Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Release Date: September 5, 2023
Publisher: DAW Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Urban Fantasy
October is very happy with her life as the second daughter of her
pureblood parents, Amandine and Simon Torquill. Born to be the
changeling handmaid to her beloved sister August, she spends her days
working in her family’s tower, serving as August’s companion, and
waiting for the day when her sister sets up a household of her own.
Everything is right in October’s Faerie. Everything is perfect.
Everything is a lie.
October
has been pulled from her own reality and thrown into a twisted
reinterpretation of Faerie where nothing is as it should be and
everything has been distorted to support Titania’s ideals. Bound by the
Summer Queen’s magic and thrust into a world turned upside down, October
has no way of knowing who she can trust, where she can turn, or even
who she really is. As strangers who claim to know her begin to appear
and the edges of Titania’s paradise begin to unravel, Toby will have to
decide whether she can risk everything she knows based on only their
stories of another world.
But first she’ll have to survive this
one, as Titania demonstrates why she needed to be banished in the first
place—and this time, much more than Toby’s own life is at stake.
Sleep No More, by Seanan McGuire, is the 17th installment in the authors October Daye series. This story takes place 4 months after Be the Serpent, so if you have not read that book yet, you must be warned that spoilers will likely be part of this review. Sorry. It is October 28, 2015, and the world as Toby Daye knew it, has been fundamentally changed. If you did read Be the Serpent, you know a few things both good and bad happened. First, Toby finally found a moment of happiness, and just told Tybalt a huge secret after yet again, saving the universe.
Right at that moment, someone who just happened to be Toby's best friend, or so she thought, revealed that she was actually the once banished Queen of Summer. Even though Titania can't touch Toby, she can make her someone else's problem and that is Amandine the Liar. Toby gets pulled into a twisted reinterpretation of Faerie where nothing is as it should be and everything has been distorted to support Titania’s ideals. Bound by the Summer Queen’s magic and thrust into a world turned upside down, October has no way of knowing who she can trust, where she can turn, or even who she really is.
What she knows is that she is handmaiden to her own sister August. That Simon and Amandine are still together and apparently happy. Where changelings are afraid of what happens during what's called Moving Day when they can move from place to place and hopefully find someone who won't fail to give them shelter. Basically, changelings are once again free to be killed without penalties. Titania's Utopia covers several faerie realms in the vicinity of San Francisco. Everyone there has been brainwashed to perceive a distorted history that makes a world as Titania believes it should be.
For instance, shapeshifters (Cu Sidhe and Cait Sidhe among them) died out long ago, and the Undersea is uninhabited. Things begin to get really interesting when Li Qin Zhou, the Duchess of Dreamer's Glass, wife of one January O' Leary, requests the presence of one of Sylvester's bloodline, and Toby volunteers to go. The first cracks of this "perfect" world show when Toby gets a taste (literally) of another life and reality. Later, Toby ends up in the Kingdom of the Golden Shores where she meets a familiar face to readers of this series, Arden and her brother Nolan.
As strangers who claim to know her begin to appear, including a really angry Tybalt, Toby will have to decide whether she can risk everything she knows based on only their stories of another world. There are moments in this book where you really have to feel for Toby. Does she want to go back to the way things were when she was constantly covered in blood? Or, can she live in this new utopia with a Queen who hates anyone not a pureblood, most especially Toby who has managed to stop her time and time again?
*Thoughts* I am really grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book, as well as the next book in the series which is told from the narrative of Tybalt. It was painful seeing Quentin being such a rotten person when it came to Toby and other changelings. One could say that he got a front row seat to the real bigotry that purebloods have been doing to changelings throughout history. Loved the fact that Luidaeg is more of a hero this time out than Toby and almost comes close to claiming Toby as family. Even though she's not a kickass hero for the entire story, her abilities with blood are the reason Titania's Utopia ends up having large cracks in it to exploit.
McGuire ends the book with a bonus novella called Candles and Starlight which actually starts right when Toby's world is getting rearranged. The story is told in the Rayseline, the daughter of Sylvester Torquill, which makes her Toby's cousin. Because of her mother, her uncle Simon, and other powerful fae, Raysel had a super-messed-up childhood. Toby managed to
make Raysel her legal guardian for a year. Just as Raysel is meeting May, and getting settled in, the world around her changes, and she wakes up in the realm of Blind Michael where she also finds Dean. I won't say anymore.
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