Welcome to the 2026 A Fix of Light read along!!!

A Fix of Light's first book birthday is today, February 6th (making it an Aquarius), and to celebrate one year of my boys, I wanted to do a book-club-read-along extravaganza!!

Here's the overview:

Week One: Prologue - Chapter 7 (up to page 71)

Week Two: Chapter 8 - Chapter 13 (up to page 148)

Week Three: Chapter 14 - Chapter 19 (up to page 211)

Week Four: Chapter 20 - Epilogue (finished!)

Each week I'll be blogging a little about the chapters, answering some questions, and maybe even asking a few questions of my own…

Beware of spoilers!

Try to refrain from posting spoilers where others can see them!

And make sure you double-check the content warnings!

Alright, let's get into it!

WEEK ONE

Metamorphoses, magic, and mental illness…

We begin in a forest, as many of my stories do. There's just something about them. In case that wasn't magic enough, it's also Bealtaine. A day to stay indoors, really, because all sorts of lines get blurred on the evening of April 30th and don't begin to refocus until the evening of May 1st.

Our protagonist has decided that this is the night he will die.

I wrote the prologue many, many years ago, though I didn't connect it to Fix until much later. It was just a piece I'd scribbled down in a red leather-bound notebook and left to float, untethered. I liked the images in it, the thirsty moss and the wind chimes.

Other wind chimes smiled down on the boy. They had died here for rebellions, for revolutions, for the old gods and the new one.

Some references to Irish history here, about those who fought against English occupation over the centuries, but also — in my Medievalist style — a small nod to our Viking past.

Odin, yes that one from Norse mythology, made many sacrifices in exchange for knowledge (his eye, for example), one of which was to hang himself from Yggdrasil. I also wonder if this is where the Major Arcana card, The Hanged Man, came from…

He was delaying his metamorphosis, but he knew he would join the wind chimes.

Hanan seeks death, here, a transition into nothing, rather than change and transformation through pain. You gain nothing from taking your own life. Of course, that would make for a pretty brief novel. So while he doesn't get what he's looking for, he does make, inadvertantly, an exchange. A sacrifice. His pain for something more.

He's in a tailspin of hopelessness and despair, and the shitty truth of it is, you're the only one that can pull yourself out of it. Not without help — always, always with help — but you've got to be willing to do the stupid boring painful stuff, the stuff that makes up the path of recovery. Hanan is not willing. Not yet.

And when you did everything they asked of you and still felt shit, what then? … What was the fucking point, anyway?

We meet Pax after a metamorphosis of his own, though his was an intentional one.

“God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine: so that humanity might share in the act of creation.” ― Julian K. Jarboe, Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel

I didn't want Pax's identity as a trans man to be a story solely about pain. There are painful aspects, sure, and we get the impression that he had to give up his relationship with his parents in order to live as his true self. It feels a bit reductive to say that was a choice, because if he had tried to ignore something as fundamental as his gender, he would have lived a half-life, at best.

It was worth it, though, for every drop in his pitch, every crack in his voice, the broadening of his jaw and shoulders. The changes felt painfully slow, but Pax revelled in each one […] He would emerge from his cocoon fully formed and not a moment before.

There are more references to Irish folklore and mythology: the werewolves of Ossory and Laigneach Fáelad, as well as the Good Folk.

READ ALONG BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION: I'm interjecting here to make sure you remember to comment your thoughts, interpretations, etc., below. Half the fun of this is the discussion! Your conversations will help guide the next post!

I'm an anxious creature. My name on one friend's phone is simply "fret". I remind many people of a chihuahua, shivering my timbers like I've had a coffee brewed with Monster or something. I offloaded some of that anxiety on Hanan.

If you're not autistic or don't have social anxiety, it can be a little difficult to grasp what exactly someone is experiencing when Outside Among Humans.

Hanan's aware of everything. Every little noise, smell, bit of light and shadow, the bodies in the space, the thousands of different ways someone might be looking at him, interpreting him, judging him.

He's observant, but his interpretation of what he sees is…dubious. That's why, at first, it's not clear if the radio really is acting up, or if there's something supernatural going on. You get an impression of the space and the people in it, but the picture's a little warped, right?

Hallucination, or magic? Magic, or natural phenomenon? Phenomenon, or dream?

DISCUSS.

Hanan has BPD, like me, so his feelings are even bigger. Everything is amplified until it becomes consuming. The smallest risk of being hurt makes him avoid avoid avoid. George looks annoyed with him, and the tears well up immediately. His mom asks him a question, and his first impulse is to lie. Anything to avoid feeling worse.

He lay with his hands still clenched around fragments of seashells, tight enough to draw fresh blood. Petrified. His fingertips may have actually begun to turn to stone.

I use a lot of figurative and metaphorical language to describe feelings and sensations, because trying to just label them as "sad" or "scared" feels lacklustre to the point of inaccurate. Even describing the usual bodily sensations that come with emotion don't do the intensity of them justice. It's more truthful, but it does mean that the lines between what is actually happening, Hanan's perception, and magic, are supremely blurry.

There is so much more I could write about, but this would turn into a dissertation-length post. Hanan had a dream. We met Mama Hanan, Aunt May, George, and a chip-eating crow named Gerry. There have been mentions of someone named Cass. Also, who called Hanan's name at the end of the Prologue?

DISCUSS.

From now on, the read along posts will be a combination of things discussed in the comments as well as chapter discussions.

Did you spot a reference I forgot to include?

Do you have theories about what's going to happen?

Am I neglecting to discuss your favourite character enough?

Here's your chance. Ask away. Avoid spoilers, be civil, etc.

Tog go bog é, see you next week x