Quill and Still
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Quill and Still
Buy Now for $27.27
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Narrated by:
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Avalon Penrose
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Written by:
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Aaron Sofaer
About this listen
Sophie Nadash once yearned to understand life and chemistry. Now a disillusioned scientist approaching middle age, she yearns to set aside pipettes and polymerase forever.
A chance encounter with the Goddess Artemis sets her on the path to becoming the Alchemist for the rural Shemmai village of Kibosh, where the rat race gives way to peace and the quiet life. Freed from the hustle of Earth, she can relax, make friends, and rediscover her love for chemistry through its mystical precursor... and come to grips with the Jewish faith she left behind as a child.
Quill and Still weaves together chemistry, mythology, magic, and an off-the-path Judaism to form a slice-of-queer-life, which reviewers described as “like opening up a pulp fiction novel and getting Milton's Paradise Lost.” It's perfect for lovers of cozy, slice-of-life fiction in the vein of Becky Chambers’s “Records of a Spaceborn Few” or Jo Walton’s “Lifelode.”
©2023 Aaron Sofaer (P)2025 Riverfolk BooksWhat the critics say
"Aaron crafts an interesting, vibrant world to explore. A slow life fantasy about civics, science, and a city above a dungeon." - Casualfarmer, author of Beware of Chicken
"This is the story I never knew I’d always wanted to read, in a world I never knew I’d always wanted to inhabit. Among high-concept fantasy conceits, ‘what if a society was built to maximize decency’ sounds almost banal to describe, until you see it actually executed well and realize just how subversive that idea is. You deserve to read Quill & Still." -D. D. Webb, author of The Gods are Bastards
I actually like the concept of "cozy" fiction, but even in a story where everything is essentially fine, there still needs to be a problem of some description to be sorted out.
The main character of Q&S never faces any kind of challenge, never has to learn any lesson and never goes through anything resembling an arc. This makes it feel like nothing is happening from scene to scene and superficially, as if there is no story. The main character gets isekai'd into a fantasy world and gets integrated into society while making a few friends. That's it, thats the story.
This is extremely disappointing because there are some really cool concepts in the world, like self-perpetuating dungeons and conflicts between gods. Any of these could have solved the "nothing happens" problem handily, but instead these elements are dropped in the same chapters as they're introduced and rarely if ever brought up again. It is entirely possible that I missed a handful of information in the book's latter half, but if I did, it is because I was conditioned by the rest of the preceding book to not expect anything to happen in a given exchange between characters.
The video game-style leveling system common to a lot of isekai stories does have an interesting explanation for its presence in this world, but its tangible effects on the story are minimal, to put it generously. It would lift straight out if the main character wasn't bringing it up constantly, which more often than not comes off as somebody talking your ear off about a video game you don't play.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that around halfway through the story, there was a single chapter that switches from first person to third person and follows a group of people completely disconnected from the rest of the story on their own brief adventure. This one, single chapter is 10/10 incredible and contains none of the purple prose that the rest of the book is drowning in and has worldbuilding that's woven into the narrative rather than the rest of the book where everything is explained point-blank to the protagonist. It is like a glimpse into an alternate reality where Quill & Still is one of my favorite fantasy novels of all time.
Then it ends.
Neat Ideas Lost In Clunky Execution
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