I have a lot of problems with these books.
First and foremost, everything is a big fucking soap opera that revolves around our protagonist, a smart-aleck changeling (half-blood) who doesn't seem to be particularly likeable but for some reason everyone loves her and puts up with her anyway. I mean, her personality is hugely appealing to the reader, with snide comments and quick sharp wit, but I can't see for the life of me why the other characters like her so much. Any of them.
Or indeed why they all hate her so much. Every single person in the land of Faerie seems to fall into one of those two categories, and if they don't, they're not mentioned. She can't be so special.
I like her relationship with her squire, Quentin. They dick around amusingly whatever the situation. Everyone else, what the fuck? Really? None of the love interests make sense to me, especially the King of Cats, who should by all rights not be giving a flying fuck about October or what she does. He did have professional interest at first, I get that: October was turned into a fish for fourteen years, and upon her return he was suspicious of her and kept tabs on her to make sure she wasn't really an impostor or anything. Fine. Then he got suspicious about her bloodline, which is something most purebloods would concern themselves with. Fine. But the rest?? There's no good reason for him to care about her the way he does. It makes no sense and I don't like it.
There's also too many little tiny (or sometimes not so tiny) intimate moments for them to retain any sort of emotional power. Those kinds of moments should be used sparingly for that very reason. The eleventh time in the same chapter that someone is running for their life, touching someone tenderly on the cheek, or crying hysterically over a dead body, I stop caring altogether (yes, I'm hyperbolizing, but that's what it feels like).
Everything is also extremely personal. If someone is trying to take down the Duke and Duchess of Shadowed Hills, a big part of their motivation is that they hate October. If October is shot, stabbed, clawed, poisoned, or passed out, but does not end up dying, it's because her friends don't have anything better to do than save her ass because they love her so much. If October dies, her mother brings her back to life. If someone tries to start a war, they also kidnap October's daughter, because that just makes so much sense when you think practically, and not because they simply want to piss her off. Right?
There's also so much fangirl catering- there's formal Courts in faerie, and because October's so damn special she gets to go to them all the time, wearing lovely formal gowns even though of course she'd much, much rather be wearing jeans. Cry me a river already.
Also given everything that has happened to Toby in her lifetime, she should be emotionally, mentally, and physically broken. And she should have been those things a long time ago. No one goes through all that shit unscathed. Not that she's described as unscathed, sure, she has nightmares and whatnot, but what she really should be is locked up in a padded room because her mind's literally snapped. But no, we can just brush it off.
Also, I can't put them down.
I went through An Artificial Night, Late Eclipses, and One Salt Sea in the past five days. A Local Habitation remains my favorite, because everything wasn't so incredibly personal yet, the awful love interests hadn't quite developed, and overall it was just a great creepy little story. Recommend? Yes. There's just also things about them that bother me is all, and I really may just be nitpicking. I'm sure there's fangirls out there who would love to see Tybalt and Toby shag each other, and if so, please enlighten me as to why this would be a good direction for the plot to go in. I really just don't see it.
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