October Daye has a mission – to get Goblin Fruit off the streets. It’s a powerful narcotic, loved by Pureblood Fae – but it’s lethally addictive to humans and Changelings. Emphasis on the “lethally”, it will kill them. Unfortunately, the Queen doesn’t care – what do Changelings dying matter to her, even if dozens of children have died? And she doesn’t like October either – so she can have a banishment.
That leaves only one choice. The Queen has to go.
In three days
That’s quite tall order for deposing the local monarch –
but she’s not popular and October has a lot of friends with some very cunning
ideas and some long hidden secrets.
The plot of this book is Epic and Urgent and Heroic and
Magnificent. Which is awesome. In fact, we need more unnecessary capitals – it was
AWESOME. But it’s also hurried and a little disjointed.
October is taking down the Queen. Which means lots of manoeuvring
to desperately come up with an idea that would knock her from her throne, which
means lots and lots of brainstorming and lots and lots of rallying the troops.
It means October rushing around everywhere and speaking to everyone. It means
we get to see everyone, all the excellent character we’ve come to know and love
(and I do love the characters in this series, more on that later). It makes
that wonderful, spine-tingly epic feeling you get when a story is real and
exciting and powerful and you can almost feel the epic consequences of the
characters actions. Overlaid over all that is that wonderful, viscerally
satisfying feeling you get when a long standing aggravating character is about
to get theirs (the “Joffrey Slap” feeling). And there’s a time limit so all of
this happens real fast with an extreme sense of tension and panic about it –
because time is running out.
Awesome and excellent.
But…
3 days? Is far too short. It makes the whole kingdom look
kind of odd that it only takes 3 days to depose the sitting monarch. I would
actually have rather this be an epic campaign taking part over several books as
October rallies her forces, gathers her allies forged in several books of
helping and heroism and challenges people to pick the unstable, dangerous,
fickle queen over her and her claimant. That would have added an extra layer of
epic to an already epic tale – and made it more momentous that she had to
gather all these forces and spar with the Queen for so long.
As it was, the story was still epic – but there were elements that felt forced or could have been better. Like taking over the queen’s castle full o’guards with just 2 people. Or the Queen able to perform near miracles with her Siren abilities (why don’t sirens rule the world?) Or the Queen only having a few gambits against Toby and Toby merrily teleporting left, right and centre to avoid them – leading to a disjointedness of her not spending much time in one place and not really hashing things out with Tybalt, Sylvester, Jazz or Walter.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a truly awesome, epic book with lots of excitement and powerful scenes. But it could very easily have been more if it wasn’t so hurried. It’s less a complaint and more a lament about what could have been.
Along with the great story we have some great world building
– and I do love the world of this series. When October found herself shifted
towards the human end of the spectrum I was kind of sad because I thought there
wouldn’t be much chance to explore Dochas Sidhe and what that means if October
was barely fae at all.
What we did get was a lot of foreshadowing of more to come – with a prophecy and a lot of the Luidaeg and all revolving around the First Born and October being a Dochas Sidhe – so I think I just need to hang on in there because it’s all coming.
