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mistressofmuses) wrote2022-02-09 07:47 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2022-02-09 07:47 pm
When Sorrows Come (and a bit about the October Daye series as a whole)
I finished a pretty decent number of things - books and movies at least - over the last week and a half or so, so I thought about writing some blurbs about how I liked them. Then this one got long enough that I didn't want to try and write up any more.
When Sorrows Come by Seanan McGuire, book 15 of the October Daye series.
I give this one 7/10
When Taylor read this a couple months ago, they gave it a pretty damning score; a cripplingly bad 4/10. I didn't read their review before I read the book, but I did see the score they gave it, so I went in with my expectations a bit tempered.
While Taylor's and my taste are usually pretty close, I really didn't have quite as many issues with this one as they did. The issues I did have were mostly the same, but I wasn't quite as bothered.
The book itself was a necessary one, finally hitting a major plot-point that's been coming for a long while now: the protagonist's marriage to her long-time boyfriend/later fiancé.
The conflict outside of that - an attempted coup in the court of the High King of North America - does feel a little... stock, I suppose. It's pretty continually pointed out how Toby has earned herself a reputation for being a kingbreaker, so another attempted overthrow in another kingdom (if on a larger scale) is not a unique situation for her to face.
But that said, I'm also willing to give it a bit of the benefit of the doubt. Setting up potential future conflict in the high kingdom (especially considering [redacted]'s future) could be a very important thing. Knowing that unrest is happening, when it's happening in an area very geographically removed from most of the series, might be an important thing. Then again, maybe their quick and easy solution from this book WILL fix it, which would make it seem ultimately inconsequential.
BUT I do want to think there's more to this whole thing that we will see more of - especially as the idea for the coup was seeded by a long-running series big-bad, and even with her (unpermanently) out of the picture, dismantling her plots-within-plots is a big deal.
Also, I think the idea of there being so much iron in New York, and in the waters surrounding it, that it's become basically a toxic wasteland as far as the fae are concerned is a really interesting thing, and I very much hope that it gets explored more!
The thing that really DID bother me the most was how there were multiple instances where characters just... decided to be idiots for the sake of the plot. (Not all the way to making it an idiot plot full stop, just... too many bad choices for no reason.)
Like... the High King gets poisoned in his study by contact poison... just a few chapters after a guard was killed by the same thing, so there's no excuse for it not being something the characters had considered as a possible threat. (Maybe it was supposed to be a sign that there were more infiltrators in the guard, because someone should have "cleared" the room as safe, but it felt more like the characters just hadn't been careful. Despite knowing they were looking for assassins, who used things like CONTACT POISON.)
Another one was the decision to keep a shapeshifting monster unconfined in a cell, but okay, I'll give it a pass due to the previously mentioned infiltration of the guard. But then why would you bring in a character (Tybalt) who has so many physical weapons (teeth and claws) for the doppleganger to copy?? Yes, I get that Tybalt doesn't want Toby walking into danger without him, but that's literally just handing your enemy a weapon! Don't do that!
There were also some sections - the booby-trapped room, in particular - that felt too significantly like padding. While finding the person the room belonged to WAS important, the whole "set off the traps, get stuck, have to find a way out!" segment felt like it could have been removed with little lasting consequence. (Or like it could have been solved in a less risky way, utilizing their OTHER teleporters.) There were emotional beats it pushed, like Tybalt's feelings of guilt and fear about putting Toby in greater danger, but those are beats that have been seen before.
Taylor's big concern (and low rating) seemed to be for the direction the series is headed. It's been a fairly consistently strong urban fantasy series, one we've both enjoyed for years. But most of the weakest entries, in my opinion, have happened within the more recent books. Book 10 (Once-Broken Faith) and Book 13 (The Unkindest Tide) are the other two that I think were the weaker entries, and the fact that all three have come within the last six books isn't *great*. To be fair, I did used to feel similarly about Book 2 (A Local Habitation), but on a reread of the series as whole, discovered how much it set up, and how important so many bits of it wound up being. (And interestingly, there's a slight callback to that book in this one, which makes me hope this book feels similarly key in retrospect.)
[And also to be fair, Book 11 (The Brightest Fell), Book 12 (Night and Silence), and Book 14 (A Killing Frost) were all ones that I consider among the BEST in the series, so I'm not quite ready to say the series is in a long-term decline.]
When this series is at its best, the books are solid 10/10s for me. When BIG plot things come to fruition, it's often perfectly, amazingly satisfying. But the books where things falter are ones where there's something big and important going on for the overarching series and lore, but the A-plot/central conflict feels like it's only there to fill pages while the actually-important thing is going on. Once-Broken Faith had the reactions to the elf-shot cure... with a semi-murder-mystery in the foreground, and an ultimately not-very-memorable set of villains. The Unkindest Tide had the resolution to the Selkie subplot, which I'd been excited for since we found out it would be a thing... with both a murder-mystery and a kidnapping plot, which I think wound up kind of unrelated to each other.
This one has the marriage, which we're given to believe has some extra significance in the world... and the attempted coup plot feels extraneous or coincidental, with no reason that this thing that's allegedly been brewing for a couple hundred years had to happen NOW just so Toby could be involved. They do say that it's because they planned to blame her for it, and hoped to involve Quentin, but... it just didn't feel like it HAD to happen that way except to give her something to do.
BUT. Even with those criticisms, I enjoyed pretty much the whole book, except for when I was annoyed at characters making bad choices.
Especially once the story moves on to the actually-important plot point of the wedding, it was really good, and I flew through the last bit of it.
I love these characters, and I love seeing where they are now as compared to the early series. I appreciate that they've been allowed to have meaningful arcs that actually matter and change them as people, rather than staying static.
There are also enduring mysteries for the series (what the fuck is up with Marcia? What the fuck is up with Stacy's bloodline and her being weird about her kids? Where are the missing queens? How the fuck much has Evening fucked up?) and I look forward to seeing how those things all get resolved.
Still, I definitely DO hope for more books where the A-plot IS the vital thing, not an excuse for a page count to pad the vital thing into a novel, because that's where the series shines.
When Sorrows Come by Seanan McGuire, book 15 of the October Daye series.
I give this one 7/10
When Taylor read this a couple months ago, they gave it a pretty damning score; a cripplingly bad 4/10. I didn't read their review before I read the book, but I did see the score they gave it, so I went in with my expectations a bit tempered.
While Taylor's and my taste are usually pretty close, I really didn't have quite as many issues with this one as they did. The issues I did have were mostly the same, but I wasn't quite as bothered.
The book itself was a necessary one, finally hitting a major plot-point that's been coming for a long while now: the protagonist's marriage to her long-time boyfriend/later fiancé.
The conflict outside of that - an attempted coup in the court of the High King of North America - does feel a little... stock, I suppose. It's pretty continually pointed out how Toby has earned herself a reputation for being a kingbreaker, so another attempted overthrow in another kingdom (if on a larger scale) is not a unique situation for her to face.
But that said, I'm also willing to give it a bit of the benefit of the doubt. Setting up potential future conflict in the high kingdom (especially considering [redacted]'s future) could be a very important thing. Knowing that unrest is happening, when it's happening in an area very geographically removed from most of the series, might be an important thing. Then again, maybe their quick and easy solution from this book WILL fix it, which would make it seem ultimately inconsequential.
BUT I do want to think there's more to this whole thing that we will see more of - especially as the idea for the coup was seeded by a long-running series big-bad, and even with her (unpermanently) out of the picture, dismantling her plots-within-plots is a big deal.
Also, I think the idea of there being so much iron in New York, and in the waters surrounding it, that it's become basically a toxic wasteland as far as the fae are concerned is a really interesting thing, and I very much hope that it gets explored more!
The thing that really DID bother me the most was how there were multiple instances where characters just... decided to be idiots for the sake of the plot. (Not all the way to making it an idiot plot full stop, just... too many bad choices for no reason.)
Like... the High King gets poisoned in his study by contact poison... just a few chapters after a guard was killed by the same thing, so there's no excuse for it not being something the characters had considered as a possible threat. (Maybe it was supposed to be a sign that there were more infiltrators in the guard, because someone should have "cleared" the room as safe, but it felt more like the characters just hadn't been careful. Despite knowing they were looking for assassins, who used things like CONTACT POISON.)
Another one was the decision to keep a shapeshifting monster unconfined in a cell, but okay, I'll give it a pass due to the previously mentioned infiltration of the guard. But then why would you bring in a character (Tybalt) who has so many physical weapons (teeth and claws) for the doppleganger to copy?? Yes, I get that Tybalt doesn't want Toby walking into danger without him, but that's literally just handing your enemy a weapon! Don't do that!
There were also some sections - the booby-trapped room, in particular - that felt too significantly like padding. While finding the person the room belonged to WAS important, the whole "set off the traps, get stuck, have to find a way out!" segment felt like it could have been removed with little lasting consequence. (Or like it could have been solved in a less risky way, utilizing their OTHER teleporters.) There were emotional beats it pushed, like Tybalt's feelings of guilt and fear about putting Toby in greater danger, but those are beats that have been seen before.
Taylor's big concern (and low rating) seemed to be for the direction the series is headed. It's been a fairly consistently strong urban fantasy series, one we've both enjoyed for years. But most of the weakest entries, in my opinion, have happened within the more recent books. Book 10 (Once-Broken Faith) and Book 13 (The Unkindest Tide) are the other two that I think were the weaker entries, and the fact that all three have come within the last six books isn't *great*. To be fair, I did used to feel similarly about Book 2 (A Local Habitation), but on a reread of the series as whole, discovered how much it set up, and how important so many bits of it wound up being. (And interestingly, there's a slight callback to that book in this one, which makes me hope this book feels similarly key in retrospect.)
[And also to be fair, Book 11 (The Brightest Fell), Book 12 (Night and Silence), and Book 14 (A Killing Frost) were all ones that I consider among the BEST in the series, so I'm not quite ready to say the series is in a long-term decline.]
When this series is at its best, the books are solid 10/10s for me. When BIG plot things come to fruition, it's often perfectly, amazingly satisfying. But the books where things falter are ones where there's something big and important going on for the overarching series and lore, but the A-plot/central conflict feels like it's only there to fill pages while the actually-important thing is going on. Once-Broken Faith had the reactions to the elf-shot cure... with a semi-murder-mystery in the foreground, and an ultimately not-very-memorable set of villains. The Unkindest Tide had the resolution to the Selkie subplot, which I'd been excited for since we found out it would be a thing... with both a murder-mystery and a kidnapping plot, which I think wound up kind of unrelated to each other.
This one has the marriage, which we're given to believe has some extra significance in the world... and the attempted coup plot feels extraneous or coincidental, with no reason that this thing that's allegedly been brewing for a couple hundred years had to happen NOW just so Toby could be involved. They do say that it's because they planned to blame her for it, and hoped to involve Quentin, but... it just didn't feel like it HAD to happen that way except to give her something to do.
BUT. Even with those criticisms, I enjoyed pretty much the whole book, except for when I was annoyed at characters making bad choices.
Especially once the story moves on to the actually-important plot point of the wedding, it was really good, and I flew through the last bit of it.
I love these characters, and I love seeing where they are now as compared to the early series. I appreciate that they've been allowed to have meaningful arcs that actually matter and change them as people, rather than staying static.
There are also enduring mysteries for the series (what the fuck is up with Marcia? What the fuck is up with Stacy's bloodline and her being weird about her kids? Where are the missing queens? How the fuck much has Evening fucked up?) and I look forward to seeing how those things all get resolved.
Still, I definitely DO hope for more books where the A-plot IS the vital thing, not an excuse for a page count to pad the vital thing into a novel, because that's where the series shines.