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.
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
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
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 puzzle 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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