Wednesday, September 30, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Killing Frost by Seanan McGuire



A Killing Frost is the Fourteenth (14th!) novel in Seanan McGuire's "October Daye" series - her fae/urban fantasy series.  The October Daye series is one of the very few long running series I read - one of the other's is McGuire's other long-runner, InCryptid - and it's a series that I have spent way too much time thinking about - containing a ton of excellent characters, a well built long term story arc that still somehow manages to pull off surprises here and there, and yet always manages to contain satisfying individual stories within each single volume.  I binge read the first 10 novels when they were in the Hugo Packet for Best Series, and have since picked up each new volume as it came out, and this was really no different (I read this from midnight to 4AM on release night).

And A Killing Frost is a hell of an installment in terms of moving long term plot arcs forward, and a very solid installment in its own right, with the potential to lead into a major series-altering fifteen book (I could be totally wrong on that mind you).  It's not perfect and isn't quite one of my favorites - the book relies too much on a last act twist that I don't really feel is set up at all (although my mind could be changed by later developments) that feels like a deus ex machina - but it's definitely up there with some of the best books in the series.  Now I have to struggle to wait for book 15, sigh.

Note1:  This review will also touch upon Shine in Pearl, a novella featuring three of the characters in this novel that is included.

Note2: This will be as spoiler-free a review as possible (obviously events from prior books will be referenced).  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 at THAT post, which can be found HERE.


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
Life has been full of twists and turns for October Daye, who simply wants to find some time to relax in between crises - perhaps on a nice surprise date with Tybalt.  But upon such a date, two things conspire to ruin her day:  first, their friends Dianda and Patrick reveal that for her wedding, Toby must invite Simon Torquill to her wedding or suffer serious consequences; and second, her oneiromancer goddaughter Karen informs her that Toby must take only May and Quentin on an upcoming quest...and NOT Tybalt or anyone else, or else she might not like the end results.

As such, Toby is forced to embark on a quest to find the man who once ruined her life, a man whom she had just started to forgive before he once again sacrificed himself for his family, a man who now as a result of that sacrifice is more dangerous than ever.  To find Simon will require Toby to take a path back towards the woman responsible for nearly all of Faerie's evils - and to risk waking her once more.  And even if she can find him, is there any way for her to convince a man who has sacrificed his way home to bless her wedding....without him attempting once more to destroy all she cares about.....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The October Daye novels each contain their own individual story arc, but often seem to be written as part of larger story arcs within the series.  So Books 1-3, 4-5, 6-8, 9-10, and 11-12 all kind of form their own mini-arcs, and even those groupings can sort of be combined into major arcs covering Books 1-5 and Books 6-10 in two major arcs respectively.  A Killing Frost fits very strongly into an arc that seemed to begin with Book 11 (and I suspect will continue/conclude with Book 15), responding almost directly to that very book's events, in which Simon Torquill - one time big bad of the series who started his redemption arc in book 8, decides to sacrifice himself for his daughters, giving up his way home so that August (his biological daughter) could regain hers and October (his stepdaughter) could rescue her fiance and friend from her mother.  The result was that all of the development back towards being good that he had made was wiped out, and Simon fled, determined to harm October by awakening his Lady.  The following two books in the series dealt with other problems created by that same book but ignored Simon, and finally this book deals with the ramification of Simon's decision on Toby's life.

It's a plot that works because the characters involved are so damn compelling.  Simon's redemption arc was incredibly well done, and while his actions are certainly horribly wrong from a sense of human morality, you can at least understand them from a Fae sense, and that's built upon here, as Toby once again has to deal with a devastatingly powerful evil - but still recognizably him - version of Simon.  And the story further examines Toby's own actions towards her fiance and to the idea of finally being married, after a long long engagement, in a way that forces her and the reader to confront the fears that have been underlying quite a few recent books in the series.  It all works really damn well.

And well, of course the plot's generally pretty good too, taking us mainly to some old places we've seen or heard of before, but in new and very different ways.  This is not nearly a retread of a journey like Books 11 and 12 were (in which the quests literally took the reader to places we've either been to or been in the very same contexts before) and it generally works really well, ending in a satisfying way and providing not just more teases for long term plot reveals, but one major shock reveal in the ending.  That shock reveal is probably the weakest thing about this book individually incidentally - while I can buy that McGuire will make that reveal work in future books in the series (it feels almost out of nowhere in this book outside a line from a prior book I had to go back and look up), there isn't really enough build up to the reveal in this book making it feel very much like a deus ex machina ending (I'll talk more in specifics about this in the spoilery post).

So yeah, that deus ex machina-y part of the ending is a downer that prevents this book from reaching the upper upper echelon of this series (Books 6, 8, and 13 for me), but it's still pretty high up there, and the ending chapter features an event that is so utterly joyful that it will make even the most jadest reader smile.  Cannot wait for Book 15, especially given that I suspect it will involve some pretty major events.

PS:  This novel also contains a bonus novella, Shine in Pearl, which features the old story of Dianda and Patrick, and the moment in which their romance took its final step towards marriage (and contains a little more than that).  It's a really lovely novella, building upon the short stories between the pair that I have always absolutely loved (the second, Shore to Shore, is maybe my favorite October Daye story ever) and tying in to the main story as well in ways that are almost devastating - even when you know what's coming in the future from the main series to make up for the devastation.  A really strong novella addition.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)