Title: The Winter Long
Author: Seanan McGuire
Series: October Daye, book 8
Narrator: Mary Robinette Kowal
Genre: urban fantasy, fay
Opening sentence:
The woods were dark, filled with strange shadows.
I preordered the ebook a few weeks back and I was very excited when The Winter Long showed up in my Kindle app the other day. However I had not read more than about a page, when I realised that something was wrong and I realised that normally I read this series as audiobooks. I was missing Kowal’s narration enough to go buy more credits on audible.com and grab the audiobook version. The book was just wrong without the voices. Especially Tybalt just isn’t the same without it. So after getting the audiobook, this was a great read!
I am very happy that I reread the series last year when Chimes at Midnight (my review) came out because so many old plot points were brought back up. It was very much a story that revisited old assumptions about how Toby’s reality looked. Toby has to deal with the fact that a great deal of what she thought she knew about her own history was just not right. She has to look at her past and re-examine it and deal with the wrong assumptions.
She not only has to question her past, she also has to take a long hard look at both her allies and her enemies. Some of those she thought were her friends and allies isn’t. This is something I think will have more fallouts in the next book.
Once again the characters are amazing and the moments between them is what makes this series. There is also action, sassy banter, romance and quiet moments. It is another solid installment in the series. I think a reread of the first book will make me enjoy this one even more.
A lot of ends were tied up with this book. It is clear that McGuire had planned the series to be about this long, but I just heard that she plan to write a bunch more in this series (hurra!). I for one is looking forward to more. I am not prepared to leave Toby and the crew behind and there are definitely more stories to be told in the universe.
As a sidenote I am so happy for Toby and Tybalt – they seem to have such a good relationship – which is surprisingly rare in fiction.
The stats
Published: 2014 by DAW
Read: September 03 to 06, 2014
Format: audiobook
The author: female, white, USA
The protagonist: October “Toby” Daye, female, white, straight, knight, Hero, able-bodied.
Setting: San Francisco, present day