This post is for a spoilery discussion of the 16th novel in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series, Be the Serpent. If you are interested in the series and want to speculate on what the events of this book 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 this book, go HERE.
You have been warned.
In my last spoilery discussion post, after book 15, I noted the dual theories out there that Stacy was secretly Titania and that Marcia (absent from book 15) was secretly Maeve. So of course when this book's plot summary came out and referenced a very old ally turning out to be a secret enemy, one related to the Rides - well, the obvious question became: Is this going to be about Marcia/Maeve or Stacy/Titania. Well Marcia isn't in this book, and Stacy is quite clearly the subject from the moment the main plot gets going. So yeah, as I sort of hinted in the spoiler-free review, the reader will have figured out that Stacy is Titania basically from the start of this book, which is a bit frustrating because of how long it takes Toby to even realize Stacy is the culprit rather than a victim - she basically needs to have it spelled out for her by Oberon, and again this makes sense (there's magic preventing her from asking too many questions about Stacy, and even without it she'd hardly want to believe her best friend could be responsible for the murder of her daughter) in character but it's frustrating as a reader.
But once the book gets over that oh my god. Titania when manifested is just as evil as we've been led to believe - and the discrepancy between her and Stacy is due to magic and Titania being locked in her subconscious essentially, not due to Titania being less bad - and with Oberon being an asshole, Toby is forced to try and defeat her....and possibly kill her best friend....almost entirely on her own. We learn about the origins of Faerie that were only previously hinted at - the Heart of Faerie is essentially a sort of sentient cosmos that birthed the Three...who turned out to be more gods than their Firstborn children, and the Heart requires sacrifice to make up for the losses of the Three...hence the Rides. When Titania (who naturally was behind everything) engineered Janet's breaking of Maeve's Ride, Maeve went in place of the sacrifice to try and buy time....although this was not enough....and the Heart made the rest of the realms of Faerie other than the Summerlands impossible to live in without those realms consuming the Fae inhabitants....apparently? (Annwn, the only deep realm we've seen, seems fine?).
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