I will describe two stories. A sort of gritty, low fantasy setting, set mostly around a royal court. Nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel of 1997, it only recently received a screen adaptation. Featuring primarily a group of siblings, their dead father had a certain great friendship with the King, but by the end of the book, they were no longer in favor with the reigning monarch. Another major character is a clever man with dwarfism, also with family connections to the royal family.  Though he is socially ostracized for his condition and irreverent cynicism, some parties value him for his wise counsel. Also, someone’s brother has joined a particular order, known by their monochrome garb. He is supposed to forsake personal and political loyalties for complete obedience to the holy master of the order, but it didn’t really work out that way.

Yes, indeed, George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones lost to Vonda McIntyre’s The Moon and the Sun.

I will describe two stories. The main character is a sort of weird woman, ostensibly with the job role of a servant. Her best friend is a man ostracized for his unusual personal proclivity. Also with her is another woman who does a similar job, but suffers from her dark skin the legacy of slavery in this historical setting. The government has captured an ugly humanoid sea monster with magical touch-based healing powers, and it believes that exploiting its body will lead to global political dominance by that state. A sympathetic scientist pleads the authorities to not kill the creature, but they order him to dissect it, anyway. Due to her unusual relationship with sound, the woman lead discovers the sea monster is actually a sea person, and learns to communicate with it. Even without being dissected, it is in failing health due to being confined in a small pool rather than the open sea. Eventually, there is a desperate race to smuggle the sea person to a waterway that will allow it to escape to the sea.

The Shape of Water (2017) was a box office and critical success, winning 4 Academy Awards. The Moon and the Sun’s film adaptation, The King’s Daughter (2022) released to abysmal critical and box office failure after being in development hell for over 20 years. I have not watched it.

In the afterword of the copy of The Moon and the Sun I have access to, Vonda McIntyre describes her story, as a screenplay, as maybe being “too expensive, too difficult to film, too uncommercial, because it stars a woman, and a sea monster, and a male lead rather different from the usual tall and hunky hero.” One imagines that The Moon and the Sun walked so that The Shape of Water could run so that The King’s Daughter could crawl.