Review: Chimes at Midnight, by Seanan McGuire

Russ Allbery eagle at eyrie.org
Sun May 7 21:29:04 PDT 2017


Chimes at Midnight
by Seanan McGuire

Series:    October Daye #7
Publisher: DAW
Copyright: 2013
ISBN:      1-101-63566-5
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     346

Chimes at Midnight is the seventh book of the October Daye series and
builds heavily on the previous books. Toby has gathered quite the group
of allies by this point, and events here would casually spoil some of
the previous books in the series (particularly One Salt Sea, which you
absolutely do not want spoiled). I strongly recommend starting at the
beginning, even if the series is getting stronger as it goes along.

This time, rather than being asked for help, the book opens with Toby
on a mission. Goblin fruit is becoming increasingly common on the
streets of San Francisco, and while she's doing all she can to find and
stop the dealers, she's finding dead changelings. Goblin fruit is a
pleasant narcotic to purebloods, but to changelings it's instantly and
fatally addictive. The growth of the drug trade means disaster for the
local changelings, particularly since previous events in the series
have broken a prominent local changeling gang. That was for the best,
but they were keeping goblin fruit out, and now it's flooding into the
power vacuum.

In the sort of idealistic but hopelessly politically naive move that
Toby is prone to, she takes her evidence to the highest local authority
in faerie: the Queen of the Mists. The queen loathes Toby and the
feeling is mutual, but Toby's opinion is that this shouldn't matter:
these are her subjects and goblin fruit is widely recognized as a
menace. Even if she cares nothing for their lives, a faerie drug being
widely sold on the street runs the substantial risk that someone will
give it to humans, potentially leading to the discovery of faerie.

Sadly, but predictably, Toby has underestimated the Queen's
malevolence. She leaves the court burdened not only with the knowledge
that the Queen herself is helping with the distribution of goblin
fruit, but also an impending banishment thanks to her reaction. She has
three days to get out of the Queen's territory, permanently.

Three days that the Luidaeg suggests she spend talking to people who
knew King Gilad, the former and well-respected king of the local
territory who died in the 1906 earthquake, apparently leaving the
kingdom to the current Queen. Or perhaps not.

As usual, crossing Toby is a very bad idea, and getting Toby involved
in politics means that one should start betting heavily against the
status quo. Also, as usual, things initially go far too well, and then
Toby ends up in serious trouble. (I realize the usefulness of raising
the stakes of the story, but I do prefer the books of this series that
don't involve Toby spending much of the book ill.) However, there is a
vast improvement over previous books in the story: one key relationship
(which I'll still avoid spoiling) is finally out of the precarious
will-they, won't-they stage and firmly on the page, and it's a
relationship that I absolutely love. Watching Toby stomp people who
deserve to be stomped makes me happy, but watching Toby let herself be
happy and show it makes me even happier.

McGuire also gives us some more long-pending revelations. I probably
should have guessed the one about one of Toby's long-time friends and
companions much earlier, although at least I did so a few pages before
Toby found out. I have some strong suspicions about Toby's own
background that were reinforced by this book, and will be curious to
see if I'm right. And I'm starting to have guesses about the overall
arc of the series, although not firm ones. One of my favorite things in
long-running series is the slow revelation of more and more world
background, and McGuire does it in just the way I like: lots of
underlying complexity, reveals timed for emotional impact but without
dragging on things that the characters should obviously be able to
figure out, and a whole bunch of layered secrets that continue to
provide more mystery even after one layer is removed.

The plot here is typical of the plot of the last couple of novels in
the series, which is fine by me since my favorite part of this series
is the political intrigue (and Toby realizing that she has far more
influence than she thinks). It helps that I thought Arden was great,
given how central she is to this story. I liked her realistic reactions
to her situation, and I liked her arguments with Toby. I'm dubious how
correct Toby actually was, but we've learned by now that arguments from
duty are always going to hold sway with her. And I loved Mags and the
Library, and hope we'll be seeing more of them in future novels.

The one quibble I'll close with, since the book closed with it, is that
I found the ending rather abrupt. There were several things I wanted to
see in the aftermath, and the book ended before they could happen.
Hopefully that means they'll be the start of the next book (although a
bit of poking around makes me think they may be in a novella).

If you've liked the series so far, particularly the couple of books
before this one, this is more of what you liked. Recommended.

Followed by The Winter Long.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Reviewed: 2017-05-07

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


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