Seasonal Fears is a 2022 fantasy novel by Seanan McGuire, and a companion novel to Middlegame.
The Wheel has turned...
The seasons seek new monarchs, and across North America those rare people who know the wheel has turned are making their way through a contest that could well mean their deaths.
For one girl though this contest means she's finally starting to live. Melanie Cosgrove has always had a heart condition a breath from the edge of death, she's gone over it multiple times, but now she's pain-free and ready to live her life.
Her boyfriend Harald March is happy for her, though the relief she feels after this is squashed when they both hear of the contest they're about to be pulled into against their will.
They have a very good chance of getting killed in the next few days and Melanie's alchemical heritage only makes them both more vulnerable not less.
(Note: unmarked Middlegame spoilers below.)
Seasonal Fears contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Melanie's father might love her, but he and his wife created her as an alchemical experiment to gain control of the elemental forces of the world, and has always viewed her as something to control, rather than a real person.
- Affectionate Nickname: Harry calls Melanie "Mel".
- Alone with the Psycho: Tommy and Misty are serial killer siblings willing to take people apart.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Harry questions if he really deserves to live more than every other Summer candidate, because he's not sure he can stomach killing anyone else. Tim tells him he's looking at the situation wrong: the real question is, does Melanie deserve to live?
- The Bad Guys Are Cops: One Jack Frost uses his position as a cop to trap rival Winters for his candidate.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Expanding from the previous example there is now Mary Shelly and James Frazer of the Golden Bough fame, which is extensively quoted here, joining the ranks of alchemists..
- Blessed with Suck:
- Congratulations, you are a candidate for the position of Winter or Summer monarch! You get elemental powers and potential immortality...if none of the other candidates or alchemists who think your body parts make good ingredients murder you first, and if you can make it through the labyrinth, and if you can manage to avoid Death of Personality via being completely taken over by your season. Not to mention, if you don't get the crown, the sudden withdrawal of the season's power from your soul will kill you, because you've been changed too much to live without it. Good luck!
- Ascendants may have it slightly easier than incarnates, in that there's less of a risk of dying horribly, but they're at a deeply inconvenient level of power—magic enough to be involved, but not magic enough to be able to meaningfully defend themselves from a pissed-off potential incarnate. Of which there are many right now.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Harry and Melanie have been best friends since they were about four, and dating since the eighth grade.
- Closest Thing We Got: Poor Jack gets to be this twice. Each potential monarch should have an ascendant (someone tied to the season, but at a lower level of power) to show them the ropes and guide them to the labyrinth. All of the more experienced Jacks who should have been Melanie's were murdered by her father, who didn't want an outside influence on his precious experiment, leaving a just thirteen-year-old who's only had the gig for a year. The Corn Jenny who's supposed to help Harry hates him and murders a different Jenny to steal her candidate, so Jack, for love of Melanie, tries to help out Harry too. She's doing her best, but it's a struggle.
- William Monroe was able to get his position by killing all other candidates. Leaving him the only possible holder of the crown, which made Diana step up and become the summer queen to check him. It didn't work and the alchemical congress bound Diana.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Harry and Melanie don’t have the benefit of save-scumming and they’re trying to get a “natural” force, one has already known. Also only one of them is an alchemical construct and she spends a lot of time angsting about it.
- Sentient Cosmic Force: The seasons are this, they can have wants and desires but because they're so tied up in the chance to look and feel human the removal of them leads to the seasons themselves taking a hit.
- Dark Andtroubled Past: Jack Frost, Melanie's Jack Frost, did **NOT** have a good childhood. Examples include: numerous pawn shop visits, being forced to sleep in the street if she pissed off her father, birthday presents getting sold for drug money.
- Delicate and Sickly: Melanie has had a heart condition for her entire life and has been known to faint and has already had a heart transplant, but that didn't stop her from climbing trees.
- Didn't Think This Through: Trevor defects to Aven rather than serve his old rival (Harry). However, Trevor did not consider the implications of serving a candidate who's spent all of her life in an induced coma and been educated by implanted alchemical knowledge. Aven has no understanding of social graces or how the world works and she's impulsive and psychopathic. Doesn't take Trevor long to experience buyer's remorse.
- Disappointed by the Motive: Harry's incredulous reaction to learning why Trevor defected to Aven and refused to fulfill his predetermined role as Harry's Corn Jenny: Because of an unrequited crush on Melanie (and ironically one she couldn't have returned anyway because of the Summer-Winter connection between her and Harry).
- Do Well, But Not Perfect: To win the crown, you must connect to your season better than all of the other competitors. But if you connect completely, you lose your humanity—and since the point of having the monarchs is that the seasons enjoy being people, that knocks you out of the running, because you're not people anymore. Melanie's at extra risk, since from the jump she has a higher baseline level of Winter affinity and a lower baseline level of humanity.
- Eek, a Mouse!!: Subverted, Melanie has to deal with a huge spider in the shower of a motel room, and warns Harry and Jack that she's shooing it out.
- Evil Colonialist: William Monroe is this, he grew up in England and immigrated to America in the 1700s. He expedited his rise as a seasonal monarch by killing any other viable candidate and wanted to ensure that the new land was properly tamed. He is very racist and sexist and doesn't change his views despite centuries of life.
- Evil Is Petty: Trevor abandons his predetermined role as Harry's Corn Jenny and defects to Aven because they both had a crush on Mel since Middle School...and Harry got there first. However, it's also made clear the unrequited crush is the tip of a massive iceberg of long-seated resentment and hatred towards Harry and his life of privilege.
- Fantastic Racism: Many season adjacent people react...badly...to the knowledge that Melanie is an alchemical construct, under the assumption that she's one bad mood away from murdering everyone in the room horribly.
- Friendly Fireproof: Seasons can only fight their own season, even monarchs can't seem to hurt each other.
- Genre Savvy: Played with in the denouement. Despite winning, Harry and Melanie come to discover that there's an unexpected loophole in the cycle that would allow a defeated candidate to still seize their Crown before their life ends. While Aven doesn't know (and couldn't know) of this loophole, they still correctly anticipate she'll be coming after them because of her obsessive, psychopathic personality. However, it's subverted in that while they relocate to a safe house, Aven moved faster than they anticipated and before defenses could be set up.
- God Couple: What the Seasonal Monarchs can be if they want, platonically or otherwise.
- Golden Ending: This isn't the same timeline that Middlegame left off in—it's Roger and Dodger's perfect run, or at least as close to perfect as they can get. Smita and Erin survived this time around, but unfortunately, they couldn't save Dodger's parents.
- Gravity Master: Dodger can apparently revoke someone's gravity privileges.
- Here There Were Dragons: Magic used to be visible, overt and measurable but its changed and evolved just like everything else. It underpins the world and only alchemists and similar magic-user are able to get to it. To everyone else in the "real world" nothing is weird.
- Heroic Build: Harry has this thanks to his football participation, its noted he also has football injuries and the work that he needs to put in to keep up his physique. The fact that he maintains it with no work during the road trip, where he barely exercises or watches his diet is one more indication of his ascension.
- It's pointed out that while he's in good shape there are still people taller then him with more mass that get the better of him.
- Humanity Is Infectious: Addictive too, the seasons Ascendent came first and linked into their seasons then the season incarnates appeared and actually talked to their seasons. The Seasons won't function without their incarnates and need them to shape and guide them, they need their fix.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: Melanie tells Henry he needs to stay with her after they mutually collapse at the opening football game only to say she needs to leave and go because she snuck out of her house to go to said football game.
- Inexplicable Language Fluency: Aven is essentially in a coma all her life but, thanks to the alchemical knowledge tinctures of her father', she speaks perfect English even if there are some issues with definitions.
- Internal Reveal: Multiple times; the Protagonists get an Infodump about the setting of recent events from Middlegame. Then there's Melanie learning her sister survived. This is long before said sister shows up trying to kill Harry to take his place.
- Invisible to Normals: "Naturals" just don't notice anything too closely related to the supernatural. Nobody even hears when Harry and Melanie are attacked by another pair of candidates in their motel room, despite how much noise it makes, and afterward, all the evidence obviously linking them to the two corpses goes ignored. Meanwhile, Harry's parents don't shut off his credit cards, not because they're trying to support him, but because they can't remember they have a son using said credit cards long enough.
- Jack Frost: The title for the interstitial of winter, also known as ascendant and “halfsies”, they can survive a contest and be part of the courts. There are also ones for spring, summer and fall; Jack in the Green, Corn Jenny and Stingy Jack respectively.
- Just One Second Out of Sync: Dodger is using this as camouflage now, and as the seconds dye they shield her with their rainbow corpses, as harry is able to appreciate.
- Killed Offscreen: Aven seems to be killing all the villains that the main characters leave behind them during her pursuit of her sister across the country. Stand-out examples are the initial season ascendent duo who are left not knowing what to do following their candidates' deaths at the protagonists' hands and serial killer siblings Matthew and Misty. Subverted, graphically as we see her dealing with her own father and the Jack Frost Patrol Man and failing to deal with Dodger and Roger's group.
- Kill It with Ice: Melanie can call on the power of Winter far more strongly than most other contenders—as they discover to their flash-frozen detriment. This is a particularly nasty way to go, because Winter candidates have never experienced cold as negative before. (In the presence of a stronger potential Incarnate, weaker ones will lose their powers and Melanie is always stronger.)
- Legend Fades to Myth: Exactly how the seasonal contest is supposed to work is up in the air, every continent is different in subtle ways. Monroe made a mess of things in North America so a lot has been forgotten.
- That Man Is Dead: Any seasons ascendant are given a new name depending on their aligned season. They can play at having their original name but they'll always *feel* like someone else.
- Meaningful Name: The Cosgrove's version of the sympathetic magic name scheme. Melanie, created to hold the Winter, has a Greek name that means "darkness", and Aven, twin sister and another potential Summer, has a Gaelic name that means "brightness".
- On the comparably mundane side Harry, a candidate to be Summer King, is named Harald, also the name of a king.
- Mundane Utility: The fundamental motivating forces of the universe incarnate use their powers to make gardening easier and avoid social interaction while grocery shopping.
- No Body Left Behind: After her death Aven turns into corn husks and roses and blows away.
- Not Quite Dead: A major new revelation is that Asphodel Deborah Baker actually didn't die. More accurately it wasn't a final death so much as ascension. Reports are confused, depending on, "which story you believe", so who knows what actually happened.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Harry tries to do this while playing the peacemaker, he's good at school but he's regularly dismissed as a dumb rich kid. He's actually more of The Social Expert.
- The Power of Love: Harry and Melanie's love for each other saves their lives multiple times, whether because they're able to call on previously unknown powers to save each other or because they can talk each other out of a case of Heroic BSoD. This is also the reason running parallel to someone makes it easier to win the labyrinth. You have to win the other season's approval to be crowned—the seasons are a wheel, after all. So two vessels who already love each other and can work together are a huge plus.
- Plain Palate: Melanie does not take well to trying spicy food for the first time to the amusement of her traveling companions.
- Pom-Pom Girl: Melanie is a high school cheerleader and the protagonist, even if her heart condition gets in the way of a lot of her participation (she used to be able to do more, but a few medical emergencies meant the school got too scared of the liability and essentially relegated her to holding pom poms in the background). The athleticism and training she gained keeps her at the same level as her sister who has a lot of her own skills.
- Position of Literal Power: The naturally incarnated are meant to be in the world and the world abhors a vacuum. There are prescribed rules and courts that bend over backward to make the contest easier, much of the competition is Invisible to Normals. When the candidates actually get the position the world will twist to make sure they have health, wealth and happiness. Several parallels are drawn to oysters being in the habit of making pearls, even with a pearl removed a new one will end up being made.
- Power Loss Depression: Ken and Jen have a bit of this given that roger and dodger have fully embodied the doctrine of ethos and thus taken it from them.
- Prone to Sunburn: Inverted, summer children like Harry don't have to worry about the sun because it "loves [them]".
- Psychopathic Manchild: Aven may be physically and intellectually seventeen, but emotionally, she's a toddler who never got the talk about how it's not nice to hit people who won't share their toys with you. Except with Aven it's more a case of "vivisecting people who didn't do an impossible task they had no way of knowing you wanted them to do". Not that it's her fault, as she was raised in suspended animation, and alchemically educated in everything but how to interact with other people.
- Road Trip Plot: The main characters spend a month all told on the road getting around. Getting into confrontations and running away as they try to get to the labyrinth. Talks about the BO that adds up and the resources needed and all the crappy motels one has to deal with.
- Seasonal Baggage: The major motif here, the seasons, either interstitial or ascendant “halfsies” like jack frost or the Incarnate versions like the main characters. They’re described in terms relating to the seasons numerous times, summertide and winter bound, and have inexplicable comfort and resistances to their motifs. When walking the "scarecrow trail" the spring and fall interstitial are decked out in seasonal dress, leaves and branches as cloths.
- Sanity Has Advantages: Aven is terrifyingly intelligent and shows all the skills to be an alchemist and surgeon as soon as she wakes up. What she doesn’t have is a basic understanding of the law, how to drive, self-control, self-denial, emotional regulation or any social graces. these are all things that help Melaine.
- She Is the King: Ascendant titles don't change based on gender—Jack Frost is a girl, while the Corn Jenny who ends up swearing allegiance to Harry is a boy. We're told to "blame the French" for this.
- Sore Loser: Aven does not take Melanie's victory well and tries to kill her in the climax.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Aven is the last death in the story on the last page, after proving so dangerous earlier.
- Synchronization: This can be seen with monarchs and parallel incarnations, the protagonists faint at the beginning and it gives them as many positives and negatives in the contest. They aren't unique in this contest or others as there are contests in other continents.
- There Can Be Only One: Well two but in the end there will traditionally only be the summer and winter royalty after the contest of the laboring wheel concludes. People can kill competitors but it isn't explicitly needed, and contestants can renounce but regardless even the candidates who didn’t die during it will die pretty soon.
- These Hands Have Killed: Harry and Melanie both have this reaction after the first time other candidates come after them and they have to kill to protect themselves. Harry keeps washing his hands, sure that the blood won't come off, and Melanie retreats so far into Winter that she almost gets trapped there because it dulls her emotions.
- Tiger by the Tail: Trevor quickly comes to regret choosing Aven as his Summer. He thought that he could use her as a ticket to power by guiding her to victory, but she's so dangerous and violent that even as her Ascendant he's constantly in danger. But if he leaves, it'll set her off like a landmine. Except landmines are a nicer way to die.
- The irony of Trevor's buyer's remorse is that by the time it's finally kicked in, he's now bound in service to Aven because of their roles in the cycle. He literally can't tender his resignation—unless he can get another Summer candidate to accept his fealty, and given who he's traveling with, fat chance—and so he's stuck in the figurative passenger seat to the bitter end.
- Title Drop: Twice, Once in the opening quotes and the second to final book, seasonal fears are hard on mortal hearts, reason why a seasonal monarch isn’t immortal for more than a century.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Melanie's always thought she's a normal girl with a bad heart condition. Nope. She's an alchemical construct designed specifically to incarnate the season of Winter...with a bad heart condition.
- Tragic Ice Character: Melanie is all set up to be this bad heart, an affinity for cold, doomed dreams, not even human. The fact she is the best candidate for Winter hands down means she could well slip under, lose her humanity and take herself out of consideration, Harry pulled along with her. The fact her support network is around to keep her sane is a major part of her character arc.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Melanie's Jack Frost is this, she's still a kid of course, but she's knowledgeable enough about the Seasonal cycle and very good at faking everything else.
