A Divided Duty by Seanan McGuire

 

A very enjoyable installment of one of my favorite serieses (series? Series’s?).  

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 excellence 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 next October Daye book.

 

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 settling in to life as a sleep deprived mother to a young baby and trying to keep her liege’s daughter in her home to allow her to heal after her trauma in previous books. 

Of course, like many of these books, there is a kidnapping and Toby has to go on a quest back to Blind Michael’s lands by the light of a candle. It was fantastic to return to this locale and to think on how much Toby has grown since the last time. 

My one big complaint in this book is how the author deals with Toby’s new motherhood (I have other complaints about how the author deals with Toby’s relationship with her first daughter, Gillian, but that’s a discussion for a different book). Ms. McGuire’s books are usually so well researched and well thought out, so I was surprised at how unrealistically she treated Toby’s breastfeeding. (Perhaps she has had no close friends, editors, or beta readers with this experience?) Basically, Toby is gone for hours/days on an adventure while the baby is at home drinking previously pumped milk. That’s all well and good, but during that time she doesn’t pump, has no pain or even discomfort, and no leakage. Even in a fantasy world of fairies and monsters this is too hard to swallow. It really took me out of the story. 

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