#danielle cain

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice

I'm in the home stretch of my 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PDX THIS FRIDAY (June 20) at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG and at the TUALATIN public library on SUNDAY (June 22). After that, it's LONDON (July 1) with TRASHFUTURE'S RILEY QUINN and then a big finish in MANCHESTER on July 2.

Margaret Killjoy writes fantasy stories of relentless tension, boundless wonder, thrilling adventure…and completely radical, unflinching anarchist politics. Her 2024 YA novel "The Sapling Cage" is a queer coming-of-age epic that motors with all the narrative energy of a genderbent Conan epic:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/24/daughters-of-the-empty-throne/#witchy

Today, Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness Press publishes The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice, a collection of three linked short stories set in Killjoy's celebrated Danielle Cain series, which Alan Moore called "ideal reading for a post-truth world":

https://www.tangledwilderness.org/shop/p/the-immortal-choir-holds-every-voice

Danielle Cain is a freight-train-hopping, anarcho-queer hero whose adventures are shared by solidaristic crews of spellcasting, cryptid-battling crustypunk freaks and street-fighters. In Immortal Choir, the action opens with Danielle and a motley band around a campfire in a dark Idaho woods, surrounded by the night-screams of some distant demonic presence. It's Samhain, and the veil between the realm of the living and the dead is as thin as it gets. Bad things are stalking the night.

To save themselves, they must court their own dead, welcoming them to their circle. They pile a camp-plate high with food for the dead to eat, build the fire up, and begin the tell the stories of their dead comrades, summoning them as a defense against the monstrous forces that stalk the All Saints night. This is the setup for the three linked short stories that make up this short book.

This is a great setup: a group of endangered comrades, huddled together against the darkness without, telling tales to buoy up their bravery. It's the framing device that makes The Decameron an enduring classic after 800 years and counting. In Killjoy's hands, it sings.

The first story is "The Troll King's Court," a ghost story about a Norwegian troll cult that came to America in a failed Manhattan-Adjacent Project to create a mystical superweapon with which to win WWII. It's ultimately a story about how the competent people who have their shit together in our lives are just as broken as the rest of us, and about the many ways that release, fulfillment and actualization can take place. It's spooky as fuck.

The middle story is "The Fairies of the Spring," which summons up the old, mean roots of the Fair Folk, the cruelty behind their beauty and merry laughter. Pratchett did one of these (Lords and Ladies), and so have many others – but no one's done it where the resistance comes from a motley band of queer punk club-owners in a rural town, who team up with local shitkickers to hunt the elves and banish them to their realm.

The final tale is "The Battle of Miami," a story about a streetfighting anti-globalist battle. It's a tale of Black Bloc tactics and true queer love, that lights up with joy.

Killjoy's really onto something with this series. She's tapping into the deep roots of fantasy – maybe the socialist parables woven into William Morris's stories. She's also connecting with the roots of urban fantasy (I was delighted to see a reference to Terri Windling's superb, absolutely amazing Borderland series).

These three tales stand alone, so there's no need to read the previous volumes before diving into this one. But you should read the other two, because they're great:

The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (2017):

https://reactormag.com/excerpts-margaret-killjoy-the-lamb-will-slaughter-the-lion/

The Barrow Will Send What It May: (2018):

https://reactormag.com/excerpts-the-barrow-will-send-what-it-may-margaret-killjoy/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/18/anarcho-cryptid/#decameron-and-on

[inka-is-a-stinka]

Something tells me this conversation is not about Rufus.

[cow-boy-caviar]

THE IMMORTAL CHOIR HOLDS EVERY VOICE by MARGARET KILLJOY

Guys, I love Margaret Killjoy so much. I shouldn’t pit transfeminine fiction writers against each other, but of those who are writing collections of short fiction, Killjoy is doing it better than Torrey Peters. Where Peters’ Stag Dance felt like pieces thrown together in order to publish a second book, The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice presents a cohesive continuation of the series, good development of existing characters, and incredibly well-done writing that interweaves the magic and the mundane.

In this third book of the Danielle Cain series, Danielle and her four compatriots (Brynn, Vulture, Doomsday, and Thursday) are camping in the woods of Idaho, waiting for a month-long ritual to be complete. On Halloween, they sit around the fire and tell their friends’ stories. Each story was originally told to our main cast by a dead friend who we as readers have heard of, but all died before we could meet them. We’re in the same position as Danielle for the first two stories: we never met Anchor or Rebecca, but their legacy is evident in how other characters remember them.

Killjoy shows how good of a handle she has on each of her characters and her craft through the framing of Immortal Choir. Not only is each story unique in vibe, tone, and content, but the narration is also unique. The character’s voice comes through in the narration and presents the story through their individual lens, different from the story’s now-dead originator and different from one another’s styles. Anchor’s story as told by Thursday sounds far different than Rebecca’s story as told by Vulture, and if these characters swapped stories we’d get different versions, too.

The magical and the mundane are intertwined — “fancy magic” of spells and rituals is just as powerful as “normal magic” of collective action and protest songs — just as eldritch horror and authoritarian horror are given the same weight. Faerie murder cults are terrifying, sure, but so are cops in riot gear who torture the people you love. When they’re side by side, it’s hard to tell which one is scarier.

But also — just because the world is collapsing around us, whether it’s because of a faerie murder cult or a demonic deer or the rising tide of fascism, that doesn’t mean we stop doing laundry, or cooking for our friends, or playing bad acoustic covers, or loving and living our lives as best we can. I hope we see more of Danielle Cain and all the magic she finds in the world.

[lesserjoke]

Book #119 of 2021:

The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy (Danielle Cain #1)

The setting to this supernatural horror novella is a lot of fun, offering a sort of queer punk commune made up of squatters and/or idealistic radical leftists who are noticeably less common in fiction than in real life. I also really enjoy how the story’s themes reinforce that atmosphere, meditating on the abuse of power and potential for accountability and redress in a would-be utopian anarchist society. One of my favorite modes for engaging with fantasy as a genre is to read its external signs of magic as a reflection or expression of character, so the idea of an undead animal spirit guarding the lawless settlement and mindlessly executing anyone it deems a threat strikes me as an apt way to explore the tensions inherent in that kind of flat social hierarchy. The demonic presence merely embodies the underlying problem of how to protect a community without undue imposition on the freedoms of its members.

Or if you’d like, this is the tale of a drifter looking into her friend’s suicide, who winds up uncovering some spooky business at his old stomping grounds and has to decide whether it’s worth sticking around to help set things right. I’m not sure where the series will take this protagonist next, and as with many works of this length, I think this particular adventure might have been stronger as a full-fledged novel. But it’s a neat ride with a diverse cast and an overall ethos that I’ve found quite appealing.

[Content warning for police violence, gore, panic attacks, and mention of rape and domestic abuse.]

★★★★☆

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[jonasgoonface]

had to quickly draw Brynn and Vulture turning up on mason jar poitin. They’re characters from “the lamb will slaughter the lion” by Margaret Killjoy and it’s fucking incredible. queer crustpunk demon hunters. read. it.

[whilereadingandwalking]

One of the newest Tor.com novellas is The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy, the first in a series, coming out August 15. Danielle Cain, a wanderer at heart (ha), arrives at the communal town that her friend had been so happy in—until he killed himself a few weeks earlier. She’s seeking answers, but she’ll find many more questions there than she’d like: starting with the blood-red, three-antlered, carnivorous deer she sees on her first day in town. 

Killjoy paints a creepy world. It was enjoyable, inventive, and creepy, and proves once again how excellent the novella series being putting out by Tor.com is, and how innovative its support of the fantasy and sci fi novella. The mythic, occult world of the novel is visual, and the relatively diverse cast of characters is well thought-out, a community of people who wanted to forge a new kind of life and are now faced with a big problem that will raise questions of justice, righteousness, and what it means to do the right thing. It was entertaining, and went along quickly. The main character forges friendships and has a f/f crush all while confronting what’s happening in this town—the way her mind works is convincing and vulnerable. Zombies, myth and magic, and regular-old-worldly-problems mix in Freedom, Iowa. I enjoyed this novella, and while it didn’t blow me away because of a couple little explanatory writing tidbits that got on my nerves, it’s definitely an excellent fantasy to pick up, and I highly recommend it. I got this novella in exchange for an honest review from Tor.com. Check it out August 15!

[inka-is-a-stinka]

🧪💘Study Date 💘🧪

[inka-is-a-stinka]

I CANT STOP DRAWING THEM