The Raconteur's Commonplace Book

Written by Kate Milford

Narrated by Jonathan Todd Ross

The rain hasn’t stopped for a week, and the twelve guests of the Blue Vein Tavern are trapped by flooded roads and the rising Skidwrack River. Among them
are a ship’s captain, tattooed twins, a musician, and a young girl traveling on her own. To pass the time, they begin to tell stories—each a different type of
folklore—that eventually reveal more about their own secrets than they intended.

As the rain continues to pour down—an uncanny, unnatural amount of rain—it becomes clear that the entire city is in danger, and not just from the flood. But the
guests have only their stories and one another. Will that be enough to save them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781501998911

Kate Milford

Kate Milford is the New York Times best-selling author of the Edgar Award–winning, National Book Award nominee Greenglass House, as well as Ghosts of Greenglass House, Bluecrowne, The Thief Knot, and many more. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York. www.greenglasshousebooks.com and www.katemilfordwritesbooks.com, Twitter: @KateMilford

Reviews for The Raconteur's Commonplace Book

[jennybeast · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the tradition of Chaucer and the Decameron — where travelers pass the time by sharing stories. I’ve seen this structure before, but rarely so well done, and delightfully set in Nagspeake’s liminal magical space. The stories flirt and intertwine with each other, and build to a satisfying peak. Particularly apt for this year of trapped waiting, as we wait for the waters to recede.

Advanced readers copy provided by Edelweiss

[peggydean-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Share this book with anyone who believes in the power of stories! Milford returns to the town of Nagspeake as an assortment of townspeople and wayfarers shelter in an inn during a torrential storm. As the river creeps closer and closer to the door of the inn, the guests pass the time telling stories of hidden byways, magical creatures, and contests with the Devil. Although Nagspeake will be familiar to readers of the other four Green House books, it's perfectly fine to jump right in with this entry. It's a bit spooky, it's filled with wonder, and it has the most beautiful language I have seen in a long time. It's so lyrical, in fact, that I had to read some passages out loud to my cat just to hear the words spoken. I'm sold on Nagspeake and will be returning to read the Green House books that I've missed along the way.

[abigailadams26 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In Kate Milford's marvelous Greenglass House, a fantastical mystery set in an atmospheric inn overlooking the fictional city of Nagspeake, the young hero, Milo Pine, is given a collection of stories known as The Raconteur's Commonplace Book. These tales are said in the story to draw upon the folklore of Nagspeake, a shipping and smuggling city-state somewhere along the Middle Atlantic coast, independent from the United States, and with a magical history of its own. Now author Kate Milford has created that book within a book, presenting us with a collection of enchanting stories, many featuring characters we have encountered in her other work, and all woven together to creative a narrative about the fifteen storytellers themselves...Opening at the Blue Vein Tavern, on the banks of the changeable Skidwrack River, the story follows the inn-keeping couple, Mr. and Mrs. Haypotten, their maid Sorcha, and the twelve guests who have come to stay as they all find themselves trapped by the rising river waters. The suggestion is made that each of the fifteen should share a story, in order to pass the time, and each tale told reveals something about the larger world of Nagspeake, and about the teller. As Maisie Cerrajeru notes, toward the beginning of the book, "it was just as impossible to keep secrets when you told a tale as when you danced." Sometimes spooky, sometimes sad, and always magical, the tales frequently concern mythological creatures said to inhabit the area. From the river serpent caldnicker, in Sullivan's The Cold Way, to the ravenous golevants in Mrs. Haypotten's The Queen of Fog, not to mention the seductive but coldhearted seiche - water people who trick humans into taking their place in the river, thereby condemning them to death - one gets a sense of Nagspeake, and the larger Skidwrack area as a place of enchantment, where anything is possible. Many of the stories concern characters or phenomena we have met before, in previous books set in this world. From the sentient old (or wild) iron, which featured prominently in The Thief Knot, to the dastardly catalogue company Deacon and Morvengarde, mentioned in all of the Greenglass House books, there are many references here for fans of the series. Readers will recognize Lucy and Liao of Bluecrowne in Captain Frost's The Storm Bottle, while the name of Negret Colphon, one of the hotel guests, will be recognizable as the alter-ego that Milo adopted, during the events of Greenglass House.The most frequent reference throughout however, is to Roamer and Deacon and Morvengarde employee, Foulk Trigemine, one of the villains of Bluecrowne. Ruthless in his pursuit of what he wants, and clever in his manipulation of others, this character appears in Phineas Amalgam's The Game of Maps, in Reever Colophon's The Whalebone Spring, Madame Grisaille's The Rover in the Nettles, Gregory Sangwin's The Hollow-Ware Man, Sorcha's The Reckoning, Anthony Masseter's The Gardener of Meteorites, and Petra's The Summons of the Bone. As quickly becomes apparent, the further one reads, this figures looms large over the story, and when it revealed that he is none other than Anthony Masseter, and that Petra has brought everyone together in these storytelling sessions to confront him, the book moves on to its conclusion, in which a trio of guests leave to challenge the floodwaters threatening all of Nagspeake...The Raconteur's Commonplace Book is a book that I have been eagerly anticipating for many years, from the moment I first learned, from Kate Milford herself, that it was in the offing. I found it immensely engrossing - fascinating, moving, completely enchanting! In form it is in the style of such towering classics as Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, or Boccaccio's The Decameron - works that also feature a group of characters thrown together by circumstance, who share stories with one another. I found many of the stories told by the guests at the Blue Vein Tavern to be appealing in their own right. I was thrilled by the spooky, sentient house, in Phineas Amalgam's The Game of Maps, amused by the back-and-forth storytelling of Mrs. Haypotten's The Queen of Fog, and happy for the triumph of love, in Sullivan's The Cold Way. I enjoyed all of the glimpses of the world of Nagspeake, at various times in its history, and was fascinated by the idea of the Roaming World - the entire magical system against which Nagspeake, and the events of Kate Milford's books, play out. I appreciated the sense of atmosphere throughout, and the strong sense of place, which is treated as something important in its own right. This latter is best encapsulated by Amalgam's observation, during the course of his story, that "surely places, if they survive for long, develop their own logic. Their own personalities. Their own sense of strategy." I have often felt this to be true myself, and it is certainly the case in Nagspeake, where the city has its own sentient representative, in the form of the wild iron, which manifests itself in many ways, including as Madame Grissaile.As should be obvious, there are many things I loved about The Raconteur's Commonplace Book, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Unfortunately, it wasn't a five-star books for me, because while I found the storytelling and world-building excellent, and loved the characters and the settings, the ending felt a little weak. Everything had been building to the confrontation between Petra and Foulk Trigemine, but once it occured, and Petra told her story, the narrative rushed on toward the conclusion rather quickly, leaving some questions unanswered. Although Jessamy Butcher does tell a story, it is more a description of what is happening at that moment, with the three who have gone off to confront the river. Unlike the other storytellers, one never really gets a sense of who she is, or how she fits into the larger picture. Similarly, although it was fascinating (and unexpectedly moving) to get some of Foulk Trigemine's history, I felt his story was simply left hanging. More generally, I found it unsatisfying, that the conclusion of the sub-plot (or plot?) involving the flooding river takes place entirely off screen. I think the main problem here is that Milford, who clearly wanted to do more than just pen a collection of Nagspeake folktales, didn't give enough attention to the second part of her book. The tale telling took up so much time, that the larger framing story, when it finally took center stage, felt undeveloped.Despite this critique, I enjoyed this enough that I will be tracking down my own copy (I read it from the library), and I highly recommend it, to all fans of the Greenglass House books, or the larger Roaming World that Milford has created.