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.

Strongly recommend this urban fantasy series. Honestly, I strongly recommend McGuire's entire oevre.

In the novel "One Salt Sea" from the Hugo nominated October Daye series by Seanan McGuire, we join our fae heroine, Toby (AKA October Daye) as she is charged to prevent all out war between land and ocean fae. This is perhaps one of her most challenging tasks so far in the series. As usual, she followers her instinct with the help of her friends and allies as she tackles this task. Betrayal and very real threats to her loved ones make the overwhelming threats even more serious. This plot includes new information about the history and background of Toby, her family, and the fae. Fortunately, Toby receives a near sufficient amount of coffee in this episode. As usual, this was an enjoyable read. The book itself was rewarding to the reader, and the overall plot arch also develops. I will start the next book right away!

Game-changing installment of the series. October loses two of the connections she loves most (though one of them not for ever). These books can really balance humor and tragedy

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 an excellent story in the series, because we now step into another part of the Fae world, an undersea kingdom which is well realised. Toby Daye the changeling has to rescue children (again) and the abducted kids look likely to be the spark for a war between land and sea. This is only the final straw of course; the land has been polluting the sea and all the Undine, Orca and Selkie folks are angry.

Toby revisits some familiar locations too, looking for help from the same cast, but the addition of sealskins and scales means she gets to be a merfolk in love with a selkie. Can it last? Well, you know selkie stories never end happily. But think of the kids.
I downloaded an ARC from the Hugo Awards pack on Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.

This was another great installment in the adventures of October Daye, changling and errant knight. I really liked exploring the underwater fae kingdom - but I wish there had been a bit more to be honest! So much potential. Read for Hugo2019 voting.

By now, you'd almost think I could be getting bored. After all, five books in and another set of kids have gone missing. It is a testimony to the world building, the narrative and the characterisations that this could not be further from the truth. In fact, I loved this almost as much as I loved Late Eclipses and that is really saying something. Considering that was the first book to make me cry this year at least, it is a tough mark to reach. This nearly manages.

Somehow McGuire introduces an entirely new fae realm here without blinking and it seems completely natural. We have always known that the fae world is bigger than the small Kingdom we are paddling in, but it is here for the first time that we are shown just how much we have been playing in the rock pools. And despite being completely new, it is wonderfully developed. The same is true for many of the character dynamics, and from a solid foundation these have just grown and grown. The development of the well known characters whilst introducing you to an entire new set is more than impressive. That the new set all have fins or octopus legs or tails is just a bonus point.

It's mildly unfortunate for Toby that we are introduced to the marine fae because the two Kingdoms are on the verge of war, but her life is never simple. With two children abducted, everyone offended and affronted, and war imminent, Toby has her work cut out for her. Particularly as debts she cannot break free of have been called in.But to stop the imminent war, she must first find the two children; sons and heir to the underwater realm. For a war between fae is such that none who have lived through one wish to live through a second. And whilst one land has grown soft, the other has never had that option. Toby knows that war will be devastating, not just for her but for everyone she knows and loves.

The romance aspect is of a higher priority here than before, but actually this didn't bother me. There has been a natural progression through five books now. It's not insta love vomit, it's not shoved in your face; it is just part of October's life in much the same way that my relationship and now marriage is part of mine. It's well done in each and every way, meaning that the romantic aspects are part of the whole. And with that comes all the other relationships. After fourteen years spent as a fish, Toby has begun to actually assemble a new network of support and friendship. The very human needs are depicted just as well as the fae insanity.

Yet talking of insanity, yet more layers of the fae world are peeled back and I have to give McGuire serious kudos here. You are learning along with Toby. There are no info dumps. Where Toby is expected to understand something and doesn't... neither do you. Some aspects I grasped well before Toby got there, others I had to wait for it to be spelled out. And yet ever answer spawns five more questions and this world is wonderful and complex and I need to find out more... and breathe. It's as though this world simply cannot stop giving, the characters are never stagnant and even what's well known can become new.

Do I recommend? Hell, yes.

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 got to read this in one sitting and man was it great. I liked that the way the storyline can either be read in the sequence or as a stand alone with enough info sprinkled in so you are not totally lost. Toby deals with finding out more about herself and the changes her mother did to her in the last book. She also has 3 days to stop a war between land fey and the sea fey. Due to story constraints you don't get enough sea fey but it is certainly a rich enough idea kingdom that a short story has to come out of it someday. In the end Toby saves the day and closes a chapter on her past as well. Can't wait to see what will happen to her next time.

I'm not sure what to say about this. The series is definitely well into its stride by now. The story delves into the more convoluted details of Fae politics, and forms a well-constructed mystery with enough of an emotional heart to make the stakes feel like they have true weight. The undersea fae characters are also appealing additions to Toby's orbit.

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.]