Description

by Lisa L. Hannett and Angela Slatter

Introduction by Kim Wilkins

Cover illustration by Kathleen Jennings

The gods are dead, but will not be forgotten.

When Mymnir flees the devastation of Ragnarok, she hopes to escape all that bound her to Ásgarðr — a heedless pantheon, a domineering brother, and her neglectful father-master, Óðinn. But the white raven, a being of memory and magic, should know that the past is not so easily left behind. No matter how far she flies, she cannot evade her family.

In planting seeds of the old world in the new, Mymnir becomes queen of a land with as many problems as the one she fled. Her long-lived Fae children ignite and fan feuds that span generations; lives are lost and loves won because of their tampering. Told in thirteen parts, Midnight and Moonshine follows the Beaufort and Laveaux families, part-human, part-Fae, as they battle, thrive and survive in Mymnir’s kingdom.

Midnight and Moonshine is a collection of interconnected tales with links between them as light and strong as spider-silk. From fire giants to whispering halls, disappearing children to evening-wolves, fairy hills to bewitched cypress trees, and talking heads to moonshiners of a special sort, Midnight and Moonshine takes readers on a journey from ninth century Vinland to America’s Deep South in the present day. Hannett and Slatter have created a mosaic novel of moments, story-tiles as strange as witchwood and withywindles.

Midnight and Moonshine is a rich tapestry of dark fantasy, fairy tale and speculation.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review

In “Seeds”, the opening story of Hannett and Slatter’s innovative dark fantasy collection, Mymnir, Odinn’s white raven, flees the Ragnarok, “an apocalypse for the gods alone,” and comes to the New World. There she creates a Fae kingdom in the image of Asgardr, transforming herself from a thieving, neglected raven into the fearsome, immortal Fae Queen. Though each story in this collection is self-contained and varied in tone and setting (Mymnir’s Fae Court, Prohibition-era Charleston, the present, to name a few), each one builds upon its predecessor, with multiple generations of protagonists and recurring objects, characters (especially Mymnir, whose desires and memories, over the centuries, bring her to the cusp of another Ragnarok), and themes. Marked by imagery both beautiful and grotesque, and unnerving twists that recall the uncanny horror of original fairy tales, this collection contains a unifying, multilayered plot that draws upon Norse mythology to take the reader on a thrilling, unsettling journey.