Bingo Square: Favorite (new entry from a favorite series and author) – Bingo 7/4th row
While I thought it would be funny to put The Favorites in my “Favorite” square, once we got to the end of September and I hadn’t filled my Bingo card, there was only one answer for this square – the newest October Daye novel! After releasing two Toby novels in 2023, Seanan McGuire switched publishers, leading to a two year break between novels.
This one starts off about four months after the events of the last two novels, when Titania reset fairy and made everyone live in her illusion of a perfect world. The last two novels showed those events first from Toby’s perspective, then from Tybalt’s. As a cat person, I have always enjoyed Tybalt but I feel like he has become a bit one note in Toby’s novels/given less to do outside of being the love interest, so I quite appreciated his POV novel, The Innocent Sleep.
Toby is heavily pregnant so between that and Titania’s interference, everyone is extra protective of her – especially characters like Tybalt and May who knew exactly what was going on and were separated from their loved ones. While everyone has drama from seeing themselves in Titania’s version of Faerie (Quentin for example was the worst version of himself for that time), it’s worse for some than others. Of course Toby not having her memories for that time was a violation but she wasn’t aware so at the time, it was easier for her, surrounded by loved ones. In fact, the fake memories mixed with four months of real life experience under the spell, has been a way for McGuire to accelerate some relationships and reset reset others: Toby’s relationship with Simon was already much improved but now there’s even more connection, Toby and August finally have the sisterly bond previously denied, Arden’s political ties and relationship with Golden Shore have strengthened, and the different Courts of Cats have strengthened their bonds, though that was from the shared hardship of being aware of Titania’s manipulation and trying to survive it.
But, Toby is trying to he understanding of the anxiety of her loved ones, even if it means she is cooped up in the house. As a result, when Toby is called up at eight and half months pregnant to help Queen Arden discover who looted the royal vaults, she both tries to decline for obvious reasons and also happily jumps back into the game.
Of course, this involves October so things are never going to be easy – she is a hero of the realm and a magnet for chaos after all.
I read this the week it was released but meant to also listen to the audiobook before I wrote my review but I just haven’t had much listening time lately. Overall, I really liked how the plot came together and the mystery reveal. And yet, I didn’t love this one as much as some others (another reason I wanted to do a second read). Part of it is back to what i mentioned before – I feel like there used to be more to Tybalt while now he is a mix of overprotective and incredibly supportive, always reluctantly putting aside his fears to watch Toby run off to get stabbed.
I think there are also so many characters now that sometimes we don’t get as much time with ones I want more of – while Quentin technically is with Toby for quite a bit of this novel since he is her squire, I wanted more of him. Really, I want a novella or short story from his perspective because of all the aftermath of Titania. I saw someone say that it seems like McGuire really enjoys Simon as a character so that he has been getting a lot of the page time at the cost of other characters. While I wouldn’t necessarily say that for the novel itself, he absolutely has been getting a lot of focus in short stories and novellas that McGuire posts on her Patreon.
For anyone that has been reading these for a while, one big remaining question is about the identity of a certain queen … there’s a character that many readers think is the answer but I have always thought it was too obvious. After this one, it feels like the character has a flashing neon sign (or crown) above their head. So not sure if McGuire is just fucking with us at this point with ever more red herrings to misdirect or if it really is going to be obvious answer.