Silver and Lead

 Silver and Lead by Seanan McGuire, 389 pages.

In this 19th installment of the October Daye series, Toby has to deal with the fact that she is much less indestructible then she has gotten used to. Well, technically she is nearly as indestructible, but she is also more than eight months pregnant, which really limits how much danger she can throw herself into. But when Queen Windermere demands that Toby investigates some dangerous items that were stolen from the royal treasury she doesn't fight the assignment too hard. Her loved ones have hardly let her leave the house for the last four months, and heroes were not made to sit peacefully on the couch indefinitely. 

I love how much fun McGuire is clearly having putting Toby in very different situations than she has been in previously. There was good action in this book, and it gave many series staples a chance to shine. That being said, I do also feel that this book was a little weighed-down by nineteen books of background information being presented as exposition. I was also hopeful that this book would be a return to Toby doing detective work, but unfortunately it was more of a book where plot happens to her. The villain at one point says that Toby has never been smart so much as persistent, but that persistence works surprisingly well when you're nearly indestructible, and unfortunately Toby doesn't do a whole lot to disprove that claim in this book. Not a bad entry to the series, but not likely to be my favorite either.