Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day

Seanan McGuire

Jan 2017 · Sold by Tordotcom

About this ebook

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day is a new standalone urban fantasy novella from New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire.

When her sister Patty died, Jenna blamed herself. When Jenna died, she blamed herself for that, too. Unfortunately Jenna died too soon. Living or dead, every soul is promised a certain amount of time, and when Jenna passed she found a heavy debt of time in her record. Unwilling to simply steal that time from the living, Jenna earns every day she leeches with volunteer work at a suicide prevention hotline.

But something has come for the ghosts of New York, something beyond reason, beyond death, beyond hope; something that can bind ghosts to mirrors and make them do its bidding. Only Jenna stands in its way.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ratings and reviews

With a unique magic system, Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day kind of subverts ghost stories. Jenna, the protagonist of this story, died 40-odd years ago, when she went out in a storm grieving for her dead sister. Since then, she has been 'living' as a ghost, helping out at a Suicide Hotline in Manhattan, 'earning' her right to move on. When the other ghosts of Manhattan disappear all at once, she teams up with a witch to help track down the other witch who has stolen the ghosts, and in a way, finds the will to move on finally. Any discussion about this book would first have to include some information about its intriguing world building. So, witches here can usually channel themselves through one substance, be it trees, or rocks, or animals, while ghosts are mostly corporeal beings that can 'take' or 'give' time. Being that witches can sense ghosts, they can use them for staying young, which is the main threat in this plot. When ghosts go missing, Jenna, who usually doesn't take an interest in the life around her, realizes that it is the action of a witch and that she has to be the one to save them. As a character, Jenna seems mostly passive at the start, and is kind-hearted, but she keeps away from attachments. She thinks that if she has to move on, first she has to do enough good work on Earth to make it worth losing her life because of her grief. Her holding on to life, when she could have gone away decades ago, is her penance. The story also has some stellar secondary characters who liven up the plot - Brenda, whose viewpoints on life and existence catalyze a change in Jenna, Delia, the ghostly landlord who is holding on to take care of humans and ghosts alike; they are interesting parts of the plot who bring it together. There were a few things, though, that I felt were not handled well. The whole canon of the ghosts being anchors seemed confusing and extraneous to the plot. For a novella that couldn't plunge into that aspect of the ghosts' existence, it felt unnecessary to even include it. Secondly, I wish Brenda's and Teresa's relationship had got more development or even a mention beyond that one ending scene - I felt it would have given Teresa's character a bit more depth than being a one-dimensional power-hungry villain. Overall, though, it was interesting, and the world-building was pretty good.

About the author

SEANAN McGUIRE is the author of Every Heart a Doorway, the October Daye urban fantasy series, the InCryptid series, and several other works, both standalone and in trilogies. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant.

She was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot.