This post is for a spoilery discussion of the 17th and 18th novels - Sleep No More and The Innocent Sleep - in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series. If you are interested in the series and want to speculate on what the events of these books mean? This is for you. If not, and you still want to read this series, I recommend not reading on beyond the jump.
If you accidentally found this page and want to read the actual spoiler free review of these books go HERE for Sleep No More and go HERE for The Innocent Sleep
You have been warned.
Wow. These two books present a very different form of Toby - one who is afraid of rocking the boat, scared to fight for what's right even as she does make a few tiny rebellions, and who is generally utterly willing to be happy in a family that has at least one member - August - who genuinely seems to love her. The Toby we know has never really wanted to be a Hero with a capital "H", but has for books now been willing to fight for what she knows is right and to get herself in dangerous trouble through her recklessness. And of course it's not just Toby - with Quentin, we see how horrifically prejudiced and racist he could've been with the wrong upbringing; with Arden, we see how she could've actually enjoyed being free even in a horrible world instead of being stuck either in hiding or in the fount of leadership; etc. This is very much a book about how we are all affected by the circumstances of our upbringings, with the only peoples remaining unchanged being those whose upbringings haven't been changed or who can see through it all.
There are a bunch of implications here for the future as a result of both that and other things though. First, again we see a bunch of characters reference the fact that Maeve is almost certainly in the area in hiding - something the readers will have long since expected (and the current theory is that it's Marcia, who's AWOL again this book) but should help the characters not take too damn long to realize it as they did in Book 16 with Titania. Second we see some character relations shift as people realize things about themselves and others - we're likely to see Toby and Tybalt have more dealings with the Golden Shore monarchs in the future, August is likely to become a full member of the team, same with Raysel, who even got to spend enough time with Dean to make that relationship better, etc. And the Library is about to be more and more significant since it's apparently a force outside the control of the Three. (And of course Toby is going to have a baby really soon at this point).
Notably however, for the future, we're once again left in a place where there are no obvious antagonist forces out there. Titania got herself forced into the Heart of Faerie way too easily - seriously, it's bizarre how for a character so damn powerful enough to set this up that the way to get her out of the way for probably a few books is simply to...just walk up to the sacrifices and survive her illusions to pull them out? Like I get Tybalt also had to stop Titania by holding firm in the protective circle but really the ending of these books feels a bit cheap and abrupt given the power level of the antagonist. But whatever, this gets Titania out of the way for at least a while, and Eira is seemingly still out of the picture and elf-shot. So who's left? Well I guess we'll see....my guess is that means Maeve will be sooner rather than later.....
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