TITLE: A Killing Frost (October Daye #14)
AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire
351 pages, DAW Books, ISBN 9780756415082 (hardcover, ebook, audiobook)
DESCRIPTION: (from the inside cover): When October is informed that Simon Torquill—legally her father, due to Faerie's archaic marriage traditions—must be invited to her wedding or risk the ceremony throwing the Kingdom in the Mists into political turmoil, she finds herself setting out on a quest she was not yet prepared to undertake for the sake of her future.... and the man who represents her family's past. Also featuring an all-new novella!
MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
MY THOUGHTS: I received an electronic Advance Reading Copy from DAW Books via NetGalley.
It should be obvious since I’m about to review the FOURTEENTH book in a series, but: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS BOOKS IN THE OCTOBER DAYE SERIES! DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU ARE STILL READING EARLIER BOOKS AND DON’T WANT SOME BIG STUFF TO BE SPOILED FOR YOU!
Also, though, I am very much attempting to NOT spoil any of the big moments of this particular book. Because I don’t like writing reviews that spoil everything. But regardless, people should proceed with caution.
Okay, with the legalese out of the way…
A Killing Frost contains everything readers have come to expect from an October Daye Novel. There’s some adorable domesticity to start things off, then Toby gets a job/assignment/mission (verbiage dependent on who it is telling her to go do what needs doing) and then it’s pretty much pedal-to-the-metal action with occasional deep breaths to let the readers’ heart-rate (and Toby’s blood loss) slow down a bit right up to the big final scene where everything comes together.
But I’ll admit, Seanan had me scared for a little while. Things were moving so fast, and with such twists and complications thrown in Toby’s way, that I seriously thought this book was going to end on a major cliffhanger. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: I think after fourteen books (and a contract in place already to give us at least one more), Seanan has earned the right to maybe end a book with a Big Whopping Oh Shit Cliffhanger. There’s precedent, after all: Butcher’s done it twice now in the Dresden books, and Seanan has done it herself recently in her InCryptid series. BUT, in true Seanan style, the story takes one last swerve and boom – all is right with the world because the mission Toby starts the book with is more than fully wrapped up by the end. I will NOT be telling you HOW it gets wrapped up, but I will say this:
This book is a game-changer for the characters. Most of them don’t know it, but their world has just been rocked in an even larger way than the return of the Roane in The Unkindest Tide. And let’s face it: that was a pretty big change for the world Toby lives in. I really am excited to see reader response once they get to the end of this book and have time to process what this book means for the remainder of the series.
I think it’s also okay to reveal, since Seanan has said it on her Twitter, that the game-changing event of this book is not the big Toby-Tybalt Wedding. We get to wait at least another book for that. But we do get to see Toby and May discussing wedding dresses, and we get to see Toby’s internal monologue about marrying Tybalt (she never quite says they’ve gone from “frenemies to lover,” but she comes close). And of course there’s both romance and conflict between our star couple throughout the book. I love their banter and their more serious talks. I also love how Toby admires Tybalt in leather … I love Tybalt in leather myself … wait, where was I?
While Toby and Tybalt may act as we expect them to throughout the book, some other characters manage to surprise us, which is often not easy to do in a series as long as this one without the moment feeling contrived or out of character. One of Seanan’s many strong points is her ability to give us unexpected character expansion at key moments without derailing the narrative. In A Killing Frost, for instance, there are three characters whose selfishness, which we’ve not seen before or at least not seen the depths of, propel the action of the book. The first selfish action kicks off Toby’s mission to find Simon Torquill (amnesiac and returned to his evil ways after earlier events) and comes from a man who has, up until now, been one of the most self-less and giving supporting characters of the series. He’s had some small moments where he emotionally put his family’s needs first, but nothing compared to this moment. It took me completely by surprise, even made me a bit angry (how dare he put Toby in this position?) until I thought about the character’s history as seen in stories on Seanan’s Patreon … and then his action made perfect sense to me. The second act of selfishness comes from a character we sort of expect it from by now – but the depths of her selfishness, the length she is willing to go to assuage her own pain, is what surprised me. It’s a heart-rending, brutal scene for Toby and for those with her in the moment. I wasn’t just angry as the scene ended, I had angry tears. But again, the behavior made perfect sense for the character once I had a chance to think about how she got to this point. The third character exhibiting unexpected selfishness never even appears in A Killing Frost, but her off-screen behavior is mentioned just often enough that I realized even after fourteen books, Seanan is still seeding in new sub-plots for the supporting characters.
There are also characters who behave exactly as selfishly as we have come to expect (Oh, Amandine…), characters who act exactly as self-less as we expect them too (Hi, May!), and characters who are as impulsive as we expect them to be (Quentin, dude…), so Seanan hasn’t turned the entire world upside down. But she has tilted it quite a bit. Even with all the action, there’s almost more than the usual humor and some time spent showing us romantic relationships outside of the Big Three. (For the record, I consider Toby-Tybalt, May-Jazz and Quentin-Dean to be the Big Three Romances of the series. Your mileage may vary) Plus, Spike the rose-goblin gets some great moments, and who can resist an adorable rose-goblin?
As is normal for the Toby Daye books now, the novel comes with a bonus novella at the back. These novellas usually tie to the main action in some way, so it’s not really a spoiler to say that this one focuses on Simon, Patrick and Dianda at a turning point in their lives back before the Great Earthquake wreaked havoc in the Kingdom of Mists. It’s a lovely three-character piece that tugs at the heart in a number of ways.