Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on October 24, 2023 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
The Innocent Sleep is technically the 18th book in Seanan McGuire's urban fantasy "October Daye" series. I say technically because the book is a unique oddity - whereas the first 17 novels in the series all are told from the first person perspective of series protagonist October "Toby" Daye,, The Innocent Sleep takes place instead from the perspective of major supporting character Tybalt, Toby's Cait Sidhe companion (and spoiler alert: something more than that). Even more different - this book doesn't tell a fully new story but instead tells the story of the timespan of book 17, Sleep No More (reviewed here), from the perspective of Tybalt as he tries to figure out what's going on and what to do about it. So in a way this is really book 17.5 rather than book 18.
This is not a bad thing at all and The Innocent Sleep more than justifies its existence. Tybalt not only is present for a lot of scenes referenced in Sleep No More, but his different approach and attitude makes him a fascinating character in his own right, with his own motivations all being all over the place but also understandable. He also has quite a bit of the old ingenuity that Toby is missing in her own story (for the reasons set forth in that setting) and it's really fun to see Tybalt deal with the horror through such human and non-fae (and sometimes fae) know-how. Add in some excellent character work to showcase the mental struggle Titania's actions have put Tybalt in, and well...this book is honestly a highlight in the series. You shouldn't read it before Sleep No More, but you should definitely read it afterwards rather than try to skip to book 19. And as a bonus, you get an excellent novella showcasing the perspective of Helmi as she came to first serve Dianda Lorden and then got to experience the events we've seen in the series....
Further discussion of this book is below. Note: Spoilers for Books 1-16 (Be the Serpent) are inevitable and unlabeled in this review after the jump. Spoilers for this book and Book 17 (Sleep No More) will not be revealed as much as possible My spoiler-filled post to discuss both this book and Sleep No More can be found HERE.
Plot Summary:
After another crisis had seemingly been averted - the return of Titania from the ashes of one of Toby's oldest friends - Tybalt had just heard what might've been the happiest news possible: Toby is pregnant with their child. And then Titania showed up on their doorstep once more....and suddenly everything changed.This is not the first story McGuire has written from the perspective of Tybalt - there's at least one free side short story from Tybalt's perspective available on McGuire's website (or included as part of a prior novel, I can't remember), and McGuire has been putting out prequel stories featuring Tybalt's times in his youth for years on her Patreon. These prequel stories showcase Tybalt's struggles in his youth with his conflicting desires - his loyalty to his people, the Cait Sidhe, his love of those he considers his family, and those he has fallen in romantic love or just plain friendship with. At the same time, those stories showcase Tybalt as he is incredibly practical as he deals with prejudice, florid language, and the fact that he's constantly facing forces far more powerful than himself, despite his disdain for them. They're a lot of fun, if frequently tragic in their happenings and tones.
Now, Tybalt awakens to find himself in a world that is horribly different from the one he knows, with most people unaware that something has changed. The Cait Sidhe and Fae Cats are locked inside the Courts of Cats, with no one other than the royal cats able to use the Shadow Roads to try to get food. Tybalt can find no way himself at first of entering the rest of Faerie as both Muir Woods and the Luidaeg are nowhere to be found. As is, to Tybalt's growing horror, Toby.
Tybalt will stop at nothing to correct these wrongs. First, he needs to help save his own subjects so they can survive this changed world and allow him his freedom once more. And then he needs to find October, figure out what has gone wrong, and figure out how to respond so that she is safe and sound. But he'll soon find out that this new false world is far deeper than he could have imagined, and that the October he finds is heartbreakingly different from the one he knows and loves...and may not want to change back.....
The Innocent Sleep feels like a longer version of such stories. That's not a complaint - it's a really good thing in fact! Tybalt's voice is great as a first person narrator, and his conflicting desires here and his struggles to balance them and do good...and the reckless actions he sometimes takes, all make sense and read really well. So of course, he's especially worried about Toby and her pregnancy (after all his first wife Anne died in childbirth), which makes him overprotective of a person who usually can't avoid danger on her own but now has issues with him because she doesn't even know who he is thanks to Titania's work. And of course he's worried about saving the Cait Sidhe from what Titania has done...which amounts to a slow death sentence if they can't find a way to feed the other cats (no spoilers on how he manages it, but it's clever and made me smile even as it is a way to deal with something truly horrible). And then there's the fact that Tybalt isn't unrestrained as he once was and doesn't want to say...harm those he knows Toby loves in reality when those same people wind up in opposition to him in this new one created by Titania.
The result is a story that is really really effective and really interesting throughout. I was worried we'd just get a story like October's in Sleep No More, in which we only see events that were referenced but not seen in her book, but nothing more. But The Innocent Sleep tells a complete story in its own right, and does so by not skipping the same periods that that book did (the four months since Be the Serpent), which allows for a more interesting discovery of the false world by a character we already know. Honestly, while it made sense for us to lose the fearless reckless as hell October we know and love in that book, it did make that book a bit more of a drag to get through, whereas here The Innocent Sleep has the Tybalt we know and love, if put through a hell of Titania's making that is definitely horrifying until the happy ending. Not really much more to say here in this non-spoiler review, but I'll try to address a little more in my spoiler discussion post, which I'll link HERE.
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