An Artificial Night, Seanan McGuire
I enjoy these books a heck of a lot, but I do agree with a lot of the criticism I’m seeing about Toby. She refuses to be helped, she makes everything harder than it needs to be, and she’s not remotely honest with herself about her own motivations for… anything, but mostly her heroism. I’m sort of waiting to see it get someone that she’s allegedly trying to protect killed, just because she won’t think in shades of grey. There are no teeth in her constant desire to protect Quentin, for example — he comes through just fine physically, despite her every statement that he’s going to get killed. It’s remarkably bloodless in that sense, in this book in particular — there was a bit more of a price in A Local Habitation.
That said, I enjoy the lore of this book a lot. Blind Michael is creepy as heck, the use of nursery rhymes and the Tam Lin ballad is a delight, and the Luideag gets a pretty big part to play. We see more of faerie and the rules that bind them, and we get to explore another world.
I enjoy the series a lot, but I’m not sure about the people I know who sneer about, say, Ilona Andrews in comparison. I see a lot of the same tropes in action, and Kate Daniels is more self-aware than October Day. They’re both fun urban fantasy, using different lore in fascinating ways… but nope, Seanan McGuire’s Toby isn’t somehow more literary. If you like this series, you’ll probably also like the Kate Daniels series.
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