No More Amazement
Seanan McGuire
“No More Amazement” is Seanan McGuire’s July 2026 Patreon reward story. It’s 41 pages in PDF, so a novelette or novella. She introduces it as follows:
(Image: A caliby--calico/tabby--Maine Coon with clear green eyes, lounging on an organ duvet with a dino bone-patterned blanket behind her, a copy of INKPOT GODS leaned up against her to show you how big she is. She looks comfortable.)
I admit, I was delaying our return to the Tybalt timeline because, as you may have noticed, there are a lot of people mentioned there who never appear in the modern day. And that sort of implies that a lot of these people do not make it to the modern day. We’re at the point where he needs to move if he wants to remain compliant with the future timeline, and as a consequence, I put it off until enough people had asked that I couldn’t do it anymore.
So this is our return to Tybalt in the past, picking up some time after “Fanes That Lie.” It is a sad story, as a warning, but it is a necessary story, in terms of moving things forward into the distant and waiting future.
Just remember, he has joy coming for him. Just not yet.
(TW: Illness, child death.)
Despite the copy of Inkpot Gods in the picture, the story is unrelated to McGuire’s Alchemical Journeys series. It is about Tybalt, one of the main characters in her October Daye series. Tybalt will eventually become Toby’s husband and the father of her second child. (“Toby” is the nickname by which most people know October Daye, the hero of the series.) But, in an age mismatch for the record books, Tybalt is older than Toby by many centuries.
For some years now McGuire has been, off and on, filling us in on Tybalt’s background prior to his move to the San Francisco Bay Area where he will eventually meet Toby. Most of the people Tybalt knew in those long ago days have stopped their dancing. Thus, as she suggests in her introduction, getting from there to here will involve some tragedy. (The title, “No more amazement,” is quoted from The Tempest—I believe all titles in the October Daye series are Shakespeare quotes.)
This is good. I can’t say more about the plot without spoiling, and in fact McGuire’s introduction already released the biggest cat. (Pun totally intended.) As I mentioned in my review of Inkpot Gods, McGuire has been off her best for the last few years, but with Inkpot Gods and this novella, I feel we have the old Seanan back.