Night and Silence (October Daye #12) - SPOILERS

Night and Silence by Seanan McGuire

And we're back into another chaotic adventure with Toby. In the aftermath of THE BRIGHTEST FELL, I expected this one to continue unpacking some of the emotional punch that we ended that one with, but it sort of jumped right into another emotional punch. Maybe that's just how Toby's life works? As a result though, it wasn't my favorite October Daye book. I'm hooked on just about anything Seanan writes in this world, but I'd like a little more continued character development rather than all-action-all-the-time in the next installment, please. Anyways, Tybalt is traumatized, withdrawn and not very present at the beginnings of the story, so when Toby is woken up by Cliff & Miranda banging on her door to accuse her of kidnapping Gillian, she doesn't have as much backup as usual when she charges into following Gillian's trail.

What she finds is . . . interesting. Unexpected. The BIG revelations & my reactions:

1. Finding out that Miranda was one of Oberon's lovers and consequently Amandine's mother. Which means she is Toby's grandmother and Gillian's great-grandmother, who is now married to Toby's ex and raising her great-granddaughter as her daughter. It's weird. Immortality is usually weird when it mixes with humanity, but really, this is weird. So Miranda is basically immortal. She's also apparently learned absolutely nothing from being the only human we know of to be privy to literal centuries of access to faerie, and makes stupid decisions that endanger Gillian. She's done everything she can to remove October from Gillian's life, and to keep the fae away from her in general, she might as well have put a target on her back. We don't yet know the amount of damage that this will do. (Side note: the Tam Lin story was a nice addition.)
2. Evening is awake. Again. And kidnapping Gilly. Again. She needs a new past-time, and to be less terrible.
3. She's being helped by Doogan. Who we assumed had died in the iron-filled dungeon. Upon finishing the book, I had difficulty believing that Toby couldn't recognize the scent of his magic. Even if she thought he was dead. She's recognized scents of people she thought dead before now, but I guess we'll chalk this one up to her being thrown off by worrying about Gilly & Tybalt being unstable or MIA for most of this book.
4. The Baobhan Sith is a great new character. I hope we see her more, and I'm glad she's free of Evening.
5. Jocelyn is not a great new character. I mean, she reads as real, she's just a terrible, self-serving person. I don't actually want to spend much time on her, so I won't.
6. GILLIAN IS FAE! SQUEEE! At least until the elf shot is out of her blood in 100 years, but for now living as fae is better than dying. A review of this book wouldn't be complete without mention of the novella Suffer a Sea Change. The novella was the best part of the book in my opinion. Gillian & Firtha's conversations were fantastic. We finally get to meet one of the Roane! . . . The other great thing about Gillian being back in Faerie is that when she meets the Luidaeg, she doesn't know she's supposed to be scared of her and she gives So. Much. Sass. It was fun to see someone clap back at the Luidaeg a bit.

All in all, it was a good enough read, and I chose to focus on the big intriguing things rather than the parts that bothered me (like is Jazz ok? We hardly saw her, and she got the same Amandine treatment as Tybalt). The questions & unresolved plot-lines are really starting to stack up, and I read the first books so long ago that details are fuzzy. It may be time for a series reread just to get a few more details in place before the next one comes out.