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I love owning swords. I love being genderqueer and owning swords. Swords are great.

I just finished reading ‘The story of silence’ by Alex Myers and I don’t think I’m gonna be able to shut up about it

Right from reading the premise of “the tale of a nonbinary knight” I was already sold. However, I could’ve never predicted how much this book would truly mean to me (especially as a genderqueer bard of a man who adores Arthurian legend, Celtic mythology and grew up fantasising about knights, wizards and dragons).

This is a retelling of a 13th century poem! And it’s a gorgeous retelling at that.

We first meet our narrator, a Bard by the name of Heldris. Now if you’re familiar with my blog you’re probably pretty familiar with my adoration for bard characters and Myers’ characterisation of Heldris is absolutely no exception.

It would turn out that I pretty much fell in love with the characterisation choices of every character within the story itself. (I’ll probably go in more depth with my praise for characters in a later post). This of course includes Silence the protagonist and also merlin!

I’ll definitely be going into more depth as to why I absolutely adore Myers’ version of the sorcerer, to put it simply: he’s the blorbo if ever. A scrunkly old crow man and I truly truly adore him.

I was pretty much instantly enamoured with the choice of language used- in fact I don’t think I’ve ever fallen in love with a piece of literature so fast. To the point I was practically screaming over every line I read, rushing to tell my partners every single detail. I’m not really the kind of guy to get super excited about most things but I literally squealed(in delight) on multiple occasions.

There are definitely some difficult topics throughout the story, as expected when exploring gender identity and sexuality within a heavily misogynistic world building. However I thought they were explored incredibly well and there are some very well written authors notes at the beginning and end that expand on the writer’s choices and why these were necessary to the book itself. I’d also like to provide a content warning for mentions sexual assault (there’s a good author’s note about this at the end of the book- it may provide plot spoilers but if you’d like more information/to be better prepared before reaching that part of the story I’d recommend reading the note first!)

I have SO MANY thoughts and feelings about this work. I’ve literally been eager to come babble about this book since I read the first paragraph but I promised myself I’d wait until I finished the entire thing.

I will most certainly be making more in depth posts expanding on said thoughts and feelings later. I also have such an urge to make fan art for this book so yeah. I guess this is partially a story of silence blog too now.

Remembering all the unfinished art I have lying around. I should probably do something with those…

I quite literally turned up to a castle, won a duel and didn’t even give my name before leaving. I’d like to reiterate that I love swords and being genderqueer.

I love owning swords. I love being genderqueer and owning swords. Swords are great.

I have a new dandelion piece in mind. It’s the middle of the night. I should reasonably not start an art piece right now. I’ve barely slept because I was already up late playing my lyre but-

Im worried if I don’t at least sketch him right now the vision will become unreachable.

Ehhhhh who really needs sleep anyway? I’ve been struggling with artistic inspiration, gotta capture it in the moment I think.

Once again begging anyone who’s willing to listen, read the story of silence by Alex myers.

It’s such a good book. I don’t want to just word for word repeat what I said in my original post about it but:

-bard narrator! His name is Heldris and whilst we only get his viewpoint in the prologue of the book there are also some (somewhat judgemental) comments of his strewn throughout the story. I just find it a really neat way of constructing the retelling of the poem itself and I absolutely adore the way he is characterised.

-Genderqueer protagonist! The story revolves around the exploration of their identity and has quotes on being trans that genuinely brought me to tears (in the most positive way). I love silence as a character- honestly I think it would be hard not to love them but maybe I’m biased in that sense.

-Merlin! The whole story is within the world of Arthurian legend and this specific characterisation of merlin is so good. He’s such an ancient creature of a man and just- an incredibly unhinged old wizard.

It’s genuinely my favourite book and there is not enough discussion of it that I have seen on tumblr. I just know people would love it as I have and please! I need to talk to people about it!!

Posted the thing after getting a couple peer reviews. So. That’s something? Fenn finally writes Witcher fic. Who’d have thought?

So apparently I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote a gerlion fic and then went back to sleep again. I absolutely dread to open up that file and find out what I wrote.

Apparently I was also fairly content with it. Interesting…