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Caitlin Davies

Narrator

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I know that there probably won’t be a sequel to this book but I want there to be. Vespertine … leaves room for much more to come.
I feel like Sorcery of Thorns was maybe more popular or the characters were more popular and I feel like the sequel was an easy decision to make especially given that Vespertine seems to have been written during COVID and that can’t have been an easy time. Maybe just the idea of returning to that world is something that causes Margaret alot of trauma. I can understand that … and it’s a shame … because Vespertine is one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had in a while and frankly, the better of the two books; an evolution of something just beginning to find it’s roots in Sorcery of Thorns.

When I was reading Eliza Andrews’ Chronicles Of Dorsa series, I had a similar feeling that I also occurred when I experienced Margaret’s books.

Princess Of Dorsa, the first book, was really … heavy on the sapphic tropes, leaned heavily into expected trappings and focused solely on the character’s love story and sex scenes. It was very slow burn romance with this amazing story underneath that I was really interested in. The second book, Soldier Of Dorsa, was like a whole different experience. It was more … mature feeling, less fanfiction, less tropey, the world was FULLY realized and focused on, the characters and the plot took center stage and you could really feel the writing becoming almost more dry … more wordy, more dramatic, more George RR Martin-esque. I think there was only one sex scene in it and it was shoved into the epilogue almost just so people wouldn’t complain that it didn’t exist. It was boring, it wasn’t hot, it felt lazy and obligatory. What I started feeling was this kind of desire for the author to go beyond the sapphic trope genre into some serious fantasy writing … and the book was such a major shift. The final book in the series, Empress of Dorsa, was like eating Triscuits in the desert … I didn’t even get through it completely yet. I felt like I was witnessing Eliza Andrews developing a sense of her own style and her own desire to write specific kind of fantasy. The first book was what you would expect from sapphic fiction but the second book felt way more evolved and it took itself way more seriously and gave more literary writing with less fluff and fanservice. I loved that. I loved that evolution.

I feel like the order that I read Margaret’s books in gave me a wonderful view of this same kind of shift of focus. I liked especially that Vespertine was NOT a typical romance novel. It was pure fantasy. Pure story. Pure characters. Pure philosophy. There’s plenty of LOVE; not the cheesy, tropey kind but the more mature, complex, multilayered and messy kind.

Sorcery of Thorns was published in 2019, Vespertine in 2021 and I haven’t read her first book, An Enchantment of Ravens, which was published in 2017. I read Sorcery of Thorns FIRST – not her most recent book – and what I saw was this development of an idea … the bound and the binder … and how complex and unique that relationship could be. It wasn’t the focus when the book started but it BECAME the focus as the book went on. The focus of the book shifted from Scrivner and to the other two characters in the book. I felt that shift … Scrivner wasn’t the hero of the story anymore, she wasn’t the priority … Silas was. Silas and all three of them and that relationship. It was like the whole book ended up being about Silas and that throuple. I wonder if that was always the plan … ? I feel like this idea took root in Margaret’s mind and she couldn’t let it go or maybe she just loved it so much that she wanted to develop it further.

Vespertine took this concept and opened it wide. It took the bound and the binder idea and evolved it into something much bigger, with much more focus, with much more emotion, with much more prominence. It feels like Vespertine was written solely to communicate this idea, this relationship, the wider ramifications and transformative aspects of what that kind of love means, whereas Sorcery of Thorns it felt like it was a tertiary relationship that took over as the main focus of the novel by the end. It felt like she was onto something really amazing in Sorcery of Thorns, especially by the end, and it just needed more time to cook. Vespertine is that final, beautifully cooked meal. Vespertine is an idea coming to full fruition in a story designed specifically around it to showcase it, not as a sidenote that overflowed and took over. There are so many ideas in Sorcery of Thorns that have come into full bloom in Vespertine. There are so many things that were interesting ideas in Sorcery of Thorns that became full foundational philosophy in Vespertine.

I experienced the two books nearly back to back and it was so obvious to me. Had I read them years apart it may not have been. It felt so clear that one book was an experiment and the other was the result. It felt like I was watching Margaret’s writing and ideas really unfold into something so strong, so clear … it was an “ah ha” moment with so much clarity whereas Sorcery of Thorns felt like a bit of a muddle that was just beginning to find it’s footing as it ended.

Perhaps it was COVID, perhaps it was the pandemic, perhaps it was the rapid decline of humanity, empathy, rational behavior, and the tremendous trauma of 2020 that brought all of these things out of Margaret as an author. No more fantasy romance. No more slow burn nonsense. No more fiddling around with childish ideas of the world … Vespertine erupted out of a very dark place, a very dark time, and yet it feels like where Margaret was already heading and maybe just didn’t have the frame of mind to get there until she had little choice.

I read that Margaret has said there will be no sequel to Vespertine and that sucks. It sucks so bad because there was so much raw truth in that novel. There was so much … reality in that fantasy. There was so much she seemed to be working out, working through, coming to terms with, giving a voice to … and now we’re just gonna have more Sorcery of Thorns? That’s … unfortunate. That’s sad. Vespertine really spoke to me and I feel like it not only spoke to Margaret, but maybe it was pulled from a place in her that she wasn’t willing to visit until The Lady spoke to her, until the ravens came cawing … (IYKYK) Sometimes when it’s darkest we find who we really are … our truth and our strength.

I’ve been trying to write the same novel since I was 12 years old. But I grew up in an abusive household, had a lot of mental damage and PTSD. I grew up, went to school, was told in college I had no skills at writing, switched to computer science, and launched a programming career. I left my creative writing behind. I have two autoimmune diseases and live with chronic pain. I also have aphantasia and you can’t imagine how hard it is to CREATE when you cannot IMAGINE. I wrote the first ever 350 pages of my novel in 2019 … 4 months after recovering from a desperately needed surgery that allowed me to be pain free for the first time in 40 years. It was like I was given new life and my ideas finally began flowing and I wrote and wrote and wrote. In fact … I started to write my first real words 2 months before Sorcery Of Thorns was published. I know what 2020 did to my creativity. I know what the past few years have done to my entire soul. I haven’t been able to get back to my novel and may never … not in the Hellscape that is coming for all of us.

So, if Vespertine was truly a novel birthed from trauma, a mental health crisis, loss, and pain … I’m sorry and I ABSOLUTELY understand. I’m sorry that Margaret had to suffer so much that she won’t consider ever returning to that world that she gave birth to from the center of her strongest (not weakest) self. I’m sorry that suffering sometimes paves the way to greatness and brilliance.

I’m truly sorry …

Sorcery of Thorns is not a bad book. It’s an amazing book. It is a WONDERFUL, beautiful experience. It was an epic story with characters I really came to love … but by the end I felt like it was going in a very different kind of direction. I felt like the heart of it was just beginning to beat … just as it ended. Vespertine was not a resurrection of something once dead, but a birth; a new life breathed into something that was just beginning to figure out what it was a few years earlier.

Perhaps I’m not speaking just about Margaret’s ideas, but also her writing voice as well.

But what do I know … I’m not a writer so I can’t really speak on that with any authority, only my gut … only how her two works made me feel.

I love Margaret Rogerson’s writing style. I love her voice. I love the way she crafts relationships and I especially love how she builds worlds that are so rich and vibrant and real. It’s almost like the worlds exist to have characters put into them, not the other way around.

I look forward to reading her next book that’s not another Thorns novel. Maybe I will have a while to wait for it but I’m confident it will be worth it when it arrives. I want to see what kind of writer Margaret will become when she heads in a different direction and embraces different things and is able to heal from the pain she had to endure to create what I think is her best novel to date.

Thank you Margaret. Feel better. Keep growing.