Review: The Winter Long, by Seanan McGuire

Russ Allbery eagle at eyrie.org
Mon Dec 3 19:26:20 PST 2018


The Winter Long
by Seanan McGuire

Series:    October Daye #8
Publisher: DAW
Copyright: 2014
ISBN:      1-101-60175-2
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     368

This is the eighth book in the October Daye series and leans heavily on
the alliances, friendship, world-building, and series backstory. This
is not the sort of series that can be meaningfully started in the
middle. And, for the same reason, it's also rather hard to review
without spoilers, although I'll give it a shot.

Toby has had reason to fear Simon Torquill for the entire series.
Everything that's happened to her was set off by him turning her into a
fish and destroying her life. She's already had to deal with his
partner (in Late Eclipses), so it's not a total surprise that he would
show up again. But Toby certainly didn't expect him to show up at her
house, or to sound weirdly unlike an enemy, or to reference a geas and
an employer. She had never understood his motives, but there may be
more to them than simple evil.

I have essentially struck out trying to recommend this series to other
people. I think everyone else who's started it has bounced off of it
for various reasons: unimpressed by Toby's ability to figure things
out, feeling the bits borrowed from the mystery genre are badly done,
not liking Irish folklore transplanted to the San Francisco Bay Area,
or just finding it too dark. I certainly can't argue with people's
personal preferences, but I want to, since this remains my favorite
urban fantasy series and I want to talk about it with more people.
Thankfully, the friends who started reading it independent of my
recommendation all love it too. (Perhaps I'm cursing it somehow?)

Regardless, this is more of exactly what I like about this series,
which was never the private detective bits (that have now been
discarded entirely) and was always the maneuverings and dominance games
of faerie politics, the comfort and solid foundation of Toby's chosen
family, Toby's full-throttle-forward approach to forcing her way
through problems, and the lovely layered world-building. There is so
much going on in McGuire's faerie realm, so many hidden secrets, old
grudges, lost history, and complex family relationships. I can see some
of the shape of problems that the series will eventually resolve, but I
still have no guesses as to how McGuire will resolve them.

The Winter Long takes another deep look at some of Toby's oldest
relationships, including revisiting some events from Rosemary and Rue
(the first book of the series) in a new light. It also keeps, and
further deepens, my favorite relationships in this series: Tybalt, Mags
and the Library (introduced in the previous book), and of course the
Luidaeg, who is my favorite character in the entire series and the one
I root for the most.

I've been trying to pinpoint what I like so much about this series,
particularly given the number of people who disagree, and I think it's
that Toby gets along with, and respects, a wide variety of difficult
people, and brings to every interaction a consistent set of internal
ethics and priorities. McGuire sets this against a backdrop of court
politics, ancient rivalries and agreements, and hidden races with
contempt for humans; Toby's role in that world is to stubbornly do the
right thing based mostly on gut feeling and personal loyalty. It's not
particularly complex ethics; most of the challenges she faces are
eventually resolved by finding the right person to kick (or, more
frequently now, use her slowly-growing power against) and the right
place to kick them.

That simplicity is what I like. This is my comfort reading. Toby looks
at tricky court intrigues, bull-headedly does the right thing, and
manages to make that work out, which for me (particularly in this
political climate) is escapism in the best sense. She has generally
good judgment in her friends, those friends stand by her, and the good
guys win. Sometimes that's just what I want in a series, particularly
when it comes with an impressive range of mythological creations, an
interesting and slowly-developing power set, enjoyable character
banter, and a ton of world-building mysteries that I want to know more
about.

Long story short, this is more of Toby and friends in much the same
vein as the last few books in the series. It adds new depth to some
past events, moves Toby higher into the upper echelons of faerie
politics, and contains many of my favorite characters. Oh, and, for
once, Toby isn't sick or injured or drugged for most of the story,
which I found a welcome relief.

If you've read this far into the series, I think you'll love it. I
certainly did.

Followed by A Red-Rose Chain.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Reviewed: 2018-12-03

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


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