I received this book for free from the library in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Winter Long
by
Seanan McGuire
It is part of the October Daye #8 series and is a urban fantasy in eBook edition that was published by DAW Books on September 2, 2014 and has 368 pages.
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Other books in this series include [books_series]
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night, Late Eclipses, One Salt Sea, Discount Armageddon, Home Improvement: Undead Edition, “Never Shines the Sun”, Chimes at Midnight, "In Sea-Salt Tears", Indexing, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Half-Off Ragnarok, Midway Relics and Dying Breeds, Games Creatures Play, Sparrow Hill Road, The InCryptid Prequels, Pocket Apocalypse, Black as Blood, Blocked, White as a Raven's Wing, The Ghosts of Bourbon Street, IM, "Good Girls Go to Heaven", A Red Rose Chain, "Full of Briars", Reflections, Once Broken Faith, "Dreams and Slumbers", Shadowed Souls, Chaos Choreography, Magic For Nothing, Indigo, Every Heart a Doorway, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, The Brightest Fell, "Of Things Unknown", Beneath the Sugar Sky, Night and Silence, "Suffer a Sea-change", The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, "The Recitation of the Most Holy and Harrowing Pilgrimage of Mindy and Also Mork", Tricks for Free, That Ain't Witchcraft, "The Measure of a Monster", The Unkindest Tide, "Hope is Swift", Come Tumbling Down, Imaginary Numbers, "Follow the Lady", In an Absent Dream, "The Fixed Stars", "Forbid the Sea", "No Sooner Met", Across the Green Grass Fields, A Killing Frost, "Shine in Pearl", When Sorrows Come, "And with Reveling", "Singing the Comic-Con Blues”, "Candles and Starlight", "Such Dangerous Seas", Sleep No More
Eighth in the October Daye urban fantasy series and revolving around Toby, Knight, Hero, Changeling. Based in San Francisco.
My Take
Ooh, lots of important and shocking revelations in this one, and at least three conflicts for future stories. One is too sad, another will become a quest, while the third has been a mission for Toby for some time. New powers also reveal themselves. Whew, I’m tellin’ ya…there is no end of action in this. Convoluted and just plain mean! There are also some tender moments. Especially that one at the end…ah, sighhh…
What appears to be the main storyline too quickly expands into the second shocking revelation and leaves Toby battered and bloody. A usual state for her. Only this set of conflicts beats directly at Toby’s heart and her past.
The Winter Long starts on a light note, for us!, since Toby hates parties and having to be sociable, lol. It’s Queen Arden’s first Yule Ball. And you can’t help but adore Tybalt as he coaxes the so-reluctant Toby into doing all the things she’d rather not…and it’s not just the party she’s so against.
This is where some of my pet peeves come in. She knows she needs to eat to keep up her strength — or regain it!, yet she whines, moans, and complains about having to spend the time it would take to eat. There were a couple scenes where she’s whining on about it and…what I really don’t understand in these…she has to sit and talk about their plans anyway. Why not eat and talk at the same time? I hate this when authors have their characters ignore basic truisms to add drama. Work on this. Find another way. I’m really tired of this trope.
Oh, boy. I am so confused about Simon in The Long Winter. McGuire’s revelations, the words she uses, about he and Amy…they make me want to believe him. But then Simon’s actions make me see him as a lying bastard. Especially when Simon talks about what he got out of his deal. They also make me wonder why Toby appears to believe him so easily. I would have thought she’d be more skeptical. I do want to believe in this “better” Simon, but McGuire needs to work on this. There needs to be more trauma for Simon. More of a sense of conflict. Instead, I’m left with the impression that Simon is a really good liar, deceiving Toby, before he springs his traps. ‘Cause I sure can’t buy that someone who is supposedly as skilled as he is, as practiced, could possibly be taken this unaware in that first encounter.
Crack me up! Toby explains the lack of any real security at the entrance to Sylvester’s knowe and you will laugh too.
Well, this is grim…
“…the sad way most purebloods looked at changelings, like the fact that we’d die someday meant we were as good as dead already.”
Toby is wondering if Quentin is half Snow Fairy, lol.
Hmm, I’m not that thrilled with the scene in Goldengreen when Raj comes racing in. It felt heavy-handed and contrived. I am curious as to why McGuire didn’t provide any reactions from the Court of Cats. After events in Ashes of Honor, 6, combined with the “intrusions” Toby is making in The Winter Long and the “demands” she’s making of Tybalt, I’d expected some hassle.
I understand — and don’t understand — Toby’s anger at Sylvester. Rather, I do understand the anger, but I don’t believe in it. McGuire didn’t make me feel it. I do want to read whatever the ninth story will be, but I do wish I could feel more emotional about it rather than simply wanting my intellectual curiosity satisfied.
The Story
An unexpected revelation by Queen Arden causes Toby to commit to more than she desired. And I suspect Toby would much prefer another night like that to the days and nights that follow.
For old enemies resurface with some awful truths, and Toby must do battle to save herself and her friends.
The Characters
Sir October “Toby” Daye is the Knight of Lost Words in service to the Duchy of Shadowed Hills and to His Majesty, Tybalt, King of Dreaming Cats. She’ll also become Hero in the Mists for services rendered in Chimes at Midnight, 7. Her mother is Amandine (“Amy”), the Last Among the First. Seems Toby has a missing older sister, August and an unexpected, unwanted stepfather. Cagney and Lacey are Toby’s two Siamese cats; Spike is the resident rose goblin, catlike but, um, thorny with a preference for fertilizer instead of tuna.
May Daye is Toby’s Fetch, her legal sister, a former night-haunt, and housemate along with Jazz, a Raven-maid and May’s girlfriend. Quentin Sollys is Toby’s squire, a Daoine Sidhe illusionist descended from Titania, only…we learned the truth behind that in blind fosterage in Chimes at Midnight. Penthea is his little sister.
Tybalt, a Cait Sidhe formerly known as Rand, is the local King of the Court of Dreaming Cats, Toby’s frustrated lover who uses the Shadow Roads, secret pathways to get around; Raj is his heir and adopted nephew, the Prince of Cats.
Duke Sylvester Torquill, a Daoine Sidhe who rules Shadowed Hills, a knowe in Pleasant Hill, is Toby’s liege lord, and has long been as a father to her. Tybalt would gladly rake his claws across him. Luna is his angry duchess, a Blodynbryd, a rose dryad; Rayseline is their daughter, kidnapped so many years ago, damaged enough to kill anyone who crossed her path, and now in an elf-shot coma. Sir Etienne is a Tuatha de Dannan knight in Sylvester’s service and still without his powers; he is head of Sylvester’s security and about to marry his mortal lover, Bridget Ames, the mother of his child, Chelsea, who will be a powerful teleporter. And, he’s, um, changed his mind about Toby. Grianne, a Candela, and her MerryDancers is still Sylvester’s second-in-command. Jin is an Ellyllon, a hedonisitic fae who heals, and Sylvester’s personal physician.
Simon Torquill is Sylvester’s twin brother and evil to the core. He’s been working for a nameless power and was supposed to kill Toby in Rosemary and Rue, 1. Oleander de Merelands was a fae assassin determined to destroy Toby but Toby got her instead (see Late Eclipses, 4).
The Luidaeg, a.k.a., Viviane, a.k.a., Antigone, is the oldest of the Firstborn, a child of Oberon and Maeve. She’s also Toby’s auntie, the sea hag, and one of Toby’s allies, she thought.
Queen Arden, a former bookstore clerk, was the lost heir to King Gilad Windermere whom Toby persuaded in Chimes at Midnight to come out of hiding. She is now the Queen of the Kingdom of the Mists (Chimes at Midnight). Her knowe is in Muir Woods. Madden is a Cu Sidhe, a faerie dog, who worked the coffee shop next door, and is one of Arden’s few friends. Lowri is the head of Arden’s guard and recognized for bravery.
Li Quin Zhou, a Shyi Shuai, a luck bender, and the Countess January’s widow, is the current regent of Dreamer’s Glass — no one is expecting its former ruler, Duchess Riordan, to return from where Toby left her in Ashes of Honor, 6. April O’Leary is the current Countess of Tamed Lightning, January’s adopted daughter, and a cyber Dryad.
Karen Brown is the very young daughter of Toby’s changeling friends, Mitch and Stacy; she’s also an oneiromancer: she sees the future in dreams and uses them to tell people what she thinks they need to know. Her oldest sister, Cassandra, is majoring in physics at UC-Berkeley. Magdaleana “Mags” Brooke, a Puca, is the Librarian at the Library of Stars where the one rule is no violence. Danny is a fae taxi driver, a troll who is one of Toby’s friends.
Dean Lorden is the current Count of Goldengreen, a fiefdom of the Kingdom of the Mists. Marcia is the Seneschal of Goldengreen. Dean’s mother is Dianda, The Duchess of Saltmist and a Merrow (think mermaid). Mary is a Roane woman with a gift of prophecy who is part of Dianda’s court.
Evening Winterrose, the former Countess of Goldengreen, the one who died in Rosemary and Rue (and if this doesn’t make ya want to go back and re-read that story…!), is threateningly back. She’s the eldest daughter of Titania and Oberon — a Firstborn and “nigh-impossible to kill” — and should have no sway over a descendant of Maeve’s.
Four major holidays for the Fae include Beltane, Samhain, Midsummer, and Yule. The “knowes are little pieces hewn out of the Summerlands, carved to fit fae needs and desires…reflect[ing] the personalities of their keepers”. Tybalt keeps mentioning the Divided Courts, and I’m not sure what he means. The Rose Road can be accessed by a Blodynbryd and it runs between “the Summerlands and places where the walls of the world are thin”. Libraries exist “in shallowings, space scooped out in the thin membrane between the Summerlands and the mortal world”; you can only get in if you’re invited by the Librarian.
There are three schools of magic: flower which is illusions and wards inherited from Titania; water which is transformation and healing from Maeve; and, blood which is memory and theft from Oberon. Toby is blood; Simon is blood and flower.
Doaine Sidhe are descended from Titania and Oberon; Tuatha de Dannan are descended from Oberon alone; Dóchas Sidhe is two generations removed from Oberon and is a result of Amandine having a baby with a human.
The Cover and Title
The cover is icy roses in Luna’s winter garden as the snow falls and chills our Toby, her hair flying in a breeze, her shirt soaked in blood (per usual), jeans hanging low, and her beloved leather jacket protecting her from the thorns even as she carries a bleeding rose through the stone archway away from the Shadow Hills knowe.
The title is in truth The Winter Long as Toby, Quentin, and Tybalt go up against a chilling adversary.
