Childbirth is stressful and unpredictable in real life but, in Lina Rather’s brisk novel, A Season of Monstrous Conceptions, a touch of magic makes things even more so for the mothers who birth children who bear the marks of another world. Sarah Davis is an apprentice midwife, learning to help both mother and child survive the often traumatic labor. She also has a touch of the other world, herself, allowing her to manipulate the force that’s seeping into England in the wake of the Great Fire of London.
A chance meeting with the pregnant wife of Sir Christopher Wren one morning brings Sarah into the orbit of a man determined to rid the world of magic forever. Wren longs for a world that can be cleanly explained with mathematics and physics, with no more inexplicable happenings or bizarre births. But the midwife Sarah apprentices for—plus the rest of the unofficial guild of midwives—sees an opportunity for women to seize the power of magic to remake the world with less patriarchy and a lot more matriarchy. The only person who bothers to ask Sarah what she wants (sometimes, this character can be a little pushy) is Margaret, who just wants to have a good time with Sarah.
The plot of this brief book races along as Sarah, caught in the middle, puzzles out her own desires in the middle of the wishes of the more powerful people in her life. I loved the amount of rich historical detail Rather used in A Season of Monstrous Conceptions to bring the London of the 1660s back to life, albeit with a lot more weirdness than in our own historical timeline. I felt like I was in the birth chamber with Sarah or in the taverns drinking with Margaret or wondering at Wren’s architectural works in progress. The fey touches of magic made London electric and mysterious, so I felt for Sarah when she started to wonder if the world needed more physics or more strangeness.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.