Thank you so much for making this book available for Hugo voters. Seriously, Seanan could write her grocery list and I’d vote for it because she’d find a way of making it Hugo worthy,

Downloaded for the 2024 Hugo Award voting packet. I will update reviews on goodreads as I complete the books.

I love Seanen and everything she writes. I will forever love Toby, also love the narrator on the audio of this series.

Please note: I have been given access to the books in this brilliant series in order to judge the for the Hugo Award for Best Series. I would certainly appreciate it if my feedback or lack of it does not count against my ratio if I don’t finish all sixteen.
Thank you for understanding!

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher as part of the Hugo Award Voter’s Packet. I am grateful to the publisher for giving us voters a chance to review and read through the nominees. I promise to give each and every nominee the respect and opportunity that they deserve before I cast my vote.

It had been a couple of years since I've read the previous book in McGuire's fantasy October Daye fantasy series. The book certainly delivered as expected. It was fun to read about Toby's adventures taking on powerful faeries up to no good. I will dive into the next book in the series soon. This is absolutely a must read for McGuire fans!

I thank the author and fan for graciously providing an electronic review copy of this work.

Many thanks to Seanan McGuire and DAW for providing the series in the Hugo Voter Packet.
This is a fantastic book from one of my favorite series, from one of my favorite authors.

This series has been amping up the stakes and tension for several books. I read this one in less than three days (very fast for me), and it was mostly because I was so anxious about the fate of my beloved characters that I couldn't rest until I knew that everyone would be ok for at least the moment.

"Leave nothing behind. Be the serpent, be the shadow. Be nothing, or never come home."

I don't usually rate 'officially', in star rating terms, until my second reading, where Seanan's works are concerned, as I've learned over the years that I never seem to be entirely settled in said ratings between first and second full reading. I'm still not 100% certain whether to round up or down from the 4.5 where my heart and mind want me to settle. For NetGalley, I'll round up.

I just finished this one. I began it last night, and managed to make myself pause about a third of the way in, as I knew if I kept on, I wouldn't get any sleep, and I needed to. It was at that point that I IMed a friend from the Toby Daye Discord just to say "CALLED IT!!" I finished the rest in one sitting this afternoon.

We have had many discussions there about this series and its beautifully-woven foreshadowing and prophecies, and yes, while I expected the basic element of this instalment's major plotline, I certainly didn't anticipate the way it made itself known - and that, even more than the foreshadowing, is why I love this series.

Even when I know what will happen, because let's be honest, DAW aren't all that great about protecting international fans from spoilers for books already out, despite the fact that most of us are perpetually behind by a book or two unless we can both import and handle hardcover copies for this series, I still want to read the book(s) to know exactly *how* such things happen and how the characters reach and react to them. That is why this series is brilliant: there is so much humanity in characters who aren't human at all, so much so that even the truly villainous - those few who do not have redeeming features, even if they always have, to some extent, comprehensible motivations, are compulsively readable.

BTS hits that mark and passes it with flying colours, as always. I dare not leave content warnings this time as they would be thoroughly spoilerish, so just... be careful. And maybe be prepared for needing tissues.