One of the most accomplished fantasy debuts of the past few years, Emma Törzs' Ink Blood Sister Scribe is a breathtaking slice of dark academia featuring magical books, sinister organisations and heart-stopping romance. In this exclusive piece, Emma discusses the ever-popular trope of found families in fantasy fiction and recommends some of her favourites.
The term “found family” (or “chosen family”), once used mostly in queer culture as a way to describe deep relationships outside the legal boundaries of blood or marriage, has become more mainstream as a way to describe nontraditional groups of close people, often fiercely loyal friends. From Leigh Bardugo’s beloved novel Six of Crows to the new Dungeons & Dragons movie, more and more narratives are granting space to nontraditional familial structures. I am lucky to have a wonderful family of origin, but I also have a chosen family, made up of housemates and friends (and a cat) with whom I’ve chosen to share my life. As such, my interests as both a writer and a reader lie in the intersections and interplays between families of origin and chosen families, and the five books I’ve highlighted below all explore that space. (And, perhaps unsurprisingly, all books except the first feature queer relationships at the forefront.)
This children’s novel, first published in the year of my birth (1987), remains one of the most magically exquisite books I’ve ever read. In early Christian Scotland, a young girl who’s been abandoned by her parents is taken in by the village healer and wise woman, Juniper. Juniper introduces Wise Child to earth-based magical practices, and also to her first real experience of a loving and safe home—until Wise Child’s mother, a powerful witch in her own right, returns to coax Wise Child away. A gorgeous look at magic, spirituality, parenting, and the choices we make as we come of age, Wise Child had an outsized impact on my own understanding of the world.
Together, these seven books make up one of my all-time favorite fantasy series, especially The Dreamer Trilogy. The glory of these books (aside from Stiefvater’s snappy, sexy, singular prose) lies in the characters, an extended relationship web comprised of family both born and chosen. Friends find one another, children reckon with the flaws and strengths of their parents, siblings fight and reconcile, and love of every kind takes root. If you worry for one character, you worry for all; their stories and relationships are so deeply connected. (I still wake up sometimes worried about Ronan and Adam or Jordan and Hennessy: iykyk.) Come for the found family, stay for the magical forests, cool tattoos, ancient kings, slick cars, massive explosions, floating cows, Irish mythology, passionate romances, and the abiding power of art.
Many stories in this stellar collection deal with family of some kind, from questions about parenting and legacy in stories like Honey Bear or Selkie Stories are for Losers, to explorations of deep friendship in stories such as The Closest Thing to Animals and Walkdog. The book is divided into two sections, “Tender Bodies” and “Tender Landscapes,” and made me consider how the concept of family is at once of the body and of the landscape, a phenomena both physical and social/cultural. Many of these stories are concerned in some way with origin: where do we come from and what do we owe our familial landscapes? The stories are beautiful, thoughtful, and delightful, and for me, this collection is a classic.
My comfort books! The six novels in this series take loose inspiration from Mediterranean history/mythology, and feature perhaps my favorite example of the “pantheon of meddling gods” trope. Each book has a different POV character from the same world, so we get a kaleidoscopic look at the complicated and fascinating familial/platonic/romantic relationships between monarchs, subjects, soldiers and spies. I adore every one of these characters, and have a soft spot in my heart for the friendship between Eugenides (the titular thief) and his bestie/cousin, Helen. The first book in the series reads a bit young for my taste, but the rest feel fully mature, and for what it’s worth, my favorite is book 3, The King of Attolia. (What can I say, I love a tale of hard-won loyalty! And I love poor, sweet, in-over-his-head Costas.)
Okay, this isn’t strictly fantasy, it’s science fiction with a bit of magic, but I had to include it, because Jimenez’s depiction of chosen family moved me to tears many times throughout the novel. Much of the story takes place amongst the small crew of a long-traveling spaceship, which is an excellent setting for ragtag intimacy (see also: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, another chosen family gem), and while the friendships are close and interesting, it is the relationship between the hardened ship captain and a silent young boy she’s reluctantly transporting that absolutely slayed me. I will admit, children can be a hard sell for me: I’m too curmudgeonly to be delighted by fictional preciousness. There’s none of that here, however. Here, everything is complicated, vast, painful, stunning, musical and sweet. Here, the only preciousness is the simple intricacy of love itself.
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