All of Seanan's books are fun, and I and my staff at The Portal Bookshop regularly get someone new hooked on the series

Received as part of the 2019 Hugo packet for Best Series.

Fun urban fantasy originally read in paperback.

Unfortunately, it seems someone told the Fae that emotional blackmail works. October has to go save the day, /again/. No more spoilers, but note that this is book 12 and the big blows come in multiples of four.

Disclaimer: I would like to thank the author and the publisher for kindly providing a review copy of this book.

Night and Silence is the 12th book in the October Daye series by the Hugo award winning author Seanan McGuire. This delightful book entertains from beginning to end as October solves her latest kidnapping case. The as with other novels in the series this story contains plenty of spells, alchemy, magical creatures, and new revelations about the history of the fae and October's family. The novella at the end presents part of the events of the main book from a new perspective, and provides answers more questions as an enjoyable epilogue.

Fans of the series will love this book also! And, I too look forward to reading more by Seanan McGuire.

Another episode in the Toby Daye saga; people who like those books will like this one. I enjoyed it.

It amazes me how McGuire can take a basic event and use it time and time again and yet it never gets old. Yes, we have another child missing - well, young adult - and yes, it is once more no less than Toby’s daughter, Gillian. And yet these novels are written with such heart and flair that it works time and time again. There is a potential complaint about just how often McGuire recycles certain aspects of her plots; kidnapped child, Toby bleeding everywhere and having near death experiences that we know she will walk away from, Tybalt coming in to save the day... there is a risk of these novels becoming more formulaic than is perhaps normally acceptable, but thankfully there are enough new aspects and some fantastic writing to see us through.

For the first time we really get to explore the family dynamics of Toby’s messed up life and there are a few surprises in store that I don’t think any of us will have expected. It was great to see Toby and her ex-husband finally talking, even if it is to initially accuse her of kidnapping their teenage daughter. Through it we learn a huge amount more about some of the characters and skeletons that have been kept firmly in the closet and some old hurts and betrayals will be explored and brought out into the open. And of course, the Luidaeg, our favourite Sea Witch. I look forward to every encounter with her and this was no exception - there is never a dull moment when Toby is around but the Luidaeg is consistently brilliant even without getting blood all over herself on a regular basis.

If there's one thing that you can certainly say about McGuire's work, it's that she truly knows how to pack a punch. She also knows how to twist you around constantly so that you are never quite sure where you stand. Oh boy, does she do it again. From the revelations about Gillian's stepmother to the question of exactly who has taken her daughter and why, nothing is quite as it seems here and the repercussions will be felt for a very long time indeed. I appreciate how the long term consequences of some of the trauma that has been experienced in previous novels come to roost here, with characters like Tybalt losing some of their arrogance out of fear and uncertainty. It makes everything seem more real when characters don't just bounce straight back from life changing events. Talking of life changing events, we are clearly heading into the big showdown between the Luidaeg and the Selkies, one where Toby is bound to have a part to play if only to cover her insurmountable debt to the Sea Witch but perhaps she'll now have an even greater reason to wade in.

Told with the wit, verve and humour I have come to expect from McGuire, this is an excellent read. It's a pity that there is so much overlap between other books; there is a lot of refreshing of the memory as well as moments of deja vu where characters go through virtually the same thing for the third or forth time - or more if it involves Toby and failing to keep her blood on the inside of her body. Perhaps it's natural in a series with twelve books, but the lost child routine is growing a little bit stale now. Either way, I still certainly enjoyed it and found the twists and turns engaging and unexpected.

Previously Toby the changeling's daughter Gillian had to choose to become human, saving her own life. Gillian was already angry that Toby had abandoned her (when she was turned into a fish for years, but try explaining that) and Gillian had to forget about Toby and lead a human life. Now, Toby is told that Gillian has been abducted from her normal college.

I enjoyed that this book is set mostly among the real world settings and people, where contrast is the ruler and magic or magical creatures can still exist, hideously out of place. Several of the other tales have been only in the Fae kingdom (or Toby's house) but the people at college, cops, angry in-laws, all feature, grounding the tale. Otherwise the story pattern is the same as usual, Toby having to find a missing person, blood all over the shop. A new reader could jump in as not too many complex Fae links are used.

I read this book from the Hugo Awards pack on Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.

Thank you so much for making this book available for Hugo voters. I will always vote for Seanan as she’s my favourite author.

I am planning a Seanan book binge in the new year. After I have read this book I will submit my review to NetGalley, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Angus & Robertson, and Booktopia.

My library didn't process this book fast enough for me to read it, so I ended up buying an e-copy. WORTH IT.

This was one of those books in long series where you get payoff after payoff and puzzle pieces "thunk" satisfyingly into place. Toby's story has always been a wonderful, wild ride, but this is the book that made it clear that McGuire is a master when it comes to twisting our oldest tales into something new and exciting.

But poor Toby. Man. My heart goes out to her. She has such a great found family and well... her Mom's awful. Her half-sister's awful. And I'm really scared of what The Unkindest Tide is going to wash up for her. Her allies are loyal and strong but they're up against a first-born. Amandine and August are the worst.

Seanan McGuire has throughout the October Daye series left a hidden trail of hints, foreshadowing and general impressions about what is yet to come. In Night And Silence we readers see what could be described as the first significant harvest of plot points and character developments from these seeds.

This entire series has become one of my all time favourites, and this novel highlights why - Excellent writing. In-depth characters. Jaw dropping world building - and a story that grabs hold of your attention like a siren calling sailors towards a rocky shore. This series has my love and commitment to the very last page - and i fear it may be the death of me! (Emotionally speaking)

Night And Silence is just amazing.

Night And Silence also includes a connected novella Suffer A Sea-Change. DO NOT read the novella until after you have read Night And Silence. Do not be tempted to skip ahead as there are major spoilers in the novella for the novel which both overlap.

October Daye series given by the author (/publishers/organizers) with the voters packet for Hugo Nomination of Best Series in 2019. Reviews will be coming later, and likely posted first to GoodReads/Amazon/B & N as books are already released.

As this was part of the Hugo voting packet, I will not have time to read this and review before the archive date. I will try to update this review when I have read this book.

This was a much more overtly emotional book than most of the previous entries in the series. The plot moves along quickly, but most of the core of the story is taken up in coping with the aftermath of the previous book (seriously, who's nominating Amandine for worst mother ever? I'll vote for her) and letting Toby and her crew trying to piece themselves, and their relationships with each other, back together. It's also fascinating to see the mythology of the world expand and some of the strings from previous books picked up and resolved. I'm definitely looking forward to the next entry.

I downloaded this as part of my Hugo Voter packet. Fantastic! My top nominee for Best Series. Seanan McGuire is a treasure.

The story starts with Toby not seeing anything of Tybalt and Jazz having problems sleeping from what Toby’s mom did to them in the previous book. When Cliff shows up on her doorstep with his wife in tow looking for Toby’s daughter with Cliff, Toby’s world is cracked. Toby thought after making Gillian fully human and having no contact with her she would be safe and never remember when she was kidnapped by Rayseline. Now Toby is racing around the city following a trail of Gillian’s blood and what she finds leads to things she never thought would happen. The coda short story at the end is lovely and bittersweet as well.

One of the things that keeps me reading this series is the way that the author keeps expanding the world and the cast of characters, in a way that keeps it from getting stale while making it easy for me to remember what has happened in past books without the need for re-reading.

It's about making a place for yourself in a hostile world, and finding your "family" to share that place with you. The main characters are flawed, but nevertheless doing their damnedest to keep their loved ones safe and make the world a better place for both humans and fae. Both novel and novella are recommended to fans of the series; anyone else will be hopelessly lost, and should start with the early novels.

October Daye used to be a private eye who worked for the fae in San Francisco, because being a changeling made that a natural choice – right until she got forced to spend nineteen years as a fish after an investigation went wrong. Once the curse was broken, she tried to go back to a normal life, only to get dragged back into murders and mysteries. Rosemary and Rue is a murder mystery with curses; A Local Habitation is supposed to be Toby as a political envoy, and then; and An Artificial Night is a missing persons case with shades of Tam Lin.

I think my problem with this series is that I was sold on it as a mystery series with fae, and it's really really not. It's an extended character study with a vague mystery to hang the character stuff on, which is fine when that's what I'm expecting (see also: Sunshine is great, fight me), but when I'm expecting a mystery it makes me really salty. Especially because the foreshadowing is a bit too obvious for me and tends to reveal the plot about a third of the book before Toby realises what the plot is – it's been suggested that this might be because I have a lot of genre savvy for mysteries, and that other people didn't have this problem so absolutely judge that for yourselves! It makes Toby look absolutely oblivious though, which is frustrating for me as a reader.

As a character study though, they're not bad! Toby is a mess who flings herself into all of her problems like they're the last thing she's ever going to do (I think because in most of these they literally are), and her problem solving skills are inventive. I love her friendship group as well, though she doesn't treat them well – which I thought she'd learned by the end of the first book but more fool me – but I enjoy reading about them and how much she is loved, and how she absolutely cannot process it. The voice the story is written in is really great, especially for how Toby explains the weird politics and magic of the fae. I love how her magic works, because the reliance on nursery rhymes to help her shape it really makes me happy. And the scenes that are meant to be horrifying are really well written – there is a scene with the night haunts in A Local Habitation that is delightfully creepy! I just... Hit a point in book four where I couldn't deal with how unrelentingly terrible everything is for Toby and the people around her anymore?

I feel like I should love these a lot more than I do, especially because I think everyone in my online social group adores them. It might just be a combination of trying to read a lot of them in quick succession before the Hugos, which meant that I burnt out on them, and that my expectations of what they were were mismanaged. If I'd come to it as an urban fantasy series where sometimes there are mysteries and sometimes there is going to other planes to fight a creature from nightmares, maybe I would have been okay and I would love it as much as everyone else does! Especially because, as it's been pointed out, I really like Human Disaster heroes, so this might be internalised misogyny showing up to steal my wallet. As it is, I am taking a break from the series until I feel brave enough to try again.

[This review is based off the omnibus provided by the publisher in the Hugo packet.]

Night and Silence is the twelfth book in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series, a fae/urban fantasy series set in San Francisco. October Daye is one of my favorite ongoing series that I read right now, and I've looked forward to this book for quite some time. The series can always/usually be counted on to give you fun characters and dialogue (even if the situations they find themselves in sometimes get very dark), plots that are interesting and twisting and often have roots in events from way back earlier in the series, and a lot of creative use of Fae and magic.

Alas, Night and Silence might be my least favorite October Daye book in quite some time, maybe of the series itself. This is not due to any problem necessarily with the book in isolation, but due to the fact that the plot of the book is well....very very similar to that of some prior works in the series, particularly Book 5 (One Salt Sea) to a major extent and Book 9 (A Red-Rose Chain) to a lesser extent. The book answers one major question the series had previously posed, but the answer was one I'd guessed (the danger of seeding plot points within past books is that reveals are guess-able), even if the method of reveal was a little surprising. That's not to say the book wasn't enjoyable - I've already reread it three times lol - but it was disappointing in that it felt a bit like a retread and a placeholder for the series.

Note 1: If you couldn't figure it out, the twelfth book in this series is not a great starting point for new readers. In theory, new readers could skip books 1-5 and commence with Book 6, I guess, but readers are strongly advised to begin the series from the beginning (even though I think books 1-2 are among the weakest volumes due almost certainly to McGuire still getting her bearings)

Note 3: Like the prior two books in the series, Night and Silence comes with a bonus novella attached. That novella's plot is even more of a direct response to the events of this book however, so while I will vaguely discuss it below, I will not be including it in the plot summary:

----------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
Life is not all right for October Daye. After her mother's forced transformation of Tybalt, her fiance, Tybalt finds himself shellshocked and uncomfortable in his own forms....and has fled from Toby's presence and left her alone. May finds herself in a similar situation (albeit less badly) with Jazz and is similarly distressed. And her father figure Sylvester doesn't want her around due to her letting loose his murderous brother.

And then her Ex and his wife show up at her doorstep with the news that her daughter, Gillian, is missing once again. Two and a Half Years ago (Book 5: A Salt Sea), Gillian was kidnapped by a Fae enemy and Toby was forced to turn her fully human and to withdraw entirely from Gillian's life in order to save Gillian's life....and the result nearly broke Toby's heart. Now, amidst signs that Gillian may yet once again have been kidnapped to get at Toby, the threat has become more dire...for there is no way that Toby can simply erase Faerie from Gillian's mind once again, and if not, can she truly be allowed to live?

And then there's the fact that whoever took Gillian seems to have connections to someone with ancient Fae ties, ties that might bind Toby to the sea-change that once ended an era of Faerie altogether......
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The October Daye series, like any long-running series, can really be broken down into a series of arcs. This is not to say that books from an earlier arc don't contain parts that will come back to roost in later arcs, which is a specialty of this series (for example, the major reveal of this book was first hinted at way back in book 3), but certain books are more easily grouped together because they seem to be written in response directly to each other. So roughly:

Books 1-3 (Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night): The Beginning of October's story as she learns to become a part of Faerie once more and gathers new friends and allies.
Books 4-5 (Late Eclipses, A Salt Sea): The Brief tale of Countess October Daye, her first love, and her realization of what she truly is.
Books 6-8 (Ashes of Honor, Chimes at Midnight, The Winter Long): October's second return to Faerie, her Second Love, and becoming a Hero of the Realm
Books 9-10 (A Red-Rose Chain, Once Broken Faith): The Saga of Elf-Shot and October Daye, Kingbreaker.

Night and Silence is quite clearly a response to the prior book in the series, The Brightest Fell (Book 11), which was one of the darkest books in the series. Toby and her friends had been in a pretty good place ten books in, but that eleventh book wrecked them, traumatizing two of the main squad's five members (and that was after those two were rescued from a worse fate) and leaving Toby further isolated from people she considered family. Night and Silence reverses that....somewhat. Not all of the aftereffects of The Brightest Fell can be shaken off so easily* and they're not fully reversed when all is said and done, but the book takes a situation that clearly had to change in order for things to progress and does so.

*Although what is shaken off is kind of done fairly quickly once it happens.*

The problem is, that while the Book is in most ways a classic Toby Daye novel, featuring a bunch of characters I truly love and care about and some great dialogue, it makes these changes by very closely adhering to a plot we've already seen in this series. Like in Book 5: A Salt Sea, Toby is facing the kidnapping of her daughter by Faerie and the possibility that the safety of Faerie might require Gillian's death (assuming Toby can rescue Gillian in the first place). Like in Book 5, our final confrontation comes between the hero and the villains in a lair, where the result is dangerously tragic. And while I won't spoil who the villains are in this post (more in that second post I mentioned earlier), they're not new villains either, and their motivations are the same as in the last book they appeared.

This is not to say that the effects of this book are small - there is one major reveal, and a major change in the status quo besides the remedying (somewhat) of the effects of the last book. Still, even the major reveal was one that avid readers might have seen coming (I did, except in how the reveal would take place). But the fact that the plot of this book feels so damn familiar makes it feel very much like this book was more of a placeholder, with the plot an afterthought just meant to set up a new status quo for the next arc - the major change in the status quo for example clearly will raise the stakes for an event that has been teased since book 5....and which the title of next year's Book 13 suggests may finally be coming.

I've been fairly negative in this review, and I want to make this clear: while I do think this might be the weakest book in the series, that's largely a factor of how high the bar has been set by the book's predecessors. If Book 5 didn't exist, this book would have been far more exciting, as it would've been much more fresh....but it does exist, and if you've come this far into the series, it's not likely you'll have forgotten it. I look forward heavily to Book 13, as I looked forward heavily to this book, because I love this series and I am not quite satisfied here.

One Final Note: This book, for the third straight book, comes with a bonus novella: "Suffer a Sea-Change." I won't talk too much of this in this non-spoiler post (but will discuss it a bit in the next spoiler-filled post) as this novella directly addresses the status quo change I hint at above from the perspective of a spoiler character, with part of it being a scene in the full novel from a different point of view. The novella obviously doesn't work independently of the novel (duh), but I enjoyed it quite a bit as a way of addressing the change and seeing the world of Faerie from a brand new perspective - which I don't expect to see any more of in the future....but I'd be very happy to be wrong about that.