I love this series. October is a great character. She takes all of her flaws and makes them assets. I was afraid because this was the 11th book that it would feel redundant or boring but it wasn't. Seanan Maguire does a wonderful job of keeping me interested.

The Plot:

Toby Daye is finally settling into the hard-won peace and comfort- she’s due to marry her fiance, her squire(s) and her adopted sister live with her in mostly-harmony, and she’s even managed to make peace with her daughter being lost to her, because faerie doesn’t play well with mortals. Even her looming debt to the Luidaeg is eclipsed by her mentor-protege like relationship with the sea witch. She has her old friends, her new friends, and life is good.

Then her Mom comes around and fucks everything up. Amandine is Fae in the most extreme senses of the world. She has her own agenda, and her own idea of how the world is supposed to be. So for Amandine, kidnapping, transforming and imprisoning Toby’s fiance and her sister’s (no relation) girlfriend in order to give Toby an incentive to do her a favor seems perfectly reasonable.

Toby, forced to follow a decades-old trail in search of her missing sister, is obviously far less sanguine about this arrangement. She throws herself into the task with the reckless abandon of someone with everything to lose. She bargains with the Luidaeg again (”there will be a price, and you are so far into my debt already,” the sea witch reminds her), and enlists the help of her estranged stepfather Simon Torquill- aka the man responsible for turning her into a fish for fourteen years, making her lose her life and her changeling daughter. Desperate times, and all that.

Thoughts:

1. I love

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Simon Torquill. I fucking love him to bits. I have so many feelings about him and his character and all the desperation and helplessness that drove him to make the choices he did. I have SO MANY feelings about his actions in this book? ARGH MY HEART.

If you had come to me back when I was reading book 4 with “hey this particular character is going to WRECK you with feelings” I would well- this is Seanan McGuire, so I would probably have been excited to see how she pulled that off. But STILL. I have so many feelings and I did not expect to have these emotions.

2. I also have equally strong feelings about

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Amandine. I remember starting to read the book soon after it was first released and stopping halfway through because I was so furious with her character and I had to calm down a little. A couple of years gave me a bit more distance, but she’s still… a Firstborn who needs to be repeatedly stabbed with an iron sword.

I cannot WAIT for the fallout of her actions in this book. Under most circumstances I’d figure she gets off scot-free because of who she is (I think it was that, more than her actions, which made me so upset the first time around), but a reckoning would be really dramatic and satisfying so I’m hoping for that.

3. That poor police officer needs a plot arc.

4. There are just so many great scenes in this Simon-October buddy comedy and I am IN for all of it? McGuire’s writing (for this series at least) is wry and dryly hilarious as always, which makes their juxtaposition with all of the heartfelt scenes that much more effective. Simon meeting the pixies, THE PIXIES IN GENERAL, everything involving “the way home” because I’m still not okay with how many feelings it gave me, and that wonderful scene between Amandine and

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August

and Toby because I could FEEL THE FURY in that page and it was amazing.

5. All told, this was one of the the more emotionally intense books in the Toby Daye series, which tends to be emotional by default. It was DEVASTATING. I loved it.

Reread, May 2023: Pureblood Faerie is NOT OK, news at eleven.

Original review, November 2017: FUCK Amandine, omfg.

After a run of books that were a slog, I was pretty glad to get a Toby Daye. That's always a good time, although this was maybe not my favorite. But, hey, there have been 11 books, and it's still good. Some backstory, too, which is cool. Also a novella, which refers to some people and events from so many books ago I don't really remember details.

Anyway, still fun.

I find these less compelling as the series goes on. I think there's not much more story, but her contract keeps getting extended. I started reading this series and the Kate Daniels books around the same time 4-5 years ago, and at the time preferred this series. Now, I much prefer the Kate Daniels books, which are clearly progressing towards a finish and which continue to provide ample character development and growth in each book. While I'm assuming that the series will end with Toby finding Oberon, I'm not super interested in hearing her whine about all the bad things (which, are a lot! she does have a super shitty life) that happen to her for at least two more books (and possibly more). Now that Toby is firmly with Tybalt, and the secret of who Quentin is revealed, the hooks that kept me more interested in the last few books are gone.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a fantastic addition to the already-amazing October Daye series. We *finally* get to properly meet Amandine in this book, (and wow, she is... something.) She sends Toby on a quest: to bring back her long-lost half-sister August. If she fails, she and those closest to her face dire and possibly deadly consequences. And one of her companions on this quest is probably the last person you'd expect - and certainly the last person Toby would want to spend time with, or trust to watch her back.

I'm not sure what I expected from Amandine to be honest, but she turned out to be way crazier and more evil than I would have thought. She's been described by others in previous books as being "off" and much different from what Toby remembers from her childhood, but this was a whole other level of crazy and negligent evil.

I found the character development from

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Simon Torquill

to be fascinating. And in some ways, in better understanding him and his complexities, Toby grew as a character as well. I actually felt really sad for both him and for Toby at the end. It will be interesting to see where the character goes from here.

Overall, I really loved it and I can't wait to see where Seanan McGuire - who at this point is one of my favorite authors - will take Toby next.

I really enjoy Seanan McGuire's October Daye series. Although this is book 11 I felt that she has kept the series pretty fresh with new plots and bad guys. I wouldn't start this series with this book she references previous books and characters so it would be pretty confusing as a stand alone.

Hardly any Tybalt but Simon surprised me. August and Amandine suck. Quentin is awesome and so is the Ludieag. A tougher read for my beloved characters.

I wanted to like this one more than I did, considering how much lore and character backstory we got, and especially how much I'm turning out to like Simon... but something about it fell a little short, for me.

This is one of my favorite series because the author's writing and character development never fails to suck me in and move me to tears or laughter or yearning for the next book.