything worked for me, I was glad to have spent time in its world. 

Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night takes place during the solstice, and centers around the disappearance of Meraud, a man with mysterious magical skills, and romantic partner to both Layla and Nat, who both love Meraud dearly but... do not exactly get along with each other. And who nonetheless have to work together to bring Meraud back to the world of the living for Magic Reasons, before it's too late.

I will admit that when I read the blurb/descriptor of this novella, and knowing one of the two authors from their work in romance, my brain filled in the assumption that, along the way in their quest, we would watch Layla and Nat also fall in love, romantically, with each other. This does not happen! And honestly, I found that intriguing: I see it's tagged on GR as a romance, and I'm sure some readers might not agree. But I appreciated how romantic love exists and is explored in this novella, between Nat and Meraud, and separately between Layla and Meraud (as well as Layla and her wife). But Meraud actually isn't really ever a character in the story. He never speaks, we see him only through Nat and Layla's impressions of him, their love for him, and the way they come to (platonically) love each other as they work to find him and care for him. It's a fascinatingly refracted way to look at romance, but also an incredibly affirming exploration of family and queerness and all the different kinds of love that make up people's worlds. 

That being said, there were times when things got left just a bit TOO vague for me. It was interesting having Meraud be this kind of ethereal, magical, queer, effervescent symbol of love, but I wouldn't have minded getting a bit more of the flesh-and-blood man in Nat's and Layla's impressions of him. And... every time the magic in this book is described, the prose gets SO esoteric that I tended to disengage in frustration. I don't need a ton of magical world-building, but I do need things other than a hand-wavy string of nouns. 

The tone and the message are lovely, though. As are the sparkling bits of humor, including this description of a novelty holiday song that should brighten up anyone's annoying holdiay season: 

[The song sounded] as if someone who'd only had extremely boring and unsatisfying sexual encounters but did quite like opera had tried to build a pleasure bot.

I mean, come on. We've all heard Christmas carols that sound... exactly like that. 

All in all, not a bad way to while away a winter evening. 

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh man, this novella was SUCH an utter joy and a delight.

Set in a contemporary fantasy London, two queer poly people, Layla and Nat, who don't even really like each other at first and have nothing in common except for having the same chaos magician boyfriend have to go on a quest through parts of England to save him before time runs out, after a magic spell goes disastrously wrong.

This was so fun and funny and charming. I loved loved loved how Layla and Nat warmed up to each other in the course of the novella, I loved the entire section where they had to pretend to want to get married to each other in order to get access to a church, and I loved all the relationships in the book -- from Layla's marriage to Katrina, to both Layla and Nat's relationships with Meraud, to Nat's friendships with Ari and Kay. It's all wonderful and so delightfully and effortlessly queer.

It's a quick read and I highly recommend it.

[Teleseparatist · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my Christmas traditions is to read either something queer & wholesome or something depressing & creepy. I chose wholesome queer this year and "Sing for the Coming..." was perfect. It gets so much right, emotion-wise, it's so life-affirming, kind and lovely. I was only somewhat invested in plot and worldbuilding, inventive though it was, but the queer feels were lovely, particularly after the first 1/3, when the setup was done and we could focus on the protagonists.

The details about the power of symbols and the way they resonated in ways big and small (for magic and "magic" like Layla's use of Meraud's perfume) were exquisite. A great read to finish my challenge with.

[aza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halfway through this novella I realized it's the first book I've read about a poly relationship! new 2022 resolution unlocked, read more poly stuff

This story is set in London, in a world where magic exists and its practitioners are common enough but still seen as whimsical to the majority.

Layla is a wife and mom of 2, who works a somewhat regular job at a mortuary and tries to fit in with the rest of her pta community, keeping her poly life separate from her "home" life. Nat is the opposite, he's visibly queer, living in an apartment off royalties of an old holiday song, does simple spells, and has no permanent plan forward. The only thing in common between the two of them is their powerfully magical partner, Meraud, who has gone missing.

Following Meraud's metamours as they try to save their partner while also struggling through their feelings towards one another is fun and interesting. While they are bitter at times, they are mature about it (they are adults after all) and watching them figure each other out brings me holiday joy.

ps now I really want their mug that says Hulk Smash Patriarchy

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warm and queer with lots to love, including found family, polyamory, a magical quest, and the Hampstead Mixed Pond.

I wish it'd been a bit longer though. There were a few pieces of the worldbuilding missing, and I needed more time with Nat and Layla to buy the change in their relationship. Also, it's unclear why it was set around the winter solstice (other than great marketing obviously - I mean it worked on me!)

[Lulu (the library leopard) · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was SO good, I don't know what to do now!

I just…really loved this? It felt very cozy despite the high stakes & I love the character relationships & the feeling of the magic and the humor.

Update: Oh no, I read it again ten days later.

Full review:
Listen, I LOVE THIS NOVELLA. I read it twice in three weeks and rated it five stars each time, so I’m not kidding when I say I adore it. Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night is an urban fantasy story following Nat and Layla, two polar opposites who reluctantly team up to save their mutual boyfriend, a chaotic wizard named Meraud, when one of his own rituals goes horribly wrong.

Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night is one of those things that just clicked so well for me that it’s hard to write a review that isn’t just READ THIS NOVELLA. I loved the magic system–it’s urban fantasy that reminded me a little bit of Diana Wynne Jones or Neil Gaiman, somehow both folkloric and personalized. I loved Layla, a bi, British-Indian sensible, married suburban mom with a wife and children alongside her polyamorous relationship Meraud. I loved Nat, Meraud’s other partner, a blue-haired, Jewish nonbinary composer with zero interest in settling down into a nice suburban family. I loved how Nat and Layla, initially clashing opposites, slowly and platonically warmed up to each other (and yes, they have to pretend to be fake-married at one point while they’re bickering their way through a magical quest). I loved the writing–equal parts magically elegant and humorous–and how the story managed to feel cozy despite the high stakes quest. And I really loved the incredibly sweet queer found families at the heart because who doesn’t love a good found family story? Despite the novella length, the characters and world of Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night all felt wonderfully realized and rich. I’d read a whole novel set in this world, but it was also nice just to curl up with it for a few hours.

Diversity notes: Layla is a British-Indian, Hindu, bi, polyamorous woman, Nat is nonbinary, and there are Jewish, genderqueer, bi, and sapphic side characters

[astri ☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was DELIGHTFUL

[Artemis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Festive and seasonal! Fun, charming, quick and easy to read. Well-written and well-edited. The queer aspects were well-done and felt like natural, engaging, full parts of the world, and I liked the characters. They felt like people I could know. The running gags could drag and the potshots at the Church Ladies in the second half felt a little mean-spirited, but overall this was a fun and easy to read winter Solstice-Christmastime novella.

An interesting thing though is that reading it, the plot felt contrived, as in, I could see the plot contrivances the authors were doing in order to get the plot to happen the way they wanted it to.
Why can’t they call the police to find Meraud when he goes missing? Because he’s a weird queer magician and magic-users are kinda mistrusted and treated as flighty and so are queer people so when they’re missing the police don’t see that as a Big Deal, they’re just like that.
Why do they need to do a scavenger hunt full of clues through England? Because the power of magic in this world is based on combining three “found objects” so Meraud hid objects in such a way that they could be “found” and grant Nat and Layla the necessary magic power.
Why do these two characters need to be the ones who do the spell and why can’t they ask any more skilled or knowledgeable magicians for help? Because the spell needs to be done by the character’s “beloved” or else it won’t work, and they interpret that as Romantic Partners Only. (I definitely rolled my eyes at that one.)
None of it was wrong or bad, and the found-objects spell magic was interestingly done in a fun way, and I really liked the lurking ominous but never-seen fairy magic implied throughout the story, but it never quite made the leap to feeling like the world existed first and the characters moved through it, and instead always felt like the rules of the world were invented such that it would facilitate the characters doing what the authors needed them to do.

Overall, while the machinations were sometimes distracting, I had fun reading it on the Winter Solstice.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magical queer polyamorous mystery set in London. Amazing writing. I loved the friendships, the mischief that Layla and Nat get up to while trying to save Meraud, the nonbinary non cisheteronormative, non-Christian patriarchal friends and community. It's not a romance but the romantic connections are significant in the book. I found it interesting that Freya Marske is named in the acknowledgments! This bodes well for A Marvellous Light, which I'm reading soon.

[Sadie Slater · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw a lot of mentions of Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma's novella Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night on Twitter last month, and bought it because it sounded like a fun holiday read. I didn't actually get round to it until the very end of the holiday, but it proved to be just as much fun as a post-holiday read.

Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night is a fantasy set in a London where magic is real, fairyland is just over there and magic users are just another minority group in a diverse society. In it, Layla (sensible pathologist with a wife and two children) and Nat (blue-haired non-binary composer) have to put aside their mutual dislike to follow a trail of clues to bring back their boyfriend Meraud, a brilliant magician who has disappeared after an overambitious spell wet wrong. It's charming and funny, pretty geeky, racially diverse and very queer; I really liked the magic system Fabian and Datt Sharma have invented, based on rules of three, found objects and associations, and I loved the way it tackled broader questions of love and belonging and family and queer existence. And in case this makes it sound a bit more serious than it is; it's fun and fluffy and a delightful quick read at a dismal time of year.

[Ludi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is clever, thoughtful and above all kind: while the story goes along at a fast and driven pace, the highlight is how the authors have drawn the characters, tensions and conflicts that form London's queer communities. The book highlights how chosen families are formed and cultivated, how queer people exist in heteropatriarchal societies and form safer spaces within and alongside them, and the ways in which many queer and otherwise-marginalised people hurt themselves in trying to fit into conventional spaces: all of which are explored knowledgeably and sensitively by the authors. The writing alternates seamlessly between the profound and the mundane, the characters are charming, and the prose is often hilarious: highly recommended as a cosy seasonal read that'll feel like coming home to queer community.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novella probably isn't for everyone, but it is absolutely for me. It's one of those rare books where after reading it, I feel changed--recentered, more alive, more ready to live authentically (and figure out what the heck that even means for me). It's deeply queer, poignant, funny, suspenseful, and beautifully written. I'm crying again writing this--this one really got me, and I'm deeply grateful to have come across it. The list of queer books that led me here described this book as a "warm hug," and at times I fully agree, while at others it was too stressful and sad for that description. Throughout, this book feels supremely wintry, right down to the nostalgia that often comes with that season, which so few books do this well. I wish there were a physical book and an audiobook; I would buy both.

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is so wonderfully queer and centers found families in a really beautiful way. I adore so much about this story that its hard to put into words. It’s just so lovely reading about adult queer people who get to be happy and unapologetically themselves and where their queerness is an integral part of their lives but it’s not the whole plot, y’know? Instead of unnecessary drama or dumb love triangles we just get this lovely story of all these people coming together in different constellations to create a beautiful queer community and a family in many different forms and it’s just so so wonderful and self-affirming to read.

[Fred Langridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this magical, queer novella. The protagonists and their concerns are so familiar that they're almost certainly friends of friends of mine, and the magic similarly. My relationships with my lovers' lovers and their lovers are a part of my daily life that I don't usually see represented in fiction; this story does so lovingly and without any fuss. It also includes the variety of religious affiliations and practices among the characters in ways that felt lovely and natural to me. Highly recommended.

[ambyr · Rating 4 out of 5]

The plot here is a bit by-the-numbers--plot coupons must be collected for metaphysical reasons I was never entirely convinced by--but who cares; that's not why I'm reading. I'm reading for the characters, for the pleasure of seeing the sort of people and relationships who surrounded my day to day life treated as normal and unremarkable, and in that it delivers in spades.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore this book down to my little tippy fingertips. Reading it on winter solstice may become a tradition.

- - -

An update, five years later: still the best solstice tradition. It just isn’t December 21st without these beloved co-beloveds seeking and finding their squirrelly Meraud. So prickly in its tenderness; so joyful in its queerness; so much love my heart bursts.

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This reminded me quite a lot of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London, because it's set in a present-day London where magic is real and is part of everyday life in a very matter-of-fact way (the first inkling this is the case you get when one of the main characters mentions a school leaflet for children from magic-using families). And if you know how much I love Aaronovitch's world you'll know how high praise it is when I say that Fabian and Datt Sharma's world is possibly even better. Because it's much more queer and diverse. The prose is lyrical and just fantastic (as Datt Sharma's always is). And the mystery aspect was intriguing enough too, though of course the relationship/dynamic between the different characters is what drew me in. Also this was the perfect read for the last day of the year. Ending my reading year on a fantastically high note.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the premise of this book but I felt like it was trying to do too much in such a short page count. The magic scape was definitely neat but I was left wanting more - more of the fairyworld, more of the context of how magic is viewed by society at large.

I also didn't feel enough of a connection to Meraud, that I was truly invested in his well-being. It almost felt like there was a lack of urgency with the timeline spanning over weeks and the main characters not seeming quite as distraught or anxious as would seem reasonable to me. I don't think we got enough of Meraud's positive qualities to truly understand why the main characters love him so much as well, because there is so much talk about his flakiness and kind of chaotic nature that I personally found it annoying and didn't understand why these characters were so invested in their relationships with him.

Would be curious to see what the authors could do with a full length novel instead of such a short novella.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A warm, beautiful winter's tale. A perfect afternoon's read.

[Annine · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my diversity challenge: poly relationship

This was cute and original, and super queer

[victoria.p · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warm, wry, and smart. A lovely read.

[Shane · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars because I felt like I wanted more from the ending. But in general it was good and cozy and queer. A fun read!