A Rose-Red Chain by Seanan McGuire

You know, a person can slog along, trying to finish reading books over longer than normal periods of time, and begin to think that it's because they're distracted, too busy, under the weather, or some sort of excuse to justify matters. Then, suddenly, you pick up a book that is quite simply so riveting that you have to force yourself to put it down so you can get a decent night's sleep before work, finding yourself halfway through it in the first hour, and tearing through the rest as soon as it is possible to pick it up again. This latest book in the saga of Toby Daye is one such book. Loved it.

The book opens with Toby, the bridge troll Danny, her squire Quentin and her fiancee, Tybalt battling a large group of supernatural Mauthe dogs that has gotten loose from one of the inner realms of faerie. When Toby realized that the Mauthe were not hostile, but rather terrified of the modern world and decided to rescue them instead of killing them all, I made a mental note of this, thinking that the dogs would end up in the role of calvary to the rescue later on, but it turned out that they were simple a device to introduce us to Madden, one of the "dog" Sidhe, who becomes the first casualty when war is declared on the Kingdom of the Mists by the Kingdom of Silence, where one of the villains of a previous novel has taken sanctuary, and seduced its King into attacking Arden's domain.

In the category of Really Bad Ideas Arden's subsequent decision to send Toby as the chief diplomat to begin negotiations with Silence to try to halt the war really ranks near the top. Toby and her fetch, May, Tybalt and Quentin, and her friend the alchemist, Walther all journey to Portland where Silences is located in the physical world. Why Walther? The Sea Witch tells Toby she should take someone who knows the lay of the land with her, and Walther was born there before a coup by the present ruler, and fled to the human realm, where he has hidden ever since.

As it turns out, Walther is key to the success of the mission. It turns out that he is related to the former royal family in Silences, and that he also is the only person with the skill, combined with some of Toby's special knowledge, to create a potion which can waken the elf-shot true rulers of the land, who have been kept asleep for more than a century now, as conditions in their rightful kingdom grow more and more oppressive.

This plot moves right along, never a boring moment. After nine novels, McGuire's tale is still going strong.

The Winter Long by Seanan McGuire

 After attending a Winter Ball at the court of Queen Arden, Toby is looking forward to a good morning's sleep, but she is shockingly awakened by the arrival of an unwanted guest - Duke Sylvester's brother, Simon Torquill, the villain who transformed her into a fish back at the beginning of this whole saga. Besides his unwelcome presence, he brings unwelcome news, which will shock Toby out of her slumbers and set her on a path towards...vengeance?

There's just no good way to talk about this story without spoilers, so be warned.

Chimes at Midnight by Seanan McGuire

Toby is doing well in her relationship with the King of Cats, Tybalt, so it's inevitable that something major should go wrong. Too many changelings are becoming addicted to goblin fruit, which is fatal over the long haul, but which provides an incredible high in the meantime, and is immediately addictive on the first dose. It has become widely available on the streets of San Francisco and its Fae desmesnes. It is a harmless intoxicant to the Fae, but the half bloods and full humans are strongly affected by it. The worst thing is, it turns out that the Queen is the one who is providing it, and isn't dismayed at all at the changeling deaths - it's a feature, not a bug.

Toby makes the mistake of confronting her, and ends up banished from the kingdom. In her inimitable and rather unique style, she sets about finding the true heirs of King Gilad, and encouraging them to claim their rightful throne, which coincidentally should end her banishment.

Along the way we get to meet a Dog Sidhe (if there are cats, there must be dogs, right?), struggle along with Toby when the Queen's agents forcibly addict her to goblin fruit, which has some wild side effect for someone who can change their own blood to become more human, thus enjoying the intoxication more deeply. Going along with the usual theme these days in urban fantasy with female heroes, we get to learn who all Toby's allies really are, and how she can count on them to have her back.

This book appears to mark a transition in the series. It will be fun to see what's next.

Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire

This is the sixth novel in the October Daye series. Toby is still grieving over the loss of her lover, Connor, and her changeling daughter's decision to remain in the human world, where Toby can never see her again. This, of course, has blinded her to something that's been obvious to us for a while, Cat King Tybalt's own undeclared love for her. Once again, I'm seeing the same theme here as in so many of the "strong heroine" urban fantasy novels being penned today - if only she would trust her friends more, and not be so self-destructive, everything would be all better. Oh, and quit resisting the overtures of the strong, dark, mysterious leading man, as well.

Also, again, Toby is presented with the case of a missing or kidnapped child. McGuire actually discusses her repeated involvement in these things, but doesn't necessarily justify it well, other than to say that Toby is driven to solve these things, and people know she's good at it. I think that a case could be made for Toby's own experience in being raised in an Oliver Twist-like fashion by a Fagan-ish figure, Devin, having predisposed her towards helping out troubled children and orphans. Her background there does come in handy on occasion, as when she is imprisoned in a dark tower in Annwn later on and needs to know how to pick locks to free herself and her companions from the villains of the piece.

One of Sylvester's retainers, Etienne, whom Toby doesn't really care for, fathered a changeling child with a human woman about sixteen years ago, and never knew the child existed until now, when the mother, Brigid, called accusing him of kidnapping the girl, Chelsea. Chelsea has inherited the power of opening teleportation portals from her Sidhe father, but has not inherited the control that would naturally come if she were a full blood. She is opening gates into dangerous places in Faerie that were sealed by Oberon long ago, and the fabric of reality is beginning to come unraveled, which could result in disaster for the Summerlands and all of its dwellers. Toby needs to find her in a hurry, before said dire results occur.

So Toby and her loyal squire, Quentin, the Cat King, and an assorted host of allies flail about a bit until they discover that Countess Riordan has gained some control over Chelsea, and is using her portal-opening abilities for her own ends. In the middle of discovering this, a coup attempt in the Cat King's court comes very close to succeeding - with slasher flick type of results when the main conspirator turns out to be amazingly hard to kill (cats have nine lives, you know). One thing that doesn't play all that well for me in this book is how Toby repeatedly comes within a hair's breadth of dying, only to be whisked away by her friends to Sylvester's healer, Jin, who rants and raves like Star Trek's Dr. McCoy each time about how it was all she could do to save Toby. Just a little overly dramatic, Toby bleeding to death from internal injuries...curtain falls...blackout! Then we wake up and everything is OK.

One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire

Fifth in the October Daye series, One Salt Sea leaves me with a taste of salty tears. When someone kidnaps the rulers of Saltmist, Dianda and Patrick's children, the Sea Witch recruits Toby to recover them before it starts a war between the Sea Fae and the land. The situation becomes personal, suddenly, when Toby's daughter Gilly is also stolen, presumably by the same culprits.


It's a race against time as she struggles to find the kidnappers and their victims. We get an nice glimpse into the imagination of McGuire when Toby visits the Sea kingdom and gets to know the rulers and some of the denizens of the deep, with octopus-form fae and cetacean types, as well. Toby, having once been imprisoned in the form of a fish in a pond for over a decade, has to overcome her fear of the water in addition to exercising diplomacy between the potentially warring kingdoms while she is there.


However, her ...ahem...direct manner somehow charms the sea dwellers, with a dose of honesty and personal integrity that seems uncommon in the world of fae. In the final battle to save the children, Toby suffers an intense and moving personal loss which changes her, and the story arc, forever.

I love the passage where Toby uses a cell phone that's been manufactured to work in faerie:

"Getting through the mortal phone system and into the limited fae exchange requires a unique approach to dialing. I hit al the keys in a clockwise spiral, then repeated the pattern in the opposite direction. I hit the 'five' three more times for good measure."

In some ways the plot of this novel is almost like classic French Farce - you know, 
where a group of people keep going in and out of doors on a corridor,trying to find each 
other? - in that Toby continues to try to be a lone wolf, and the "universe" 
keeps conspiring to make her dependent on and responsible for other people in her world.

Having had nothing to do with her daughter, Gilly, since Toby spent fourteen years as a 
fish in a koi pond, she has managed to lock away most of her feelings about Gilly. When 
the girl is kidnapped by the same people who took the princes of Saltmist, Toby has to 
confront those feelings and face the prospect of losing her daughter all over again, one 
way or another. 

Duke Sylvester, who obviously regards Toby as the daughter he should have had, rather 
than the one he ended up with, the venomous and lunatic Rayseline, isn't about to let her 
skate on her responsibilities, and forces her to see herself as a mentor figure, 
assigning her Quentin as a squire.

Toby figures out that she's going to have to delegate responsibility for the running of 
her new lands,Goldengreen, so she assigns Marcia as her seneschal. When that realm is 
threatened, she has to allow Tybalt the King of Cats' people to help her defend it, and 
all of its refugee population. Toby does, in the end, find a way to absolve herself of 
responsibility for the realm she really doesn't want, in a rather sneaky yet effective 
gambit.

We get some interesting revelations here about Toby's fetch, May, and some deeper ones 
about the Luidaeg and her relationship to the roan, which may form the basis of the plot 
in a future October Daye adventure, unless I miss my guess.

Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire

Late Eclipses is the fourth, and most recent at this point, novel in the October Daye series. October's friend Lily, the Naiad, has fallen ill, and no one knows why, or how she may be cured. Shortly after discovering this, and determining to get to the bottom of the matter, Toby is called to the Queen's court, where she is awarded the title of Countess, with the land of Goldengreen, to boot. Toby knows the Queen despises her, so she is certain this honor is really a trap.

Next, Duke Sylvester's wife, Luna, also falls ill during a ball in Shadowed Hills. Toby catches the scent of an infamous and elusive poisoner named Oleander just before it happens, rushes in to discover Luna as she collapses. Toby suspects poison, but many of Sylvester's subjects suspect Toby, especially his daughter Rayseline, who has hated Toby for many years.

Third, the King of Cats, Tybalt, summons Toby to his domain, where he reveals to her that many of his subjects have been poisoned, and some have already died. She begins to work with one of Lily's subjects, who is a chemistry professor at UC Berkley, to try to analyze the poisons used and to concoct an antidote.

At this point, Rayseline brings accusations of attempted murder against Toby before the Queen, and she subjected to a kangaroo court, then sentenced to die for these crimes as well as the previous crime of killing Blind Michael, one of the fae firstborn. Toby's friends break her out of jail, but not before she suffers greatly from iron poisoning from the cell in which she's been confined, and in order to survive, Toby must confront her mistaken assumptions about her past and be changed in ways she never imagined.

McGuire, in her Toby tales, just keeps getting better. The new book is due out in September, and I look forward to it.

An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire

This is the third book in the October Daye series, and moves things along nicely. McGuire never really burdened her readers with a ton of descriptive information and back story on all of the characters in the first book, but just jumped into the action with just enough explanation to, well, explain. As we've gotten deeper into the series, we continue to get glimpses of the people, places and history that occupy Ms. Daye's world. It may seem a bit stingy, but it works.

Someone has begun kidnapping children, beginning with two of October's friend Stacy's youngest. We know from the earlier books that Toby has issues with having an estranged daughter, after spending fourteen years in a koi pond, but the opening scene at a screaming, hollering kiddie birthday party gives us the information that Toby likes kids, and seems to relate well to them. When Andy and Jessica disappear, Toby is called to investigate, and finds out it's not just a mundane abduction, but that there are magical forces in play.

As she digs further, her Cat Lord friend, Tybalt, divulges that children are missing from his court, too, and requests her help recovering them. When she gets to Sylvester's court, looking for information, she finds that children have been taken there, as well. She consults Lily, the naiad, which leads her to Luna, the kitsune and wife of Sylvester, and eventually back to her acquaintance, the Luidaeg, who shows her a path she can follow to the realm of Blind Michael, leader of The Hunt. He has taken the children to replace casualties among his riders and steeds and will transform them in horrible ways if Toby doesn't do something about it.

Blind Michael is one of the First Born, however, and there are few left in faerie with comparable power, so it looks like certain death to face him. This seems to be further confirmed when May Daye (again with the month names), arrives on the scene in the middle of this muddle. May is Toby's Fetch, the agent sent to escort her to the land of Death. May is also basically Toby's doppleganger, which works out well when Toby finds ways to use her that aren't strictly traditional.

One of the things that this volume does quite well, I think, is develop Toby's understanding of herself and the people around her. She's gone for quite some time as the typical loner heroine, and has a hard time accepting help, or the idea that she's actually loved. McGuire shows her and us in An Artificial Night that she really does have a family, just not of the traditional sort, who are willing to put their own lives on the line to help her when it counts.

Key plot points:

Still more Tybalt

Arrival of May

Toby kills a Firstborn

Stacy's daughter displays powers her bloodline doesn't justify

Luna is Blind Michael's and Acacia's daughter

Rayseline gets crazier

We meet Raj

Quentin helps Toby again

A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire

A Local Habitation is the second in the October Daye series, and has been sitting on my bedroom shelf for months, awaiting my acquisition of the first novel, Rosemary and Rue. Now I gotta go find the third one, drat it! Anyway, this one turns out to be a mystery of the Orient Express sort, wherein all of the suspects in a murder are employees of the same company, and the challenge for us - and Toby - is figuring out who and why. I actually had the main "who" of "dunnit" fame pegged from the start, but there were a few twists that kept it interesting right up till the last few pages.

Toby is recruited by Duke Sylvester to go check up on his niece, January O'Leary (odd coincidence with the month names there), in Fremont, CA, where there is a desmene of the fae that serves as a buffer zone between two kingdoms nominally at peace. He hasn't been able to contact her in some time, and is getting a bit concerned. He sends along one of his squires, Quentin, whether to learn the knightly trade or just to keep an eye on Toby isn't exactly clear, but Toby does take the young elf under her wing as far as the investigation is concerned.

Totally out of the blue - NOT - Jan has a high-tech computer company in Fremont which has been doing some development of electronic gadgets, like cell phones, which will actually work in Faerie lands. When a dryads' grove nearby was denuded, demolished and bulldozed, she managed to "save" one of the dryads by downloading its essence into a server (computer) with some very special circuitry, and has adopted the dryad, April (another month name?) as her own heir.

When Toby and Quentin arrive, there have already been three murders, all contact with the rest of the elven world has been cut off, and the killer is not through yet. As the cast of characters drop like flies, it's up to Toby and Quentin, the only two we can trust, to figure it all out, report back to the Duke, and prevent a war from breaking out when Jan's buffer zone, the County of Tamed Lightning, is destroyed.

Again, though sorely tempted, Toby doesn't indulge in pages and pages of graphic sex, though the violence was quite well done. The reader gets to learn some new things about the world McGuire has created, and it should provide some more entertaining installments.

Plot developments:

1) We see more of Tybalt

2) Toby and Quentin work together for the first time

3) Toby has befriended the Ludaieg

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

Finally broke down and bought a copy of the first book in the October Daye series at Hastings. This novel is very similar in theme to the Merry Gentry novels by Hamilton. October is a half elven private investigator who has done her best to avoid her elven relatives and home for quite a while, but takes the occasional case from a relative. While tracking her liege, Sylvester Torquill's brother, Simon, she is ambushed and transformed into an ornamental koi in a pond for the next fourteen years, causing her to abandon her human husband and daughter, Gilly, from whom she is still estranged.

Sometime after her return to bipedal form, she is pulled once again into immortal politics when Countess Winterrose is murdered, and leaves October "Toby" with one of the few clues to follow, a magical key, plus a geas-style curse that will not let her rest until she apprehends the culprit. So Toby must once more meet up with old allies and enemies to find out who would have the means, motive and opportunity to kill the Countess.

Aside from being set in San Francisco rather than L.A., Toby differs from Merry in that she doesn't feel the need to fall into bed with some random stud every twenty pages or so. Much easier not being a descendent of fertility goddesses, just a Daione Sidhe - one of those who are able to read memories in the blood of the dead. She's also not a royal, just a knight of the Sylvester's court, so she can act without much of what she does having political ramifications.

This first novel drags a bit at times, as McGuire takes the time to tell us what we need to know about some of the backstories of the major players, and I get the feeling there's an October Daye short story out there previously published that it wouldn't hurt to read to find out how she became a knight in the first place. Toby wants desperately just to be an ordinary private investigator, but keeps getting drafted to be a hero, instead.

Key plot points:

Death of Evening Winterrose

Discovers that the queen may be going mad

Finds the Hope Chest

A Hate relationship with Tybalt (see romcom tropes)

Rayseline showing effects of her abduction