Silver and Lead by Seanan McGuire

A marvelous book, a tad smaller in scope than the last two but no less impactful.  

I love Seanan McGuire’s body of work. (Note: I review a bunch of her books so I am copying part of some of my other reviews here to save time.). She has quickly become my favorite living writer and I feel very lucky that she is so prolific. I was first introduced to her work when her book Parasite, written as Mira Grant, was nominated for a Hugo Award. I loved it and quickly devoured the Newsflesh series before I realized that Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire were the same person. 

I started reading her works under her own name, starting with Sparrow Hill Road, which is amazing, but I picked it because I was intimidated by her long running October Daye series. I had read some Urban Fantasy before, and I fondly remember Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde books, but my tastes run more to science fiction and then secondary world fantasy, so I was hesitant to dive into such a long series. I picked up the first book, Rosemary and Rue, when it was on sale as a kindle daily deal, and I found it somewhat disappointing compared to her other work. I reminded myself that it was her first published novel, so I cut it some slack. Then Incryptid was nominated for the Best Series Hugo in 2018 and I dove into that instead. I loved it! So I vowed to give Toby another chance. And I was so glad that I did! It is now one of my favorite series. 

October Daye is perpetually on the top of my best series Hugo ballot - she deserves to win. This type of excellent in a long running series is what this award was designed for and none of the other nominees come close.

I was overjoyed when Tor and NetGalley awarded me an eARC of their first October Daye book after the series switched publishers because we have been waiting a long time to find out what the fallout of was of Toby and a large chunk of Faerie was totally ensorcelled. This was another amazing entry in this series and I cannot wait to devour the next one!

 

This book picks up several months after the end of the last one. It felt a little bit like when your favorite sitcom picks up after summer break and the characters tell you that not much has happened in the past few months. Toby is a few weeks from her due date and has been effectively sequestered by her family, who are concerned about her safety and the safety of the pregnancy. I would’ve had a lot of harder time reading this book if I didn’t trust Seanan McGuire so much as an author. I know that she is never going to have her characters be raped, and I believed that she would not hurt or kill this baby. 

This book had a couple of blasts from the past show up again to cause trouble, and it really made me wish that I had done a complete reread before this book. My plan is to get all of the audiobooks and listen to them before the next volume comes out. But she did a good job catching people up on what was going on. Is it bad that one of my favorite parts of the book was a tease for the future? Once again, Marcia popped up in a very tiny role and I can’t wait to find out what that reveal is going to be.

Many of the secondary characters got a moment to shine in this book, though I would have liked to see a little bit more of Jazz. I feel like she is often sidelined. 

But that is a minor quibble. This book was a fantastic page turner from beginning to end.