Silver and Lead is the 19th mainline book in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series of urban fantasy novels, one of my favorite ongoing series out there. It's the first book in basically 2 years, and also takes place after a major two part event in the series that took place over books 17 (Sleep No More) and 18 (The Innocent Sleep). I'm not going to spoil those books or that even before the jump (after is fair game), but it was a major gamechanger in terms of the mental states of the characters. This is something McGuire has kind of done a bunch of times in the series, and often it is followed by a novel that keeps up the stakes but ends in a way that calms things down into a more stable and temporarily happier status quo.
Silver and Lead doesn't quite go in that direction as much, (we end up with a new status quo change that is kind of happier but still extremely tense), and while it's another solid October Daye novel (I think my low score for any of these book is a 7.5, just to be clear), I struggled with some parts of this novel for a few reasons. We again have one old antagonist returning in a bit role, whose capabilities the main characters should be well beyond at this point, so say nothing of the "new" central antagonist. That's to be expected after our last book had one of the 3 essentially gods of Faerie as an antagonist I guess, but it rung me wrong. The central surprise antagonist of this book is what kind of saves this one from being one of the other books with this similar issue (Book 12, Night and Silence, comes to mind), and I'm intrigued on how things go from here so October Daye fans should still be satisfied, especially with the tease at the end of this book.
Spoilers for Books 1 through 18 below, I can't talk around them further here. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. I may post a spoilery post also for this book after this book's actual release too.
Plot Summary:
October "Toby" Daye is trying not to go crazy. She's almost through the end of her third trimester of pregnancy, dealing with all the usual and difficult pregnancy symptoms (movement issues, trouble keeping things down, etc), and this isn't being made easier by her husband Tybalt and her friends and family smothering her in the name of protecting her. If she didn't know how badly they all were also traumatized by Titania's illusion she would've snapped ages ago, but she understands how much they're struggling with their own lives and realities...even if it's driving her crazy.
So when Arden asks her to go on a mission to find and recover the treasures and deadly faerie artifacts that were stolen from the Queen's knowe (thanks to Titania's intervention causing a security lapse), Toby is enormously grateful to have some reason to get out of house. But investigating the theft will take her not only to the home of an old fashioned fae noble who shares Titania's ideals, but will also cause her to come face to face with a figure from her past....one who was affected by Titania's illusion in ways October could never have expected and who now aims her anger over what happened squarely at October.....
Gonna get this out of the way quickly, I'm a cis guy, but one who just had a child in June 2024, so it was kind of hard for me to truly buy how October is able to act in this one - first as a near term third trimester pregnant woman and then afterwards. I get that she's not fully human and her fae blood makes her recover super fast from anything, but I don't know I had trouble buying that the biggest troubles Toby would deal with would be a lack of mobility, food cravings, and an inability to keep things down, and that she otherwise can kind of act like she always does here. Again, magic, and every pregnancy is different even in our world, but just it colored my view of this book.
ANYHOW, for the most part, Silver and Lead is a pretty classical Toby novel. She gets a quest, gets herself massively into trouble as a result of going in without planning properly, gets out of trouble and figures out what's going on, and has to save herself and people she cares about from danger. This is not a bad thing - there's a reason I'm still largely reading this novel after 18 prior books and countless other stories both in the books and on her patreon account. Toby's voice is still great, and my pregnancy issues aside, it's always fun seeing how she gets in and out of trouble, and the story deals excellently with the serious issues and traumas that have occurred throughout the series so far, especially after Titania's illusions massively shifted how people saw themselves and others in the last two books. McGuire's great dialogue and character work remains excellent here and the story itself does move the overall series myth arc along at least a little bit, with one major figure showing up here in a big way and the series' most obvious and multi-books long tease of a reveal coming closer to FINALLY happening (It's teased to possibly happen maybe next book, as the character it relates to shows up here again in both the novel and the attached novella for the first time in a while) - I won't say much more about that, but if you know, you know.
That said, a few other things prevented this from being as amazing a Toby novel as some of the others. For one - and this was always going to be somewhat of a problem - the power level of the antagonists here just seems to be SOOOO much lower than in the prior few books, such that it's hard to get why Toby and her family should have so much trouble with them. I get Toby's pregnant, but we're dealing with ordinary fae (or fae-adjacent) people here - the usual prejudiced power hungry assholes who we've seen throughout since the very first book, and while only a few characters in story could compare to Titania, it just feels like kind of a letdown. This leads into my other problem - a bunch of the family characters wind up getting captured off-page and it feels insanely like "what??
But again, overall this is a solid October Daye novel, which leaves me tremendously wanting for more like now, please? Oh and as usual, this book comes attached with a novella (Seas and Shores) from the perspective of a side character, in this case Simon, as he deals with the end of Dianda's pregnancy. It ends on a happy note which compliments the actual novel really well. So if you're a fan of this series, you won't leave disappointed.
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