Winter Tide

Winter Tide is a novel by Ruthanna Emrys, published by Tor in 2017. It continues the Innsmouth Legacy series begun in the 2014 novella The Litany of Earth, in which the Deep Ones of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" are not treated as horrific monsters but as a different kind of human deserving of sympathy. Winter Tide extends and examines other Lovecraft stories, including "The Shadow Out of Time", "The Thing on the Doorstep", and "The Mound".
As with Litany, Winter Tide focuses on Aphra Marsh, a Deep One woman and one of only two survivors (with her brother Caleb) of the government raid on Innsmouth to make it out of the subsequent concentration camps alive. In this book, set largely at Miskatonic University in 1948, she continues working with sympathetic FBI agent Ron Spector, this time trying to learn whether Russian agents have used Miskatonic's resources to learn the mind-swapping techniques. She gains new allies--including a member of the Great Race of Yith who has appropriated the body of a Miskatonic professor, and a student from Miskatonic's sister school who appears to be descended in part from the people of K'n-yan--and butts heads with another FBI contingent that hopes to use Miskatonic's magic for their own ends. Aphra reconnects with her blood family at Y'ha-nthlei, and strengthens ties with her growing chosen family.
==Characters==
*Aphra Yukhl Marsh: Aphra comes to Miskatonic University to help the FBI learn whether mind-transfer magic may have been learned by the Soviets--but also to get back in touch with her Deep One family in Y'ha-nthlei. She has the "bulging eyes, thick neck, and receding hairline" associated with her Innsmouth heritage.
*Caleb Nghadri Marsh: Aphra's brother, and with her the only known survivors of Innsmouth who still live on land. He is driven to recover Innsmouth's books, now held in Miskatonic's library. He is a "gangling man" with "long arms and legs"; like his sister, he has "the bulging eyes, the flat nose, the broad chin, and long fingers" that mark them as People of the Water.
* Neko Koto: A 19-year-old member of Aphra's adoptive Japanese-American family who accompanies her to Massachusetts. She serves as a secretary to the FBI mission, but chooses to join them out of a love of travel.
*Charlie Day: Aphra's boss at the San Francisco used bookstore he owns--and her student in the magical seminar she runs. Gruffly protective of Aphra, he is gay but not out of the closet, even to her.
*Ron Spector: Aphra's contact in the FBI, who sees Aeonism as a religion with followers both good and bad, and wants to protect the former and enlist their help to protect humanity from the latter. He is Jewish, which is seen as slightly suspicious in the Bureau, especially after the formation of Israel. He is also gay and deeply closeted, which Aphra figures out when she detects his secret relationship with Day.
*Dorothy Dawson: A Black FBI agent who is undercover as both maid and mistress of Miskatonic's dean. This relationship is key to getting the FBI access to Miskatonic's library. She becomes romantically involved with Caleb, a relationship that is kept secret for multiple reasons.
*Dean Skinner: The head of Miskatonic, and Dawson's boss--and lover. Having been subtly blackmailed into accepting Spector's party, he gives them a frosty reception--and initially a friendlier one to Spector's FBI rivals.
*Catherine Trumbull: Miskatonic's only female professor--teaching multidimensional geometry in the math department--and a host for a Yith. She is described as "thin and without curves in either body or face". Aphra figures out that she is possessed, and agrees to keep her secret, as the Great Race is held in high esteem by the Deep Ones. Gradually, however, the whole team comes to know her real identity. When a botched summoning creates complications at Miskatonic, the Yith swaps minds back with the real Professor Trumbull, leaving Aphra and the others to explain her missing years.
* Audrey Winslow: A student at the Hall School, Miskatonic's female counterpart. Headstrong and eager, she presses Aphra to teach her magic, and she is reluctantly allowed into the confluence. Trumbull points out that Winslow is recently descended from a person from K'n-yan--referred to as the Mad Ones Under the Earth, a third sub-species of human alongside Deep Ones and what we think of as regular humanity.
*Jesse Sadler: A Miskatonic student, a friend of Winslow's who she says "wants everything to be fathomless mystery."
* Leroy Price: Another Miskatonic student, one who argues that "ancient wisdom might merely be another form of modern science.” A friend of Winslow's and Sadler's, he follows Winslow to a meeting at Innsmouth with Y'ha-nthlei's Deep Ones and is nearly killed accidentally when caught spying.
*Sally Ward: A Hall student, part of the same crowd, though less independent than Winslow. When she is caught alongside Price at the Innsmouth rendezvous, she is given a magical bond to Aphra to make sure she keeps her promise of secrecy.
*Obed Yringl’phtagn Marsh: Aphra's grandfather.
*Patience Chulzh’th Gilman: An acolyte.
*Ngalthr: Archpriest of Y'ha-nthlei.
*George Barlow: Spector's rival in the FBI, who wants to learn supernatural powers in order to use them against the nation's enemies.
*Virgil Peters: Barlow's right-hand man.
* Mary Harris: Barlow's FBI secretary, and the most talented magician in his FBI faction.
* Ephraim Waite: The antagonist of "The Thing on the Doorstep", who is long dead but still casts a long shadow.
* Daniel Upton: The architect who killed Ephraim Waite in Edward Pickman Derby's body, and the narrator of "The Thing on the Doorstep". In Winter Tide, he is still committed to a mental hospital, having been ruled insane after "Derby's" killing.
== Settting ==
Winter Tide moves the action from California to Lovecraft Country, with key events happening in Arkham (both on and off Miskatonic's campus), Kingsport, and Innsmouth. While Lovecraft places these imaginary towns in the real world's Essex County, Emrys fictionalizes the area as Morecambe County. 
From the point of view of the novel's narrator, Innsmouth survivor Aphra Marsh, “Miskatonic University is not a nice place"; its professors "are old men, proud of their power, frightened of anyone who might threaten it." The people of Innsmouth had mocked "Miskatonic’s scholars...as dilettantes and power-seekers, godless, prurient, exploring Aeonist philosophy and practice as others might take a safari." The college "has a reputation for producing the sort of fools who try to summon the gods themselves, or their close servants. Fortunately for the school, they don’t usually get any response.” The student body in this novel is all-male, and Miskatonic recently hired its first female professor in Catherine Trumbull.
The Miskatonic library--which Emrys calls "Crowther Library"--is "widely believed to hold the best esoterica collection in the world," considerably expanded with arcane literature confiscated from Innsmouth. 
Arkham is described as "not much larger than Innsmouth save for the college buildings, but it was more urbane and attracted more visitors." Aphra notes its "gambrel roofs and sagging Victorians." Along the Miskatonic River, clapboard houses lined the precipitous bank. Porches jutted over the water, leaning downstream." Points of interest include The Book Mill, a bookstore in an old mill building, and Jake's, a "tantalizing" sandwich shop. 
The Hall School, which is mentioned in "The Thing on the Doorstep," is presented as Miskatonic's all-female sister college, kept at "a well-chaperoned distance on the far side of Kingsport." It is less possessive of its arcane literature than Miskatonic. It appears as "a series of low-slung brick buildings with none of Miskatonic’s flourishes."
== Aeonism ==
Winter Tide expands on The Litany of Earth's presentation of Mythos religion not as a depraved cult but as a sincere expression of spirituality, referred to by practitioners as Aeonism. Aphra Marsh prays to a pantheon of Lovecraftian entities, including "Dagon, guardian of waters, steadfast"; "Hydra, defender of waters, fierce"; "Cthulhu, bringer of life and death, ever patient"; "Nyarlathotep, herald of knowledge"; "Yog-Sothoth, maker and keeper of gates"; "Azathoth, void and melody"; and, under a variant spelling, "Shub-Nigaroth, mother of fear."
The "ostensibly nondenominational" campus church at Miskatonic is "extremely Christian," but has a "discreet" shrine in the back for Aeonist worshipers. Aphra describes it:A stone altar stood empty except for a single candle. If I let my eyes unfocus, the half-abstract carvings resolved into great tentacles reaching from the altar to enfold the little grotto. The artist, I realized, had placed those who knelt there within the god’s embrace, while making the god invisible to any who did not know to look.
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:Ruthanna Emrys Works