The Day Music Died
The Tobias & Stuart Trilogy
Free Sample
Start reading instantly — no signup needed.
Blurb
Music is dead—and the world has forgotten how to sing.
When Music—the ageless, androgynous presence that shadowed humanity’s first stories—dies in a London flat, instruments are refiled as “old-world communicative devices”. Melodies slip from memory. Only a few hear the hush that remains: Marion of Putney as her memory flickers; a sharp child in Birmingham; and Tobias Tam Staghorn, thirty-two, Associate Professor at Birmingham University, who suspects history has torn.
Tobias should be cataloguing relics. Instead, he follows a pattern hidden in wood, wire, and skin—parlour guitars with worn frets, a “telephone desk” that sings when its levers are pressed, hand-drums that once called the spirits. The trail runs through Barcelona auction rooms and along the canals and lecture halls of the Midlands, into snug pubs by the Thames. Allies gather: Marion and the ghost of her beloved saxman; Stevie and Daisy, who can still “see” what adults cannot; Lily the restorer and her serene assistant Troy; and a guarded trauma doctor with a keen eye.
The rule they share—felt more than stated—is simple and perilous: name the right tones, voice the right stories, and what was erased might be called back. But institutions are circling to strip rare artefacts for spectacle, Music flickers at the edge of forgetting, and Tobias must decide what he’s trying to save: his field, his career, or the part of the human heart that hums.
Series: The Day Music Died is Book 1 of The Tobias & Stuart Trilogy.
Content notes: one on-page intimate scene; minimal violence; occasional strong language.
Perfect for: lyrical contemporary fantasy, academia-adjacent mystery threads, found family, and queer romance with heart.
Behind the Pages
Over the years, I’ve had more story ideas than I can count—some passing through quickly, others lingering for tea. A few even came with dramatic entrances and impossible demands. But none of them ever made it onto paper. Not even a line. Not even a note on the back of a napkin.
Until Tobias & Stuart.
I’ve always been drawn to MM romance and speculative fantasy, and since this was my first novel, I thought I’d start with something I knew well—academic life. It’s a world full of eccentric characters, strange rituals, and an endless supply of questions without clear answers. In its own way, academia already feels a bit fantastical. My challenge was to combine all three into one story.
Tobias & Stuart became the kind of book I wanted to read myself: an MM romance that doesn’t just flutter hearts but nudges the mind awake. At its centre is Tobias, an academic who’s built a perfectly sensible life for himself… until he hasn’t. His journey is one of confronting emptiness, finding courage in vulnerability, and slowly becoming the truest version of himself—all while the world threatens to unravel around him.
It’s a story about love, friendship, and the delightful absurdity of being human. Those small, stubborn things that—when you really think about it—might just be what saves the world.
I hope you’ll come along for the journey with Tobias and Stuart, and of course with Music, Death, and Time, who have a way of turning everything upside down just when you think you’ve figured it out.
Jern Tonkoi
Reviews
I enjoyed this as a opening chapter and am excited to read more in this universe. This was a strong start to the Tobias & Stuart series, it had that fantasy romance element that I was looking for and was engaged with what was happening. The characters had that overall feel that I was wanting and enjoyed the concept. Jern Tonkoi wrote this well and was engaged from the first page.
Wow! I can't imagine a world without music, it's so much a part of my life. Music is personified in this version of reality and they pass away and with them all knowledge of music disappears. Tobias is a professor at Birmingham University and is studying and collecting what he terms sounding communication devices. These devices are broken musical instruments that no longer have names or meaning. As Tobias and his unusual group of associates slowly start to piece together the sounds the devices make, music begins to return, but only to a select few who can hear. A very interesting and powerful take on music and the impact it has on our lives.
This is one of those quiet, slow-building stories that lingers long after the last page. At first, not much seems to be happening — Tonkoi spends time layering context, history, and atmosphere — but by the end, the emotional weight really hits. It’s lyrical, thoughtful, and deeply sentimental in a way that stayed with me.
Read-alikes
- Piranesi — Susanna Clarke 2020 · Fantasy — Contemporary
Quiet, melancholic wonder and a puzzle unveiled through artifacts mirror the book’s gentle speculative mystery and themes of memory and absence.
- The Night Circus — Erin Morgenstern 2011 · Fantasy — Historical
Lyrical atmosphere and concept-as-character worldbuilding align with tender wonder, ensemble dynamics, and slow-bloom connections.
- Signal to Noise — Silvia Moreno-Garcia 2015 · Fantasy — Contemporary
Music as magic and the cost of calling something back echo the novel’s instruments-with-secrets and melancholic hope.
- The Ten Thousand Doors of January — Alix E. Harrow 2019 · Fantasy — Portal
Story-as-magic, archival threads, and the act of naming as key resonate with the rule that voiced stories can reopen what was erased.
- The House in the Cerulean Sea — T.J. Klune 2020 · Fantasy — Contemporary
Tender, quietly witty tone and intergenerational found family align with campus-adjacent warmth and queer slow-burn sensibility.
- Babel — R.F. Kuang 2022 · Fantasy — Academia
Academia-meets-mystery, institutional scrutiny, and language-as-power parallel the scholarly setting, rare artefacts, and ethical stakes.