Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Linsey Miller! Her work in young adult speculative fiction includes “A Helping Hand” in the horror anthology The House Where Death Lives, “Give Up the Ghost” in the Lambda Award–nominated anthology Being Ace, the Lambda Literary Award–nominated dark fantasy novel What We Devour, and the fantasy novels in the Mask of Shadows duology (Mask of Shadows, Ruin of Stars). Coming out on June 3, her next book, That Devil, Ambition, is a standalone YA fantasy novel described as “an incredibly fresh, twisty love letter to dark academia…with a body count.” I’m delighted she’s here today to explore what it means to do the right thing in “A Descent into Kindness.”

About That Devil, Ambition:

From Lambda Literary Award finalist Linsey Miller comes this thrilling stand-alone fantasy about the lengths we’ll go to get ahead—an incredibly fresh, twisty love letter to dark academia…with a body count.

Perfect for fans of A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid, Gallant by V. E. Schwab, and All of Us Villains by Amanda Foody and C. L. Herman.

There is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…

First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school’s honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.

If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit.

And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.

Fabian isn’t worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them.

As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records—and their tombstones—forever.

A Descent into Kindness

I like kindness. Nice characters. The sorts of characters who wouldn’t get a second glance if lined up beside their grittier, darker, flashier counterparts with sarcastic one-liners and smoldering gazes. Kindness is relegated to secondary characters who can offer an empathetic ear or healing touch to the lead because we often equate kindness with boringness. A kind character will always do the kind thing. The predictable right thing.

And “the right thing” is what I love exploring.

It’s more common in middle grade and young adult novels. There’s a misconception that kindness and optimism, that striving to create a better world by being kind, is childish idealism. Often, characters will learn some lesson about how everyone around them is living their own life and deserves some grace. The kind thing is what most readers would expect, and some of my favorite examples are the Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce, Lirael by Garth Nix, and Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison is one of the only recent(ish) books I’ve read featuring a truly earnest character continuing to be kind in the face of cruelty that is neither about how his choice to do so is a mistake nor written for a younger audience. The characters in these books do not meet cruelty with cruelty. It’s cathartic.

Then, of course, there are the (often revenge-driven) stories about good people who decide that the only way through cruelty requires a specific level of violence. Killers and manipulators grapple with the moral quandary of bystanders’ deaths for the sake of their ultimate goal, and usually that goal is one that fits within the readers’ ethics—killing murderers, nobles, tyrants, and gods. Isn’t removing someone who actively chooses to do harm a kindness? These characters are not “good,” but they are doing a kindness for the world by eliminating entrenched corruption. They have decided that killing a few is acceptable for either justice or progress.

In my debut novel, Mask of Shadows, Sal was an assassin out for revenge who had seen the horrors of their world firsthand and decided to remove the source, like debriding a wound. They were driven by both selfish and unselfish goals in equal measure. In my last standalone fantasy, What We Devour, Lorena is kind. She works as an undertaker, tending to the dead to spare others the task, and she agrees to be arrested to keep her lover’s family safe. Then, she decides that the kindest act of all is to welcome in a magical apocalypse.

Sal and Lorena have calculated the cost of souls, their own included, and decided that they are willing to be cruel and ensure the deaths of the corrupt upper classes and their families to allow a kinder world to rise from the ashes. It is not what many readers would consider to be the ethically correct thing, but it’s something we can forgive. Vengeance and wanting a better world are understandable.

The main characters of That Devil, Ambition are not out for vengeance or a better world but themselves. Fabian, Credence, and Euphemia are three best friends on the cusp of adulthood and graduation who must kill the devil summoned to teach their class in order to receive tuition waivers. If they fail, the devil will kill them.

And they agreed to this! They matriculated knowing the cost of the school, the deals of their loans, and the requirements of the tuition waivers. They did not have to study magic. They did not have to pursue the waivers and could have just paid back the money. They are young, ambitious, and even though they might possess kindness that would lead to them creating better worlds after graduation, they are not primarily motivated by what most morality systems would consider “good.” As the weeks of term go by and their devilish professor remains alive, they must decide what lines they are willing to cross in order to graduate debt-free.

(Alright, maybe contemplating crime to pay for student loans is still understandable and forgivable, but it is not the narrative-standard calculus of souls we’re accustomed to.)

There is a certain ferality to it that is usually reserved for anti-heroes and beloved villains. The trio is kind; they each sacrifice something of themself to protect another. They believe that they are capable of changing the world for the better as educated magicians, and so, aren’t they justified in their selfishness? If they are certain they will accomplish morally good things, then aren’t all of their actions good? If they minimize the harm and destroy themselves in body and soul first before anyone else, then is the end result not worth it? Are they not kind?

Dozens of books have made me really dig in to the meaning of kindness and forced me to shed my own morality while reading, but here are a few favorites that made me ask, “Is a character selfish and morally gray if they become the bloodiest, cruelest version of themself so that no one else needs to get their hands dirty, or is that simply kindness in its most base form, like a sheep in wolf’s clothing?”

So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis
The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

Photography by Tara Welch

Once upon a time, Linsey Miller studied biology in Arkansas. These days, she holds an MFA in fiction and is the author of the Lambda-nominated What We Devour. Her other works include the Mask of Shadows duology, Belle Révolte, The Game, the first three books in the Disney Princes series, That Devil, Ambition, and various short stories. She can be found in Texas writing about science and magic anywhere there is coffee.