Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10) by Seanan McGuire

The cure for Elfshot – the poison that puts fae to sleep for 100 years – has been found and it promises to completely overhaul fae society. Now the ultimate weapon beyond death has the potential to be neutralised and who knows what the fallout will be. Especially with all the people who can now rejoin society

To keep ahead of the potential chaos, the High King and Queen of North America have called a conclave of West Coast monarchs to discuss the issue and the way forwards. And, of course, October is invited. And by “invited” he means “required to attend”. That means lots of Pureblood politics, being the only Changeling in the room and a lot of etiquette

Until a king is murdered – and then things get far more awkward and really, politics become the least of Toby’s worries.

There are so many characters in this book I love. I love October and her relationships with the other cast. I love how they can be very complex like her mixed emotions with Sylvester. I love how she manages to be sensible and emotional in a very real way. I love how he can respect someone but still not have time for the bullshit, I love how she interacts with the world around her striking a delicate balance as a changeling, yet a Changeling with influence. I love how her past has shaped her, I love how dedicated she is to the ones she loves – and all the ones she loves, not just her love interest. It is a joy to read through Toby’s excellent, complicated, very real eyes.

I love how she’s constantly out of her depth – but smart and funny and quickly adapting and able to cut through the bullshit around her with an excellent skill – being the outsider while being in the halls of power gives her an excellent insight on the glaring flaws of the court system. It’s excellent and excellent way to present world building as well.

The Luidaeg is an ongoing wonderful, terrifying, caring, powerful, arrogant, yet gentle, furious and awesome and snarky character who bulldozes her way through everything with the sure and certain knowledge that she will kill you and eat your skin if you have to

Then there’s Arden, the new Queen who is desperately trying to find her feet and is really not used to all this yet but she is desperately trying. And she has a decorating theme, so that’s half the battle.

All of these characters work so well because the world setting is amazing. And I don’t just mean the incredible work that has gone into researching and including so many fae varieties and legends and including them in the book. There are histories and politics and wonderful insights into magic (even if that magic is “magic is weird and has few rules). There’s a real sense of a heavy world beyond all the references that has just continued to build and grow over the period of the books. This works to make all the political intrigue – from the different crowns, the different view of Undersea, the treatment of Changelings, the Firstborn and how they relate to their descendants to the whole political structure – feel not just involves and complex but also real. Like it’s been fully designed to work, rather than twisted to fit the convenience.

A Red-Rose Chain (October Daye #9) by Seanan McGuire

The Kingdom of Silences has declared war on the Kingdom of Mists. The new Queen Arden is far out of her depths and has little idea how to respond…

So she throws October at the problem. She’s no trained diplomat but she has good friends and she is very good at thinking on her feet

And with both the old Queen and a kingdom that considers Changelings beneath notice, it’s going to be a hard fight to be heard or listened to – or to stop a war that the King of Silences so cruelly wants. Even if she could stop the war, the ongoing injustice and cruelty of the Kingdom of Silences cannot be allowed to continue.

The story is immensely fun, as I definitely expect from this series. October Daye continues to be a scrappy character who runs around well out of her depth as is her wont. But she fights, she struggles and she rests on her friends and her unique abilities to get things done even if she so often has to make things up on the spot

The writing and pacing is, as always, excellent – always keeping me on the hook, reading until I reach the end of the books and all the… well not exactly twists and turns so much as constant questions and confusion. October doesn’t know what she’s doing and that’s really well portrayed in the text. She’s been thrown into a situation beyond her control and she has no plans, she’s incapable of planning in these circumstances. All she can do is run and hope to keep up and hope an answer, some answer presents itself so she can stop a war and save the people she loves

I really like how this is, in turn, reflected in Arden, the Queen. She’s also supremely out of her depth, after all she has only assumed the throne recently and before that she was a book store clerk. Without weakening her in the slightest she is depicted as exactly what she is – a woman who is completely overwhelmed and terrified and needs nudging back into the correct direction. It doesn’t make her a bad person or even a bad queen – any more than October’s flailing makes her and it’s a nice parallel between October and the Queen as we see them both try to adapt to a situation that is so far beyond her. As an extra bonus October’s epic speech to get her back on track is awesome.

The Winter Long (October Daye #8) by Seanan McGuire

October has a long and difficult past – but at least she understood it. She’d also left a lot of it behind – she had a new life, new loves, new friends and was an honoured hero of the kingdom

But when old, long vanished people return, she quickly learns nothing was how she imagined it – and people close to her have been keeping vital secrets about her life, her past and her family

This book hit that wonderful sweet balance between EPIC and PERSONAL which is very hard to do.

We have a lot of epic because the antagonist is immensely powerful and threatens pretty much everything October knows – including the entirety of North America. She is vast and all consuming and not a power that October can reasonably match. More, this series is truly excellent at invoking the great forces of faerie, it really conveys the epic power of these beings as well as their truly alien, unknowable nature. When this series decides to bring out an epic power, there is absolutely not doubt at all how powerful it is – everyone one of the epic faerie forces has a sense of age and power that is really well conveyed even when showing their oh-so-human frailties as well. The book never really forgets what they are – epic, powerful, the stuff of legend. It’s what I’ve always loved about this series and this book doesn’t disappoint.

On the personal side – much of this book covers a lot of October’s past. Way back at the beginning of this series we knew October had recently been cursed by Simon and that this had seriously disrupted her life; Simon had also gone on to cause some trouble for Sylvester, October’s liege’s family as well. But his motives (and, relatedly, Oleander who also showed up to cause havoc) remained very opaque and in the later books we’d moved so far beyond that period in her life that it was rarely remembered. In fact, every now and then October would mention something like her fear of water and I’d suddenly remember. That isn’t a criticism – the October of The Winter Long is a very different person from the October of Rosemary and Rue, she has grown a lot and the things that once were such major issues for her have faded and been replaced by the far greater and more epic. But that growth and development makes it all the more important (and fascinating) to revisit October’s past with new perspective, knowledge and power, filling in all the gaps about her old friends, allies and enemies (and people who have moved from one category to another as well). I can’t say much more than that because I’m risking spoilers – but it is epic and fascinating and really adds to October’s backstory. And adds a whole lot more mystery to October as well – I really want to know who her grandmother is.

We also have some interesting world building on the Liudaeg who is definitely a favourite of mine – and also the interesting bindings that can restrain even the greatest and mightiest of the fae. It’s a really nice balance of surprising weakness in beings that are so incredibly powerful. There was other interesting world building elements, including what it means to be a child of Titania or Maeve (the two great fae matriarchs) with added elements of marriage in fae culture – and just what a faerie race’s First Born actually means to them.

Chimes at Midnight (October Daye #7) by Seanan McGuire

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.

Ashes of Honour (October Daye #6) by Seanan McGuire

 

October Daye is managing to move on with her life after the loss of both Connor and her daughter – but it’s hard and her grief is a background for this book. But, perhaps more so for that grief, she cannot turn away Etienne when he comes to her for help. He has a daughter, a changeling daughter who he never knew about. Her mother has only just informed him of her because she has gone missing – not just gone missing, but literally vanished before her friend’s eyes.

Perhaps not impossible, given that Etienne’s a Tuatha de Danaan, a skilled teleporter, but there’s definitely something suspicious with this disappearance. And to make it worse, Chelsea is one of those Changelings without limits – or controls – on her power. She can break barriers that were never meant to be broken, open portals to places that were best kept sealed and the consequence of doing so may be to bring down those barriers entirely, devastating faerie.

Getting involved quickly drops her into a whole heap of fae politics – only further complicated with chaos in Tybalt’s court of cats

This is another excellently written adventure with the multiple threads of the story coming together and conflicting with each other. They have a desperate mission, the world itself could rest in the balance and at the same time –with the worst possible timing – Tybalt is faced with his own revolution from the court of cats. I like how the four story threads we have here: finding Chelsea     , stopping Chelsea destroying the world, finding Raj and dealing with the court of cast are all interlinked, even extremely closely related storylines but they also serve as competition for time. It adds to the tension to have it all going on at once but also adds to the realism to have them inter-related.

The story is well paced, well balanced and nicely mixes character emotion and bonds with action to keep it moving at a decent pace. It’s nice to see the world develop and have some names put on long mentioned faces while at the same time visiting some of the older characters in the series; including Tamed Lightning. This gives a sense that it’s not just Toby. I also like that, while Toby is a special one-and-only-kind-of-fae (except her absent mother), she isn’t a special one-and-only-kind-of-fae with the Awesome Super Power of Awesomeness as is so often the case. Her strength, her power, her agency, her excellence as a character is not based on the special shiny powers she has or her amazing ability to kill things – because she doesn’t have them. She does have super miraculous healing which means she doesn’t spend nearly as much time healing as she did – but it does mean she can keep on being a punch bag which is one thing this series occasionally makes me uncomfortable about (though the first book was by far the worst on that and it has got exponentially better.

And the Luidaeg is still awesome. It is known.

Review: One Salt Sea, by Seanan McGuire, Book 5 of the October Daye Series

October Daye, the new Countess of Goldengreen has a new mission and never has so much rested on her.

The children of the Duchess of Saltmist, an Undersea realm bordering the Kingdom of Mists, have been kidnapped. Worse, the suggestion is that the Kingdom of Mists is involved – war is very much in the air. But it’s a war the Kingdom of Mists will not be able to win – and even if they did, the cost in immortal fae lives would be far too high.

The only chance to stop a war is to find the children – unharmed – and find out who has taken them and why. But on a more personal stake, October’s own daughter has also gone missing – and the same perpetrator is indicated. Saving the children now includes saving her own, mainly human, daughter as well.

There are few distractions from this main plot in this book – despite the running of Goldengreen and her knew squire – October has a kingdom (and children) to save in a mystery that takes her to the bottom of the ocean, confronts old enemies, follows a long path of clues and calls upon all her friends and allies to help.

The world building of this series continues to be amazing – and draws me in each book with as thirst to know more, especially now the whole concept of Undersea has opened up. Even almost-throwaway things like the origins of the Selkies are beautiful rich additions to an extremely varied and well planned world. I get a really huge sense of vast numbers of notes, maps, biographies and histories on Seanan McGuire’s desk that goes into making this amazing world.

The story itself is extremely well balanced and paced. There’s a maintained urgency without rushing and the story blurring. We take the time to be fully exposed to the emotional impact and consequences of what is happening without maundering around or getting bored by it or reduced to yelling “just rescue them already!” at the book. It’s well put together between emotional depth and exciting action with revelations coming often enough to keep things interesting without them being cheap or overwhelming.

And all of it was well written – the emotional scenes were strong and painful, the sense of tension and threat and the looming horror of war was fully presented and conveyed, the pain of the parents, the sheer amount at stake was all powerfully presented without being excessive or melodramatic

The story itself has sufficient clues and twists to keep it interesting as a mystery without so many that it becomes lost and convoluted – there are no loose ends, no excess distraction and the investigation is actually sensible and reasonable rather than relying on coincidences or random leaps of logic – again, a really well balanced story with the mystery and the logic working well together even in a world of fae and magic.

If I had one quibble about the story it would be that fairly early in the books the Duchess of Saltmist realises and seems to believe that her children have not been kidnapped by the Queen of Mists or her agents – so I’m not entirely sure why she is pursuing the war and imposing such a tight deadline on it as well.

Review: Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire, Book 4 of the October Daye Series

Before the first book, October was turned into a fish for trying to rescue Luna and Rosalyn from the clutches of Simon and Oleander. But now, Oleander is back. A master illusionist and poisoner and a brilliant assassin, she is hunting October and those she loves.

As people she loves and values are brought down, October has to find a cure for the poison and catch Oleander before more people are lost. Or discover whether Orleander actually exists and isn’t just a figment of her own breaking mind?

As if an arch enemy poisoning people weren’t enough, her rival and other enemy, Rosalyn, ends up with unprecedented power in the Shadowed Halls. And the unstable and dangerous Queen of Northern California has her own vendetta against October – and is determined to settle the score. And here are these murders, ideal for framing.

And in the process, October learns far more about Amandine and herself than she ever imagined

As far as mysteries go, it was an odd one. There wasn’t  choice of villains or really choice of methods. From almost the word go we knew it was Oleander, in the Knowe, with the Poison. There’s more detective skill goes into a game of Cluedo than that. However, I don’t think it was a mystery or a detective story per se – though there was a considerable amount of detection involved in finding the exact vector of the poison – so maybe it’s a different kind of detective story.

I think far more it counts as a part action book, part political intrigue. October doesn’t need to find out whodunit so much as howdunnit and how to stab whodunit repeatedly when we have Rosalyn and the Queen on her back and so little of her normal support network. And I liked it. I was curious as to what would happen next, I wanted to see how the political intrigue would developed and I was interested to see how they would actually find their way through the maze and actually resolve everything. I never really knew what was coming next or how the plot would resolve – and it was a fascinating trip to the end as October dodged the obstacles in her way to finally confront the big bad in true heroic fashion.

Review: An Artifical Night by Seanan Mcguire, book 3 of the October Daye Series

The Hunt is riding again. His hunt rides forth every 100 years and before it does it gathers new riders and steeds into the fold. But the source for these new recruits are children – fae children to ride, mortal children for horses and the nights before Samhain Michael recruits new steeds and riders from their homes.

And in comes October Daye. Her best friends have lost their children, the Court of Cats have lost children and her friend Quentin has lost his girlfriend to the Hunt and October, as a hero, isn’t going to let that happen. Even if her Fetch has arrived, predicting her imminent demise.

With the help of Luna, the Duchess of the Shadowed Halls and the ancient fae, the Luidaeg, she has to enter the lands of the hunt and retrieve the children. But she is entering a new world with this quest, playing by the rules of children’s games and songs, fighting with rhymes and half remembered rules of fairness in a world that isn’t bound to reality. 

And, of course, even if you manage to save people from the Huntsman, how do you stop him turning his eyes upon you?

I think in this book we had the most powerful feeling of what it means to be fae –not just in the series but perhaps in Urban Fantasy in general. The surreal, malleable world, the shifting reality and the low grade3, unnerving terror was powerful. But more so was the simple use of children’s stories, of fairness and of arcane rules to the games. It added to the surreality and the alienness of the world, even told through the familiarity of children’s rhymes. In a way it adds to the terror of it – because these aren’t creatures that follow the rules and mores of adult society – not even of adult thinking – they are literally creatures of nightmares and as alien and incomprehensible as those nightmares.

This links with the huge richness of the world here to make something which is both epic and wondrous with lots of shinies and lots of surreal terrors.

The plot has an interesting element in that you think it’s solved and then realise – wait, I’m only half way through. And then we’d have a new chapter, a new start, a new twist. And then you think it’s resolved a second time, but again there’s a new chapter, a new twist to the tale. In other books I’ve found that irritating – but largely because there hasn’t been enough coherence between the stages. In this book each section of the tale naturally leads into the next. I also like it because we’re very much reading things through an almost fairy tale lens – and fairy tales end far too neatly with their “happy ever after”. Each “ending” would have been a great fairy tale ending – and then they all lived happily ever after, but what about the consequences? Does the story really end there? Are there no loose ends? So I quite liked it, I felt it was  rejection of the simple, pat ending.

Review: A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire, Book 2 of the October Daye series

Sylvester, Duke of the Shadowed Halls has called October with a problem. His niece, the Countess of Tamed Lightning, isn’t answering his calls. He would check up on her, or send one of his top officials – but the neighbouring duchy of Dreamers Glass would take that as a move against them – and war would surely follow. Hamstrung by politics, he has to turn to October, a trained PI and his knight errant

Setting off with Quentin, a young Page from the court looking for some experience, things rapidly get out of hand. Not only are communications from Dreamers Glass being interrupted – but half of the inhabitants have fled after a string of murders.

A string of murders that continues while October Daye is there. With her PI experience and her Daoine Sidhe ability to read blood memories she’s perfectly placed to help solve the murders – as well as her duty to Sylvester. But the memories are absent and even the darkest forces in faerie won’t touch the bodies – more people keep dying. And, other than Quentin, anyone can be the killer, no-one can be trusted. And can they trust her? Especially with the dangerous politics of the County?

And, if murders weren’t enough, the people of Tamed Lightning have their own secrets, some of which could be just as dangerous as the murderer themselves.

The world here is amazingly rich with a huge variety of fae and faerie legends presented. It’s a very varied world, a very large world with, consequently, a lot of scope for different characters and abilities. I think these books are worth reading for their rich world alone and the potential of them.

October Daye is a nuanced character. She’s a Changeling in a fae society that ever treats her as less. She has her mother’s extreme reputation to live up to while at the same time she is limited to the power level of a Changeling. And this is after her last major quest for Sylvester resulted in her not only failing to rescue Luna and Rosalyn, but also being trapped as a fish for 14 years – the aftermath of which she is only just recovering from. She’s very ambivalent about being involved in faerie, but at the same time cares deeply for the people she regards as her family.

The plot itself has a lot of action – October is facing off against an unknown assailant, there’s a sense of danger around every corner, of constantly being stalked and just not knowing who or what is out there or why. The tension is very well maintained and there’s always a sense whenever a character leaves the frame that they may not be coming back. Other than October, there was a very good sense of “anyone can die” with lots of nail biting tension, head scratching mystery and occasional frenzied bolts of energy as the newest threat raises its head.

One thing that isn’t to my taste is the way October investigates – or, rather, the way the investigation is written. In fiction, I generally find there are 3 kinds of detective stories: 1) the investigator actively seeks the answer, follows a series of clues and brilliantly puts them together. 2) the investigator has a couple of clues then has a magical insight/stroke of genius/convoluted hunch that solves the puzzle. 3) The investigator does very little or her investigation turns up next to nothing, but the bad guy decides to try and kill her and eventually is caught.

October Day kind of fits into option 3. In fact, by the end of the book her suspect pool has dropped to 3 people and one of them highly unlikely. She could have flipped a coin. The problem is that it didn’t make her, a trained investigator, look very competent. Her investigation skills consisted of tasting the blood to use her Daoine Sidhe powers – and it not working. Ok, next body, taste the blood – didn’t work. Ok next body, taste the blood – didn’t work. And that was kind of the extent of her investigative skills; I think the only other investigating she does is call the Luidaeg for a ritual she repeats step by step. She also spends a lot of time being attacked and being injured - though not as bad as the last book. It’s sad because in the end October has a lot of second guessing of herself and her competence and I want to say “no, Toby, you did your best” but at the same time I’m faced with the fact she didn’t actually do a whole lot – and spent most of the book reacting rather than seeking the actual suspect.

Of course, she’s not helped by the other characters being even less competent. When January can’t get through to her uncle on the phone she just… leaves more phone messages? Really? She’s a fae leading a whole herd of other fae and one phone is all they can manage for communication? Add in that October repeatedly tells them to stay together but they continually split off. Why weren’t they all gathered in one room where they could all watch each other? Why did people keep wandering off alone? Why did October keep wandering off alone? It made no sense! They were in a desperate survival situation, they’ve been decimated, losing 3 quarters of their number and they’re still going for solo wanders?

Unfortunately, the book is pretty heavily erased with a very straight, white cast. There’s also so unpleasant hints towards the killer being mentally ill though it’s not entirely spelled out. I’m also unhappy with references to pureblood prejudice as “racism” though thankfully they’re not common

Those criticisms aside, it is a book I enjoyed. While there were actions of the characters I didn’t entirely agree with, but I didn’t find it sufficient to detract from the overall goodness that is this book, the depth of the world or the continuing interactions of the characters. It’s a series that continues to intrigue me and its potential only grows more with each new book.

Review: Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire, Book 1 of the October Daye series

October Daye, fae Changeling, has a mystery to solve.

Of course, her last time investigating for the fae didn’t end well. In fact it ended with her spending 14 years as a fish. 14 years in which she lost everything, her mortal partner, her daughter, her job, her friends, her life – everything. She’s not eager to jump back in there.

But her friend, Evening Winterrose one of the few, if not only, friends she has managed to keep and the one who helped her put her life back together has been murdered. Horrifically, and brutally murdered with cold iron, the worst possible death of a fae. If that were not enough to inspire her to act, Evening called a curse on October before she died – a curse that demanded she find Evening’s killer or be destroyed by the curse. 

October must make contact with her old liege, her old friends and her enemies, juggle her old issues and handle one of the most powerful magical artefacts of legend all with the limited magic of a Changeling.

October Daye is an interesting character, despite some issues I have with her that I’ll go into later. She’s very much the bottom rung of fae society being a changeling and surrounded by forces that are much more powerful than her and always will be. She has her own place but isn’t comfortable with it and it’s clear throughout this book that she really doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to be dragged back into the fae world and isn’t comfortable navigating its murky currents

The world heavily involves the fae – which is always a favourite of mine. And it has an extremely diverse range of fae both shown and referred to, pointing to a lot of knowledge on the author’s part and a dedication to include more than the usual well trodden ground. I’m certainly eager to read more about it and I think I’d be tempted to read the next book simply for greater elaboration on the world.