October is very happy with her life as the second daughter of her pureblood parents, Amandine and Simon Torquill. Born to be the changeling handmaid to her beloved sister August, she spends her days working in her family's tower, serving as August's companion, and waiting for the day when her sister sets up a household of her own. Everything is right in October's Faerie. Everything is perfect.
Everything is a lie.
October has been pulled from her own reality and thrown into a twisted reinterpretation of Faerie where nothing is as it should be and everything has been distorted to support Titania's ideals. Bound by the Summer Queen's magic and thrust into a world turned upside down, October has no way of knowing who she can trust, where she can turn, or even who she really is. As strangers who claim to know her begin to appear and the edges of Titania's paradise begin to unravel, Toby will have to decide whether she can risk everything she knows based on only their stories of another world.
But first she'll have to survive this one, as Titania demonstrates why she needed to be banished in the first place—and this time, much more than Toby's own life is at stake.
Title : Sleep No More
Author : Seanan McGuire
Series : October Daye (book seventeen)
Format : eBook (overdrive)
Page Count : 368
Genre : urban fantasy
Publisher : DAW
Release Date : September 5, 2023
Reviewer : Hollis
Rating : ★ ★
Hollis' 2 star review
The seawitch, as always, is the best. Long live the Luidaeg.
Despite my excitement at the end of the last instalment, one of my most enjoyed reads of the series, this one.. well. This one was a classic October Daye novel aka frustrating AF. McGuire has basically (temporarily) reset the world and given everyone personality transplants and it is not a fun time (but it's not supposed to be). However the problem is that the first 30% of this was unbearable and almost incomprehensible; no jokes, I fell into a three hour coma the first time I picked this up. It does get easier along the way as certain things come to light but..
.. those personality transplants? Really inconsistent. There's a line this particular Toby things about in relation to one of the other characters that I think McGuire took to heart and that's (paraphrasing here) : the rules are there until they are inconvenient. And I think that's been kind of the case for a lot of characters throughout this series but especially in this instalment. Everyone has a new personality until it's not relevant to the plot and then they flipflop all over the place. Toby included. She is an even more reluctant hero in this version of her life (understandably) and therefore is very resistant to wanting things to change and yet.. when this has been dragged out too long and we are coming up on the finale of the story, suddenly she's frustrated by others, wanting to do the right thing, and there's not enough transition here to make it believable that she wants to up-end everything she's known and believes in the span of a day. No matter the good intentions and the proof that is being shown to her. This Toby wouldn't.
So that's annoying.
And to make matters worse, everything gets resolved super easily, making the stakes of the whole situation (which we knew were never really that high to begin with once things got going) an additional flop. Fun.
This was a hard instalment to get through because it epitomized everything I dislike about this series and turned it up to eleven. Not my favourite. Definitely a bummer. And book eighteen is just the same from another POV so I'm going to push on and read that now or else I never will.
No comments:
Post a Comment