Thursday, April 27, 2023

October Daye Series Update

I've been reading this series for four months now and thought I would give an update on it. I already posted a review of the first book in the series, Rosemary and Rue and you can find it here. This post will focus on books 2 through 4.


 

A Local Habitation (October Daye #2) by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
 
Category: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Content: Strong language

 

Toby Daye-a half-human, half-fae changeling-has been an outsider from birth. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the fae world, retreating to a "normal" life. Unfortunately for her, the Faerie world had other ideas...

Now her liege, the Duke of the Shadowed Hills, has asked Toby to go to the Country of Tamed Lightening to make sure all is well with his niece, Countess January O'Leary. It seems like a simple enough assignment-until Toby discovers that someone has begun murdering people close to January, and that if the killer isn't stopped, January may be the next victim.

 

This book was slightly better than the first book in the series, but still just a 3 star read for me. Toby is very slow to put together the clues in this one and it irritated me to no end. There were elements of the story I liked, especially the Faerie girl that lives in the machine.



 

An Artificial Night (October Daye #3) by Seanan McGuire      

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

 
Category: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Content: Strong language

 

Changeling knight in the court of the Duke of Shadowed Hills, October "Toby" Daye has survived numerous challenges that would destroy fae and mortal alike. Now Toby must take on a nightmarish new assignment.

Someone is stealing both fae and mortal children—and all signs point to Blind Michael. When the young son of Toby's closest friends is snatched from their Northern California home, Toby has no choice but to track the villains down, even when there are only three magical roads by which to reach Blind Michael's realm—home of the legendary Wild Hunt—and no road may be taken more than once. If she cannot escape with all the children before the candle that guides and protects her burns away, Toby herself will fall prey to Blind Michael's inescapable power.

And it doesn't bode well for the success of her mission that her own personal Fetch, May Daye—the harbinger of Toby's own death—has suddenly turned up on her doorstep...

 

This book was a definite improvement over the first two books in the series, although it was about the wild hunt and I'm not really a huge fan of stories about that. There were some pretty horrifying things that happened in that book. Children were being stolen, and some were being turned into horses for the wild hunt. It reminded me of that scene in Pinocchio were the kids start turning into donkeys, only these kids had done nothing wrong.



 

Late Eclipses (October Daye #4) by Seanan McGuire 

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
 
Category: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Content: Strong language

 

October "Toby" Daye, changeling knight in the service of Duke Sylvester Torquill, finds the delicate balance of her life shattered when she learns that an old friend is in dire trouble. Lily, Lady of the Tea Gardens, has been struck down by a mysterious, seemingly impossible illness, leaving her fiefdom undefended. Struggling to find a way to save Lily and her subjects, Toby must confront her own past as an enemy she thought was gone forever raises her head once more: Oleander de Merelands, one of the two people responsible for her fourteen-year exile.

Time is growing short and the stakes are getting higher, for the Queen of the Mists has her own agenda. With everything on the line, Toby will have to take the ultimate risk to save herself and the people she loves most—because if she can't find the missing pieces of the puzzl
e in time, Toby will be forced to make the one choice she never thought she'd have to face again...


Book four was the best of the four books I've read. There were things I liked about it, and things that irritated me. I'm still having a hard time liking Toby the way I want to. It's due a lot to the way she just does things without thinking them through. I don't think she's the brightest bulb in the box, and I end up rolling my eyes at some of the things she says and does. It got better in this book, but it's still an issue for me. I also have an issue with the two possible love interests. One is too weak and uninteresting, and the other is an interesting character, but he does things that don't make a lot of sense to me at times.

This series is all about Faerie. That's what Toby is, or at least partly, and there are things I like about this world and things I don't find all that interesting. The plot has definitely become more complex at this point, but I think I prefer Faerie in smaller doses, like the way it's done in The Dresden Files series. In general, I like a variety of creatures in the urban fantasies I read, and this series doesn't have that.

I'm on the fence about continuing this series. Mainly because I'm curious about a few things, but don't find the series all that compelling. 






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