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.

"Once Broken Faith" is the tenth book in the Hugo award nominated October Daye series by Seanan McGuire. Ten books into the series and McGuire keeps the action fresh! "Once Broken Faith" has the building blocks we come to expect such as magic, faeries, nobility, evil doers, conflict, assassination and assassination attempts, etc. We learn about new magic, new abilities, and a bit more about the mysterious and powerful firstborn. Through Toby's nonstop heroism, the kingdom becomes a better place. The novella included at the end was surprisingly welcome. It cleared up a few loose ends and provided an enjoyable viewpoint from someone other than Toby. All around, this was a great book. (Although I am still getting use to Toby's lack of emphasis on coffee.)

Why on Earth does anyone let Toby near diplomatic events? Sure, they'd probably be worse off without her, but she can be a bit of a danger magnet. Such is true in Once Broken Faith, where someone starts killing people at a meeting to discuss whether elf-shot cures can still be used. Toby is recruited as detective, but the killer has their sights on her too.

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.

This is perhaps my least favourite of this series so far. Not because it's badly written - it isn't. McGuire's writing is as strong as ever, her characters just as entertaining, chaotic and vibrant. No. It's not even because the narrative is weak, although all being centred on a single convocation, although this is somewhat problematic. In reality, it's because this seemed like a four hundred page epilogue to the last book and, more importantly, we have been here before.

It seems like a mish mash of plot ideas that McGuire has already used in this series, only the injuries are getting more severe. Considering Toby was at deaths door even in the first book, you can imagine why this might feel like overkill. We join a bunch of squabbling pure blood Fae in a discussion as to whether the cure for elf shot is to be used or banned. People argue. Someone important dies. Toby steps in to bumble her way to saving the day. Toby escapes death by a sliver and people feel like killing her. It's been the plot of several previous novels in the series, just with a different setting and different players.

If it had been more focussed on the politics and the new aspects of the world, this could have been excellent. Instead it was just a bit meh. Now, I know I have high expectations for this series and perhaps that's my fault. But this didn't fulfill them. I don't know. Maybe McGuire was running out of ideas when she wrote this. As a novella depicting the murder mystery though, it would likely have worked. But there isn't enough new content to justify a novel. None of the new characters and kingdoms are truly fleshed out. For a political convocation, you get precious little of the actual politics.

It's good. It's not great. And it's greatness I have come to expect from McGuire.

The cure for elf-shot developed by a modern alchemist is under debate. Should everyone sleeping for a hundred years be woken? Now we know where the Sleeping Beauty legend and similar came from... but politically, some folks don't want others woken, while a few were put under as official punishment. A conclave of rulers is called and the Fae are standing on courtesy and ignoring the changeling Toby as usual, when after some time, a murder occurs and instead of a competent guard captain, Toby is called on to solve the crime.

One interesting feature of this stage of the series, is that Toby travels from one level of Fae to another and in reverse as her 'blood levels' get tampered with magically. Her ears get more or less pointy, her senses sharper or duller, her magical tolerance and violence tolerance increase and decrease. None of which will stop her getting beaten up, stabbed, bitten, defenestrated, and covered in blood three times a book. As usual. I have to say the whole "let's do violence to Toby and have her stab herself" idea gets too much when you read several books in a row. Why has she not learned karate? Or if she has, why not better karate?

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

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.

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

There's almost nothing I didn't like about this book. It was a good mix of broader political world-building and a locked room (ish) mystery. The solution to the murder mystery was a little forced, but I was willing to forgive it, considering how fast everything around the central mystery moved. I do wish we'd gotten a little more character development (Quentin is kind of the only one who got to do much growing), but otherwise it was pretty ideal.

So the fallout of discovering a counter spell to elfshot causes a political uproar of should the cure be put out in the Faerieworld. Toby must attend a convocation of the area Kings and Queens along with representatives of other interested parties as they decide with the High King and Queen in attendance to figure out the ramifications of the discovery. The usual changeling bias works against her but now she seems comfortable claiming that her mother is Firstborn and it helps that the Sea Witch backs her claim. The majority of the book is a variation on the locked room murder mystery but substitute a locked knowe for a room. As usual it was a great read and then the bonus story with the POV being Arden was nice as well.

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.]