Friday, December 15, 2023

Short Book Reviews: The Latest "October Daye" Adventure

 Be the Serpent, by Seanan McGuire (DAW)


I’ve loved Seanan McGuire’s “October Daye” urban fantasy since the very first volume and looked forward to each new installment. Be the Serpent is every bit a treat for long-time fans of the series. It is not, alas, an entry point for the new reader. Long-running series are often burdened by sheer weight of backstory. McGuire is skillful enough to weave in bare-minimum necessary details, but after 15 previous volumes, that amounts to a lot. Even though I had read all the previous volumes, some more than once, I found myself wondering who is this person and when did that happen? I wished for a “refresh my memory” synopsis from time to time, especially when supporting characters had similar names (like Simon and Sylvester, although there aren’t enough letters in the alphabet to give everyone in Toby Daye’s world a name starting with a different letter). I have the greatest sympathy for the poor, unsuspecting reader who tries to jump into the middle of the story. To be fair, there are plot elements that don’t depend on an encyclopedic knowledge of What Has Come Before and are engrossing in their own right.

Be the Serpent has the same delicious blend of Faerie, magic, romance, mystery, and action, not to mention great characters, as has come before. Fans will love it, me among them. If I was disappointed by once-terror-inspiring characters descending to warm-fuzziness, the switch from BFF to arch-enemy more than balanced it out.

The story ends on a partial resolution, a false cadence as it were, promising that the story isn’t over yet. This is great news for fans, maybe not so much for someone still trying to figure out what’s going on.

I tried to read the attached novella, but I kept falling asleep.

 


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