Wednesday, September 18, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Unkindest Tide by Seanan McGuire




I've said this quite a few times, but Seanan Mcguire's October Daye series is one of my favorite ongoing series out there.  I first got interested in the urban fantasy series when the first ten books were in the Hugo Packet 3 years ago and I intended to read only a few of them for voting purposes....only to binge read them all within a week.  I've read each of the next two books on the day they were released, so uhhhh yeah, I love this series, although I did think the most recent book - Night and Silence - was a bit of a lowpoint of the series for being really repetitive of past adventures.

The Unkindest Tide is however a terrific return to form, with the book paying off on plot threads that have been dangling since Book 5 in a creative and interesting way and moving our characters and world in some really interesting directions.  As usual, I would not suggest this book as a starting point for the series - despite the first chapter being nearly entirely devoted to recap, the book relies heavily on past story developments to work.  But this book is yet another good reason for newcomers to try and get into the series, as it's producing works that range from solid to great nearly every year.

Note: This book also contains a short novella "Hope is Swift", which I will quickly review below as well.

Note2: This will be as spoiler-free a review as possible.  I will post a spoilery thoughts post for this book as well, so if you're interested in my spoiler-filled thoughts, wait for that, and if you want to post in comments, do so there


---------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Given how crazy and tragic events have been in October "Toby" Daye's life, things recently have turned out pretty good: her fiance is finally shaking off the trauma caused by her mother's magical imprisonment, her place in Faerie isn't threatened, and things have been calm for a little bit.  But when she finds the Luidaeg on her doorstep, she knows that means its all about to change, for the Luidaeg has come to call in Toby's debts.

And that means the time has finally come: the time for the bargain between the Selkies and the Luidaeg to finally end, and for the Roane to return....but at what cost?  And what of Toby's daughter, Gillian, so recently turned into a Selkie herself because of the actions of Toby's enemies?

And yet these questions may not be all that Toby has to worry about, because as this request forces her, still hydrophobic after all these years, to travel to the sea, she finds herself in the domain of the Undersea once more, which tends to solve all their disputes with violence.....
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Book 5 of this series (In Salt Sea Tears) ended with some major revelations involving the Selkie Fae race, and a prophecy involving October and them that was to come true within a year.  7 Books and 3 in-series years later, this cliffhanger had still hung over the series, yet to be followed up on despite occasional references, and some additional setup done in Book 12.  This book finally picks up that cliffhanger, and well, there are some high expectations for it as a result, especially due to what happened with Gillian in book 12.

And yeah, the book meets those expectations for the most part.  Most the main cast returns (unlike book 11) and remain excellent, and new characters - who have been referenced mainly in the past but never introduced by name or appearance - are excellently added to the series here as well.   You shouldn't need me to talk about how good the characters are in this series so I'm going to skip my usual rundown about how awesome they are and jump to the plot.

I found the last book in the series, Night and Silence, to be one of the weaker installments, because it felt too much like a repeat of other books - particularly one specific book - in the series, which is a problem that might seem inevitable for any long running series.  But The Unkindest Tide avoids similar pitfalls, with its plot involving as I said before new but not quite unheard-of characters, places we've occasionally been before but never fully explored, and antagonists and conflicts that we've heard of before but never had a chance to experience.  The book shifts angles in its plot several times, but these shifts seem totally natural and never come out of the blue, with the book tying everything together solidly at the end.  And the book not only introduces new characters and resolves long-awaited mysteries, but introduces at least one new one (which other readers have suggested for a while, but I didn't believe....until now).  I'll go more in depth on this in my spoilery post with thoughts.

So yeah, excellent plotting to go along with the typically great cast, a change in setting featuring new characters and concepts, plus some fresh original twists make The Unkindest Tide my favorite book since at least book 10, and definitely up there with the top books in the series. 

Oh and quickly, the novella, maybe more really a novelette, "Hope is Swift", follows Raj as he's left behind by the main cast on this story, as he deals with friends both Cait Sidhe and elsewise, particularly his long-time girlfriend Helen.  It's sweet and a nice touch, but nothing essential, or really anything that adds significantly to the universe as the novellas included with the last 3 books did (although it does introduce the first Non-Binary character in the series as far as I can tell).

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