This is the fourth novel with the character October Daye. I read it without having read the preceding three stories and I think I was the poorer for it. McGuire gave me just enough backstory to keep me engaged but I knew there were things I was missing. Our protagonist, October, is the child of faery and a mortal. The most interesting thing about this story is how it only involved supernatural folk and yet took place both in Faery and in the mortal world. It was actually a bit disconcerting that many of the faery folk seemed to have perfectly mundane and mortal names. For example, while Oberon and Titania were mentioned, the current ruling Duke is Sylvester.
October, aka Toby, becomes embroiled in a plot to kill two female fae and the enemy is an old one who has reason to hate and hurt Toby. It falls to Toby to do all the sleuthing to discover the how and why; all the while she has to defend herself from being charged with the same murders. Pretty simple plot, right? Not exactly and one of my complaints: the plot is overly complicated and there are too many players. Perhaps it might have been easier for me to keep track of all the characters if I had already been familiar with them from the earlier stories. But it was challenging to me, the reader.
Aside from the plot, the characters were interesting although many of them were just walk-ons. Toby was pretty well-realized but, again, I think I needed the earlier stories to fully understand why she would do what she did. I gotta say one thing here – she plays with her hair too much. I found it to be distracting to read how she ‘raked her hair back’ over and over again.
But the best thing about this story? The dialogue! Most prose is very correct English with correct grammar and interesting vocabulary. The only time we see something different is when an author attempts to inject an ethnic voice or accent – which is usually more trouble than it’s worth. What McGuire has managed to do – to her great credit – is give her characters very real voice. The dialogue was so very interesting and, well… real. I just can’t think of another word for it. And the last comment – I never did figure out what the title meant. ~~ Catherine Book
|
|