Early Review – Sleep No More (October Daye, Book 17) by Seanan McGuire (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 385 pages
Publisher: DAW
Release Date: September 5, 2023
ASIN: B0BX2DNVTZ
Stand Alone or Series: 17th book in the October Daye series
Source: eGalley through NetGalley
Rating: 4/5 stars
“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.”
Series Info/Source: This is the 17th book in the October Daye series. I got a copy of this on ebook through NetGalley to review.
Thoughts: I feel like I will probably be in the minority when I say that this was by far my least favorite October Daye book to date. I really hope this series ties up soon. The below contains spoilers for previous books in this series (but not this book).
The story starts with us following an October who is happy with her life as the daughter of Amadine and Simon Torquill. She is a changeling and is hidden away in Amadine’s tower, her main goal in life is to provide companionship to her sister September. As Moving Day approaches (a day where faerie can safely cross the borders of different kingdoms) things start to unravel. October finds out that her life may not be this relatively peaceful existence. People keep calling her a hero and she begins to discover she can do powerful blood magic.
I hate the “oops the main character lost her memory” plot device and that is basically what this story is. Yes, it does this creatively but we spend the whole book watching Toby get back to who she was at the end of book 16.
I just don’t see a lot of point to it. Yes, the characters do grow some as a result of their unique experiences in this book, but in the end it seems that more harm than good was done. These characters end up remembering all their experiences from the twisted new version of faerie they’ve been dwelling in; in some cases this is good…in most cases this is bad.
This is still very well written, McGuire is a top notch author and always writes beautifully. I am just a bit dismayed at the turn this story took and how long this series is being drawn out.
I have “The Innocent Sleep” to review and read as well, and will be reading that in a couple of weeks. I am going to try to just sit back and trust McGuire’s thought process because she very rarely lets me down as an author. However, I couldn’t help but feel like this was filler.
My Summary (4/5): Overall this was well written but a weak installment in the October Daye series. This felt a lot like filler to me and I am not sure why we needed this book. However, I am going to try and trust McGuire’s process and hope that somehow this was vital to the series. I will be reading “The Innocent Sleep” soon, which covers the same time period as this book but from Tybalt’s POV.
