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

Things escalate fast for Toby, which means this is a wonderfully unpredictable book. Also, if you try to remove a hero lest they remove you, well, now the hero has no choice but to try to remove you.

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

Fun urban fantasy originally read in paperback.

"Chimes at Midnight" is another awesome novel (#7) by Seanan McGuire in the Hugo nominated "October Daye" series. The action is engaging and entertaining, and does not stop for a moment until Toby overcomes frequent near impossible challenges she faces as she defends herself, her friends and allies, and extended community. As in other novels, she learns a bit more about her past, builds her base of allies, and improves her magic abilities. I have enjoyed each book in the series, but this is my favorite so far. (I am sure I am going to repeat that sentence after I finish the next book in the series.)

A pretty good installment in the October Daye series, one that temporarily sidelines Toby's semi-enemy because she technically did treason (whoops)

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.

I thought this book would be about other changelings. As we start the changeling population, a largely hidden element, is being killed off by overdosing on a drug that doesn't harm pureblood Fae. So the Fae Queen isn't concerned. Changelings are expendable. Then the book segues into a plot to overthrow the Queen as she has no legitimate line of descent from the previous King. So the changelings were just a plot device to get Toby Daye interested in sedition, and not even one of them gets an identity with which to back her up or provide a clue.

I did think the rest of the book was well managed, so I'm giving it a top rating, because we don't really think of overthrowing the Fae Queen. Toby as a kind of outsider can conceive of it, but the courtiers are too busy currying favour. The lack of any real guard force is clearly shown; Toby and her friends should have been heads on spikes in no short order. But if there was a coherent guard, Toby would have been strongarmed out of most of her investigations in this series. Poor Toby spends much of the book getting beaten up and covered in blood. Again.

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

If Toby doesn't manage to get herself in enough trouble on a day to day basis, our plucky heroine really nails it this time. In a certain near suicidal fit of reckless despondency after the death of someone close to her, she decides to take to the streets in search of goblin fruit dealers. Think the fae equivalent to heroin, only not dangerous to pure bloods and fatal to changlings. But Toby finds she has once again bitten off more than she can chew as she finds herself exiled by the Queen for her efforts. Well, I suppose it's better than attempted execution. One thing leads to another and suddenly Toby is leading a movement to overthrow a monarch.

This is another fast paced novel full of twists and turns to keep you on your toes, exploring more of the world and history that the fae live in. This complex tangle of history leaves some usually solid allies with their hands tied, meaning Toby has to find new ways to save herself and those around her. Much is still a mystery as McGuire gives you new slices of information in dribs and drabs, but she always provides enough to tantalise and tease, leaving you keen to keep on discovering more.

On top of all that, this is inventive and witty with a spark that made me giggle inappropriately on public transport. The magical moving fae library is brilliant, and offers another character who promises untold entertainment in future instalments, but along with Tybalt as King of the Cats we are now introduced to his doggy counterparts and that couldn't be more awesome. Along with a missing princess and sleeping bachelor, a sweet yet not overpowering romance, revelations and rearrangements as Toby starting to figure out the power of her blood, this is yet another wonderful entry in what is fast becoming one of my favourite series.

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.

I love the way that this series expands out the universe as we get Toby interacting with more people. This book kept the tension high enough to propel the plot and make me keep reading without feeling like it was falling into cartoonishness.

The seventh book of the series and I still love everything about them. Each one builds on the relationships that Toby has made in the previous books but with all of the books they seem to be able to let you read them without having read the previous ones. The back story is mentioned but not shoved down the reader's throat as the current story unfolds. Things come to a head with Toby and the Queen over the goblin fruit jam that is killing changelings and Toby finds herself with 3 days to leave the kingdom. Or she can somehow replace the Queen. Knowing Toby she chooses the harder of the two options since it turns out that the current Queen may not be the correct heir to the throne. A great story and this ones has lots of people that Toby has helped in the past come to her aid this time. Bonus you finally find out who Quentin's parents are and for the paper readers there is a short story at the end of the book that is hinted at during the story when Toby tastes the Luidaeg. All in all a great book and I can't wait for the next one.

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.]