The sixteenth October Daye urban fantasy has a lot to follow. So much of BE THE SERPENT depends on what has come before, that I don’t think it’s at all readable for a newcomer. Some fans of the series will be thrilled with any new instalment, and there’s action, twists, and consequences. Having said that, Be The Serpent is my least favourite novel of the series.
Toby Daye is a sometime PI in West Coast America. She’s also a changeling. Having been imprisoned (as a fish) for some years before the start of the series, she has made up for lost time by rescuing and adopting fae youngsters and getting herself recognised as a Knight of the Faerie Realm nearest her home. In the fifteenth story, she got married, to Tybalt, King of the Cait Sidhe or fae cats. So yes, he’s a shapeshifter. Foreseeably, it all goes wrong just when her life should be going right.
Seanan McGuire wrote this book during lockdown. I believe there will in the future be a category recognised as lockdown stress literature. The settings vary from a house of horrors to a Knowe or two, hollow hills of labyrinthine halls and crowded courtly rooms. When Toby is out of doors, it’s on her way to another indoors. The claustrophobia, compared with previous books about undersea life or private eye work, is oppressive. More than that, we get the hard theme of the mother as a monster. I am trying not to give away too much of the plot, but if anyone thinks this theme will be too severe for them to read, they should take the warning. The author notes at the start that she long intended certain factors. Well, authors can have a plan and choose not to write it. Or they can moderate the harm.
Characters in Faerie expand to include Queen Titania, along with The Luidaeg or Sea Witch, who has provided a deus ex machina for Toby in the past. An even more powerful version arrives, Lord Oberon, but he’s actually not inclined to do anything if he can stand back and let Toby do the dirty work. The courtly Fae are too powerful to fight, as they would destroy a great deal and they rather like living forever. The internecine squabbles expand into hatred, over centuries. Toby’s supposed liege lord, Sylvester, just banished her when she grew inconvenient, and at the start, a princess is recovering from being elfshot, got out of the way like Sleeping Beauty. If these people have a dispute, and can’t banish someone, they’d rather a disposable knight went and settled it. The action is good as always, with magic and knives used in equal measure.
BE THE SERPENT does have a conclusion, but then Seanan McGuire continues with what’s really the start of the next book, in order to leave us hanging. At this stage, I feel she is guaranteed sales for the seventeenth book, so a cliffhanger seems unnecessary. Again, stressful real life perhaps caused her to cut fictional happiness short. I have rated some of the series really highly, so readers can make up their minds as to whether this will suit them.
Now in hardcover, the sixteenth novel of the Hugo-nominated, New York Times-bestselling October Daye urban fantasy series.
October Daye is finally something she never expected to be: married. All the trials and turmoils and terrors of a hero’s life have done very little to prepare her for the expectation that she will actually share her life with someone else, the good parts and the bad ones alike, not just allow them to dabble around the edges in the things she wants to share. But with an official break from hero duties from the Queen in the Mists, and her family wholly on board with this new version of “normal,” she’s doing her best to adjust.
It isn’t always easy, but she’s a hero, right? She’s done harder.
Until an old friend and ally turns out to have been an enemy in disguise for this entire time, and October’s brief respite turns into a battle for her life, her community, and everything she has ever believed to be true.
The debts of the Broken Ride are coming due, and whether she incurred them or not, she’s going to be the one who has to pay.
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