Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsDeaths and Revelations
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2021
Late Eclipses is difficult to review because almost anything I tell you about it will be a spoiler. So, let's start by talking about where we are when the story starts and how we got here. In the previous October Daye novel, An Artificial Night, Toby killed Blind Michael, one of the firstborn, for good and sufficient reasons. By this act she broke Oberon's Law forbidding the killing of pureblood faery, and her life is therefore forfeit, in principle. Any enemy who wants to kill her has the right, if said enemy can collect on it. But we all know that killing Toby is easier said that done. Survival, as Toby herself acknowledges, is her great talent.
Toby has enemies. These include the Queen of Mists, who is head honcho of San Francisco Bay Area faery, and also Toby's sort-of relatives by marriage Rayseline Torquill and Oleander de Merelands. These people hate Toby to the point of wanting her dead. It is not at all clear exactly why they hate Toby so, but they do, and they are prepared to act on their desire. In fact, they are even willing to produce a few more corpses in order to facilitate disposing of Toby.
We knew all that, so I'm not counting what I just wrote as a spoiler. It is perhaps a bit of a spoiler in the sense that I'm implying that certain things you already knew are going to be particularly relevant. So, we launch into a tale of murder and vicious palace intrigue. Since you presumably know that the October Daye series continues for another 11 novels, it's a safe guess that Toby will survive these straits in some form. Will she survive unchanged? I'm not telling.
I'm giving this one five stars because I like dark stories, and because we learn a lot of new information about key characters, their origins and natures.
