A Court of Splintered Harmony by Sarah J. Mass, 297 pages
The newest ACOTAR book since 2021, very long awaited. This book served as more of a transitional book for the series, which was a little bit unexpected by many fans, myself included. I did enjoy all of the different POV's from different characters, but it just felt rushed and like a lot was packed into a short book. I am still looking forward to the next book in the series, but this was not my favorite.
Silver and Lead by Seanan McGuire, 389 pages.
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.
Emily Wilde's Encylopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett, 354 pages.
The Field Guide by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, 114 pages.
Mercy Thompson is an auto mechanic specializing in VWs. She is also a shapeshifter who can change into a coyote at will. She also has two love interests from a pack of werewolves and has to choose between them before they choose for her. To complicate her life even more, her fae mentor has been charged with a murder he didn't commit and Mercy is trying to find the true killer and stirs up another creature who tries to kill her and injures a number of the werewolves. Then their are the angry fae who want her stopped. Mercy suffers a lot of physical and mental trauma in this book but her love life seems to be resolved. I mistakenly thought this was the first book in the series when it is actually the third so I need to go back and begin the series to see what I missed.
The Innocent Sleep by Seanan McGuire, 368 pages.
This is, in a first for the series, a companion novel to Sleep No More from a few months ago. This time we follow the events from Tybalt's perspective, who is unaffected by the illusions wrapping their world and is having a worse time in many ways because of it. This is another book that I can't talk too much about the plot without major series spoilers, but the actual events of this book are pretty similar to Sleep No More, but with additional knowledge about the Undersea and where a few missing characters were.
Unfortunately I don't think this book worked quite as well as it's companion novel. I found Tybalt's voice to be stiff in a way that inhibited the action of the book, and overall less compelling than Toby as narrator. This book also suffers from a common issue of "the same story but from another perspective" books, in that it felt like overall Tybalt just didn't contribute that much to the plot. The big, world-ending consequences were pretty much on Toby (as usual) and Tybalt ended up left with more minor adventures. Sadly a slightly disappointing book.
Sleep No More by Seanan McGuire, 368 pages.
Be the Serpent by Seanan McGuire, 384 pages.
This book was really interesting because a lot of the major plots hinted at in the earliest books are finally coming to fruition. It's also interesting to see how the author manages to keep the stakes high as Toby keeps inching closer to functionally immortal. I found this book to start really picking up again after a bit of a lull the last couple of books, and I'm very excited for the TWO (!) new novels coming out this fall (including the first full length novel not from Toby's perspective). I would definitely recommend this book, although it's book 16 in a series, and I can't help but feel that if you've made it that far you're probably already hooked.
When Sorrows Come (also "And With Reveling") by Seanan McGuire, 384 pages.
Toby's getting married! Finally! Moreover, Toby is getting married sooner than even she expected, after her friends decided to take her at her word when she said that they should handle the details of the ceremony and just tell her when to show up. It even practically goes to plan, with just one small coup she has to prevent before she can get married (which is honestly probably still less bloodshed than most people were expecting).
This book was really nice because we got to spend a whole lot of time seeing how far Toby has come and how much she's healed. This is book fifteen in the series, and it was genuinely really nice to be able to take some time to appreciate how far she (and everyone else) has come. The plot was good, but ultimately secondary to the characters. I'm finally almost caught up! Hopefully I'll have time to read book sixteen before the new one comes out in the fall.
A Killing Frost by Seanan McGuire, 368 pages.
Due to a quirk of the faerie rules of politeness Toby has to undertake a quest she had promised to do earlier than usual, or risk serious consequences arising from her marriage. (It gets harder to write these descriptors free of spoilers the longer this goes on, this is book 14 and everything is feeding into everything else).
Unfortunately, I think this book may be the weakest of the series so far. The pacing wasn't as good as usual, many people's motivations didn't really make sense, and there was an astoundingly high instance of deus ex machina. However, McGuire mentions in the acknowledgments that this book was written during in the height of lockdown, so I can give her some grace about it, especially since I've heard the most recent book is phenomenal.
The Unkindest Tide by Seanan McGuire, 368 pages.
This is the thirteenth book in the October Daye series and it's selkie time. When the selkies were first created it was with the understanding that the Luidaeg would one day destroy them, and it's finally time for the debt to come due. Toby's debt is called as well, as her magic is necessary to turn all of the selkies into roane, the race that was slaughtered and whose skins the selkies wear to give them their magic. And if that whole situation isn't complicated enough, the big event is being held in the Duchy of Ships, where Toby gets pulled into unrelated politics of the undersea for the sake of old friends.
I think this is one of the weaker books in the series, although I still definitely liked it. The plot felt less tight than usual though, and I didn't feel like the threads quite came together. That being said, the Duchy of Ships is an awesome setting, and I love how much time we got to spend with the Luidaeg and the selkies.
Night and Silence by Seanan McGuire, 368 pages.
In this installment (book 12 of the October Daye series) Toby feels like her life is crumbling after the events of the last book. Many of the social ties she has spent so long building are strained or broken all together, and it makes it all the more difficult to get over the experience herself.
Everything is much worse when her human daughter is kidnapped and all signs point to Faerie.
This is a great series about a changeling PI solving magic mysteries. I wouldn't recommend jumping in at book 12, but this is definitely a solid edition to the series. It explores a few more of the mysteries of Toby's family line, but there wasn't quite as much big-picture lore as I was hoping for after the last book. This was a recovery book for her in a lot of ways, and I'm excited for the next one.
The Brightest Fell by Seanan McGuire, 368 pages.
This novel, book 11 in the series, continues the trend of making Toby's life more complicated just as things are starting to look up for her. Despite these constant setbacks, her life has trended generally upward throughout, which is both a thing I appreciate and something that is made abundantly clear by the friends she is surrounded by at the start of this book. Of course, having more people you care about means having more to lose, as Toby discovers when her fiance and friend are kidnapped as leverage to force her to find her sister who has been missing for more than a century.
One of the things I appreciate the most about this series is how great it is at rewarding readers for paying attention throughout the whole series. McGuire is really great at sowing seeds for things that won't happen until many books later, which makes the payoff feel especially satisfying when it happens. It feels like were really gearing up for big plot things that have finally started rolling, and I'm really excited to see where this goes.
Once Broken Faith by Seanan McGuire, 420 pages.
This is the tenth book in the October Daye series, and a more direct continuation than many others in the series (which means spoilers ahead). After Toby doing diplomacy went so "well" in A Red Rose Chain, Toby is commanded by the High King of the Westlands to attend the conclave that is being called to decide whether the cure for elf-shot should be distributed or suppressed. Being in a room full of royalty is never a good time for Toby, but it gets distinctly worst after the first murder.
This book felt like a bit of a stopgap in the series. Which isn't to say it wasn't good, I thoroughly enjoyed the action and getting to see Toby digging into detective work again. But the overall tone is that this book is gearing up for something. It had more recap than most of the previous books of what had happened in the series to date, and also broadened the scale of the world considerably. I'm not sure what comes next, but I'm pretty sure things are about to scale up.
