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Fantasy. Fiction. Historical Fiction. HTML:New York Times-bestselling October Daye series �?� Hugo Award-winning author Seanan McGuire �?� "Top of my urban-paranormal series list!" �??Felicia Day 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 f… (more)
User reviews
This time, Toby, our favorite half-human, half-fae and changeling, is summoned to the court of the Queen of the Mists, one of the most important fae in the San Francisco area, where she is called to speak about why she killed the fae Blind Michael. Soon after, Toby finds that her friends, as well as some of the movers and shakers in the fae court, are being targeted. Not only must Toby protect her friends, but also battle false accusations laid against her.
One of my favorite aspects of these novels has always been the world-building. Author Seanan McGuire has done a fabulous job of creating a unique and complex mythology that's otherworldly while still grounded in reality. I'm particularly in awe of the amount of detail McGuire spins in her prose without seeming like it's sensory overload for the read or that it makes the pacing slow down. In fact, Late Eclipses boasts one of the quickest-moving plots of the series thus far, filled with non-stop mystery, action and awesome that kept me flipping pages until the very end.
It's really hard for me to say anything bad about an October Daye novel. I really think these books are some of the best in the urban fantasy genre. If you're a fan of these types of books -you must read these books (I would suggest starting at the beginning, as it can be a little confusing otherwise). Late Eclipses delivers another great adventure for Toby and leaves readers desperately waiting for more.
Much was wrapped up way too easily and deep seated emotions reversed completely in the space of a very short conversation on two occasions. Sometimes Toby could see what someone's expression was when he was behind her. And why doesn't she, as a knight, know how to use a sword? The reason given is lame.
I'm also frustrated that the author thinks that a bad headache=a migraine. Sometimes a bad headache is worse than migraine pain. In fact, you can have a migraine without any pain although it's not common. But the pain is only one of the symptoms of a migraine, usually the worst. But when Toby starts to feel pain in both temples with no other symptoms, it's very unlikely it's a migraine. If she's going to have a migraine, give her a real migraine so people realize that it's do much more than just a bad headache. (Oh and her ubiquitous Tylenol doesn't work for a bad migraine.)
Although I dislike how there's always a point at which no one likes or trusts Toby, the loyalty of her closest friends eventually makes up for it to the point where they risk everything for her. The action and peril in the second half kept me reading beyond "well past my bedtime" and since, as always McGuire left us hanging with Tybalt, I can't wait to read the next one.
The tone of the story is just as dark and depressing as the previous novels, as people fight, die, get betrayed, lose loved ones, and question their sanity. However, the story does end on a hopeful note, and I greatly enjoyed getting there. There are some huge revelations about Amandine and Toby’s identity that both answer questions and raise a million more. Plus, we get some clues to other mysteries such as why the Queen hates Toby and what happened to Luna and Raysel when they were kidnapped. The ongoing mystery of Simon’s motivations and whereabouts is something I look forward to uncovering in subsequent books.
The plot is action packed. Toby almost never gets a chance to slow down as she rushes from the scene of one crisis to another. Like in A Local Habitation, I figured out a couple of the mysteries long before Toby, but that didn’t make the story any less entertaining. There’s also some great romantic moments - nothing particularly steamy, but very heartfelt and cute. I’m a big Tybalt fan and this book only increased my fondness for the King of Cats. Connor is still in the picture as a potential love interest, and it’s annoying to see Toby even considering getting together with him. He’s such a wuss compared to Tybalt and it’s so obvious (at least to me) which guy is the real catch.
One thing I didn’t understand, though, was why everyone who had a problem came running to Toby, expecting her to fix it. I know she’s a hero and all - she wants to help people and she’ll throw herself headfirst into danger to do it - but the problems people put on her shoulders seem so insurmountable that I found myself asking, “What do they honestly expect Toby to do about it?” As for Toby, she gamely promises everyone she’ll save the day even when she has no idea how to go about doing it. I guess I have to give her credit for that, even though it felt like she was pretty much winging it the whole time.
All in all, I really enjoyed this installment. There’s room for improvement, but, in general, the characters, the action, the romance, and especially the world-building is awesome, as always. This is one of my favorite urban fantasy series and I can’t wait to read the next book, One Salt Sea, coming out September 2011.
I read this entire book on a plane flight from Ohio to Texas, and found myself annoyed when I had to put it down now and then for things like landing and layovers. I feel like I'm
The plot here is ridiculously simple: Fey who should not be able to die are dying of diseases no one can place. Friends and enemies are unclear, and it turns out that if Toby doesn't solve the problem soon, she's not going to survive to solve many more.
It's a testament to McGuire's wonderful skills as a serial writer that a plot so simple and in some ways so mundane can be so terribly captivating. The story itself doesn't quite live up to the intensely creepy An Artificial Night, but it is solid and fun and had me worried more than once. More importantly, characters and relationships grow in this volume, several long-term mysteries are kicked up a serious notch, a few tantalizing secrets are revealed, and I turned the last page still wanting more, more, more.
It's a good thing she writes so quickly.
When Toby
This is a very fast paced book and it was hard to put down. The world is complex and intriguing. This book thrust the reader deeper into fairy politics than any previous book. We get more insight into a lot of characters that we have meet in previous books and gain a lot of understanding of Toby's past.
Toby is still confused about who she likes more Tybalt or Connor. Tybalt plays a pretty big role in the beginning of this book which was awesome because he is my absolute favorite character in this series. Then his role fades in the second half of the book and Connor plays a bigger role. We finally got to spend time with Connor and get to know him better, but for me he isn't anywhere as interesting as Tybalt is.
We also got to see more of Toby and May making a life as roommates together. It was nice to see some of the more domestic aspects of Toby's life. This book really filled out May as a character and made her one of the characters that I really enjoyed reading about. Toby also undergoes some incredibly drastic and interesting changes and I am eager to see what they mean for her in future installments.
The story wraps up nicely but there is a lot of room for more story in the next book. This book doesn't do more than touch on the fact that Toby now has a fairy kingdom all her own. There also isn't much progress or resolution on Toby's relationships with Connor and Tybalt; hopefully we will see some of that in the next book. I really enjoy McGuire's writing style it is very readable, has great description, and is incredibly engaging. I continue to enjoy how McGuire merges fantasy, mythology, and nursery rhymes into a cohesive whole.
Overall a really excellent addition to this series. I loved spending more time in fairy and watching Toby unravel this complicated mystery. I love the characters more with each book in this series and absolutely can't wait for what will happen next. This was an incredibly engaging and fun to read book; the complex world and intriguing characters are a joy to read about. I can't wait for book 5, One Salt Sea, to come out in September 2011.
Seanan McGuire really excels at writing. Her world is so detailed and so complex that I don't know how she keeps up with it! She must be one heck of a note taker! Also Toby is so much more likeable than many of her urban fantasy peers. If there is a flaw to her character it is that she is too self sacrificing and too quick to be down on herself. After awhile I want to yell at her to get some therapy and like herself more.
The side characters also make this series. I love Quinton, Danny, and Tybalt. I didn't care for the introduction of Mae Daye in the last book. Mae is Toby's fetch, or her harbinger of death and doppleganger. I just plain didn't trust Mae....well I think I do now. And I think I kinda like her too! There is a potential love triangle being set up which I don't care for. This book has tons of overtones of a relationship between Connor, the son in law of Sylvester, Toby's liege and father figure. Also hard to miss in "Late Eclipses" are the feelings Tybalt, King of Cats, and Toby have for each other. Its so exciting and sweet that I am certainly on Team Tybalt. Conner is such a weak man. He never is the first to take action for Toby and he may be in the action scenes now and then but he is always off to the side and shows up mostly when the danger is out of the way. Also, he never stands up to his crazy wife and lets her use him which drives me batty. I don't even understand how Toby is attracted to Conner. (If there are Conner fans out there, please leave a comment and let me know why you are fans of Conner's character! I'd love to know what I am missing here if anything!)
Also there is at least one very big change revealed for Toby in this book and I actually didn't care for it. I trust Seanan McGuire after four books to do whats best but I didn't see this coming and right now it doesn't sit well with me.
However, from what I have read, there are two more definite Toby Daye novels and a potential of three more in the works after those! There are so many directions that the author could take with this series and I see no clues that this will get stale anytime soon. I really look forward to reading more of these books. These are just plain fun, high quality reads.
Exploring concepts (Scalzi’s “big ideas”) of family, governance, guilt, honor and love,
I was on board with this one until the final third of the book, when I got a little antsy and bored as the climax rolled near. Now that I know that McGuire & Mira Grant are one and the same I keep looking for similarities in the style & they're surprisingly plentiful. Really, Toby and George are different versions of the same character. And both of them do a fair bit of grandstanding, but I like it in the Newsflesh series and feel impatient with the October books. Little things, like, there's a scene where Toby makes a big fuss about who's going to accompany her on a dangerous mission - Tybalt or Connor. And then the choice she makes turns out to be completely irrelevant and, personally, I felt let down. I wanted the payoff.
I also get super irritated by the theme of heroism in the October books. It's so similar to the themes of journalistic integrity and moral justice that thread through the Newsflesh books, which I love. But here, whenever October includes the word "hero" in her inner monologue, I roll my eyes.
Anyway. LATE ECLIPSES marks a major turning point for the series. If you think about it, the changes were inevitable. It's a universal law of urban fantasy series that the bad guys have to escalate in power from book to book, and Toby barely stood a chance against Blind Michael. Trying to tackle anyone more powerful than him would be sheer suicide, and, let's be honest, poor October Daye spends a healthy percentage of her books injured and incapacitated as it is. So instead McGuire goes back to the fundamentals of who October is and changes it up. The results are pretty interesting.
Fans of the series are sure to enjoy it. Disgruntled fence-straddlers like me won't be won over, but I was glad to be reading a book that had solid writing, worldbuilding, plotting, and snark after suffering through a few duds. Anyone unfamiliar with the series should start with book one.
Toby's finally coming in to her own, but friends and family beware - fate sure isn't easy on her allies!
This series
The most common types of series roughly fall into into two categories. There's the stable, loosely linked
I would have to say that this book convinced me that Seanan Mcguire may actually be one of the best writers currently writing that third type of series. Obviously, it will have to wait until she finishes a series that isn't a trilogy to confirm or deny this, but this book got me invested in the short term and long term story in a way that's rare for authors to really pull off. The last book in the series got me interested in what this series can do in a standalone book, but this one got me interested in where this series is going in a way that not many books manage.
This time, I finished the book,and I have mixed feelings about the ending. After Toby rushes off into battle, weakened and underprepared, she does not manage to win against all odds due to her strength of will, blind luck, or the like. I don't want to give away a major spoiler, but she actually loses (!), and then her mother, insane and missing for decades, steps in. There are major revelations that follow logically from things in previous volumes. I give McGuire lots of credit for clearly having plotted this out. On the other hand, it does make some major changes in Toby that I'm not sure improve her as a protagonist. Mixed feelings, and I want to see where this goes before I decide what I think about it.
Primarily her problem is that she killed one of the Firstborn, and the fae don't like being reminded of their own mortality. This is exacerbated when both her high ranked friends start to sicken,
This was fun, but it felt short a very much a bridging novel, where the author realises they've got a series that can run, but now needs to set a few foundations that had previously been left speculative. Even if we're not quite sure, Toby now knows who she is and where she came from - it was quite a deux et machina, and I hope will subsequently be more explained. It also suffered from the common problem of having an enemy grandstanding about rather than getting on a doing the sensible thing. Toby spending large amounts of time not thinking clearly also didn't help move the plot along very much, and led to reactive responses, which is always a bit more dull than the protagonist being clever.
Will see how they progress.
4 Stars
When Lily, Lady of the Tea Gardens, and Luna, the Duchess of Shadowed Hills, are both struck down by a mysterious illness, Changeling knight October Daye must race against time not only to find a cure but to capture the culprit before she, herself, pays the ultimate price…
The
McGuire’s interpretation of faerie lore is a highlight of the series and this book is no exception. The focus in this one is on the fae women who have it in for Toby for one reason or another: the despotic Queen of Mists, the psychotic Rayselline Torquel, and the sociopathic Oleander de Merelands … Of course, the question an everyone’s mind is which one is sick enough to target those closest to Toby.
There is also some excellent character development both in terms of Toby learning more about her fae heritage and in terms of her personal life as the love triangle continues with the amazing Tybalt and the superfluous Connor. When will Toby see what is right in front of her face?!
All in all, the strongest book thus far and there is a definite sense that McGuire is building toward something significant.
This time the threats Toby must face don't just concern people she cares about, but are part of an intricate plot to hurt her: there is a heavy sense of
Once more, as already happened in An Artificial Night, she is more than ready to sacrifice her life in order to avoid further harm to others: there is this almost-suicidal quality to her actions that clashes with her undeniable will to survive and the way she fights against foes and obstacles. This dichotomy makes me wonder if it's just a psychological trait or if it's something that goes hand in hand with her changeling (i.e. hybrid) nature. Whatever the reason, it makes for a fascinating character that grows with each new installment, to become more complex and layered.
Contrasting impulses also dominate her emotional attachments, where Toby's yearning for an old flame is at war with a new (and IMHO much more interesting) attraction that plays in a complicated dance that's nothing short of fascinating.
Together with the character-building there is an equally strong world-building that's firmly based in myth and fairy tales intersecting more or less seamlessly with our mundane world: the point of view of these creatures on our modern society offers many opportunities for intelligent humor that in its turn balances quite well the darker overtones of the stories.
For someone who has always been wary of serialized books, I have to admit that I've become an October Daye addict. And no, it's not a complaint....
My Rating: Must Read: These books just keep getting better and better, and I thank everyone yet again who encouraged me to keep going after A Local Habitation. What's great about this series is how each book builds on those that came before, which means, of course, you really need to read this series in order to fully appreciate the story and the cast and all the development that goes into the series. This installment is my favorite to date, horribly difficult to put down. There's so many revelations in this book that really cast Toby and her purpose in a new light, and the cast is just delightful. I can't say more without gushing, so I'll shut up, and say that if you're an urban fantasy fan and you haven't at least read up to book three, An Artificial Night, you're missing out. And if you're already a fan, you definitely don't want to miss this one.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Nay. I'm doing an experiment and want to try really hard to avoid spoilers. Just for giggles. That doesn't mean, however, that I won't spoil books one through three. The full review is in my LJ for those of you interested, and as always, comments and discussion are most welcome.
REVIEW: Seanan McGuire's LATE ECLIPSES
Happy Reading!
At the end of An Artificial Night
And not only that, but October keeps getting hints that Oleander de Merelands is back. No one else seems to have seen her though, is it all in Toby’s imagination? Is she going mad herself?
This is my favourite of the series so far. Although that may just be because the more you read in the series the more you can immerse yourself in the character and the world. And this book is all about Toby beginning to understand who she is. Part of being a changeling is trying to balance two identities, the mundane world versus the fairy. Toby straddled that divide for as long as she could. Before the series began she had loved and had a child with a mortal man, but she had always had to hide part of her life from that family. But she could never fully embrace her fae side either, too much snobbery in fae society for them all to accept a half human.
So she was constantly straddling that divide, as the series has progressed Toby has increasingly been pulled into the fae world. And now she is really beginning to reflect on what it is to be who she is. Not trying to be one or the other, but to be who she is.
And of course who she is is a hero.
She’s always had a bit of an issue with heroes. They don’t tend to live long. They get other people killed. She’s not that fond of either of those negatives. But they also do the right thing and save people. And that is what Toby is great at. Sure, she makes mistakes, but she learns from them. And she has learned a lot since the first book.
She did have a lot to work her way through, being a fish for so long isn’t something you just brush off, nor is losing your family in that way. But she has come to terms, to a certain degree, with the past. She’s learned she can still have friends, and that you can make a new family.
I’m looking forward to the next book, and the book after that
Toby really isn't having it easy in this one and it looks like her life keeps getting complicated in interesting ways. She's learning how to be herself and how to accept the mantle of Hero. It's a mantle she keeps putting on despite her own protestations, a job she's eminently suited to. It was a compelling read.
Like most of the October Daye books, there's a kind of zig-zag pattern to the plot with Toby going from here to there and back again in a kind of manic trying to figure things out. Sometimes it's a little too much action, action, action without much retrospection.
But that's a minor quibble, because this series is so much fun and I can't wait to read the next book.
If you've never read UF (Urban Fantasy), this series is a perfect introduction--it doesn't get better.