awakeTHERE WILL BE SPOILERS.
Seriously. If anyone comments here at all, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. So please don't read and then yell at me because you encountered spoilers. You were warned. (I will not reply to every comment; I call partial comment amnesty. But I may well join some of the discussion, or answer questions or whatnot.) I will be DELETING all comments containing spoilers which have been left on other posts. No one gets to spoil people here without a label.
You can also start a discussion at my website forums, with less need to be concerned that I will see everything you say! In case you wanted, you know, discussion free of authorial influence, since I always wind up getting involved in these things.
Have fun, and try not to bleed on the carpet.
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September 2 2014, 07:01:20 UTC 2 years ago
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September 2 2014, 10:51:52 UTC 2 years ago
It was really nice to see a bit more of Raysel, I have a disproportionate fondness for her.
September 2 2014, 17:52:11 UTC 2 years ago
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September 2 2014, 11:33:23 UTC 2 years ago Edited: September 2 2014, 13:03:10 UTC
I mean. First and foremost, the way this book completely shifts everything we thought we knew. It is so clearly the beginning of something much bigger. And I hadn't previously thought that the canvas of the storytelling was small. But suddenly it's a whole universe.
And omg. Toby and her abilities. The Luidaeg and her endless awesomeness. Amandine. The Winterrose. as;dlfkjasd;flkjasdf;lksajdf;lasdkjfa;sd
TYBALT my heart!!! God, he was written just for me (and, er, all the rest of y'all who love him this much -- I just mean, it feels as though he was written via a direct line to my id) and the end of the book send me into over-the-moon raptures of squee.
Like I said, still incoherent. But I love this universe beyond the telling. And its characters. And I completely trust that we are in the best of hands -- that Seanan knows exactly where all of this is going, and is somehow keeping track of these zillion threads in the weave, and is going to carry us exactly where she wants us to go.
(ETA: for those who are not Seanan and therefore might enjoy reading fic, I've written a wee something set immediately after the book: They sought the remedy.)
September 2 2014, 15:45:53 UTC 2 years ago
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September 2 2014, 17:46:23 UTC 2 years ago
ACK. ACK. ACK. And nifty, and ack and eeeeeeeeeeenteresting.
September 4 2014, 10:21:18 UTC 2 years ago
September 2 2014, 17:59:15 UTC 2 years ago
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SERIOUSLY.
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...Simon wasn't the one behind the enfishening. Simon was hired to kill Toby, and actually chose "tranformed" over "dead".
But WHY did Evening want Toby dead? Speculation: Concern that Toby couldn't be controlled and was too loyal to Sylvester?
I also note that according to Rosemary & Rue, Evening supported the pretender Queen. Wonder if Queen Arden threw a wrinkle in Evening's plans in The Winter Long....
September 2 2014, 18:12:33 UTC 2 years ago
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September 2 2014, 21:14:10 UTC 2 years ago
The Luidaeg and the key was awesome. Actually, everything involving the Luidaeg was awesome. It's such fun when she comes off the bench. ...Oh, hey, it's been more than a year since One Salt Sea. *rubs hands with glee*
Look at Toby, leveling up. Can she learn to break a geas, or elf-shot? Hmm.
September 3 2014, 09:00:55 UTC 2 years ago
Until I find out otherwise, I'm assuming that the Luidaeg was saying, "I guarantee you have at least a year. After that, you will have to be ready to move when I snap my fingers."
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September 3 2014, 00:56:53 UTC 2 years ago Edited: September 3 2014, 00:57:23 UTC
Over time we've discovered no, Toby has a LOT more relatives. She just didn't know they were relatives. Luna's her cousin, Acacia & The Luidaeg are her aunts, Blind Michael was an uncle (eew)....and now we have Stepfather Simon, Uncle Sylvester, and Auntie Evening. There's a lot of history there, such as Toby's changing relationship with Luna and Sylvester.
Then contrast that with Toby's chosen family: May, Tybalt, Quentin, Raj, Jazz.
Very well done.
September 3 2014, 12:59:29 UTC 2 years ago
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September 3 2014, 02:25:10 UTC 2 years ago
This book! This book!
First of all, I've been waiting for that proposal since they first kissed. It was utterly adorable. Second, the stuff between the Luideag and the Winterrose. That was just... feels. Really feels. And I knew Amandine had more children. I'm still not sure what happened to August though. I got a sense of Blind Michael?
I can also see how this book had to have been plotted before anything else. Because you really can't read it without understanding everything that has come before.
Marvelous, really marvelous.
September 3 2014, 09:14:11 UTC 2 years ago
We know that the Dochas Sidhe are important in some way. Perhaps somebody wanted to make sure that August would not fulfill the destiny of the Dochas Sidhe. Presumably, this attempt was not wholly successful, but I don't know how reliable Simon's opinion is in that regard.
Severe paranoia points out that Olivia de Merelands was in the area about the same time that August vanished - and we know who was pulling her strings now.
In my opinion, October appears to be Amandine's attempt to have a child who would not be fae enough to be part of the Dochas Sidhe. She lost one child, and she wanted to have a child that she could keep - somebody who was human enough to escape the job that her bloodline was supposed to do, and the threats that came with it.
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September 3 2014, 03:03:02 UTC 2 years ago
What I DIDNT see coming was Evening being alive holy SHIT. PLOT TWIST TO THE MAX!
One thing that I notice no ones brought up yet is Dawn. Toby was knighted for solving the murder of Evening's sister Dawn, right? So where does Dawn fit into this picture? Is she still alive? Was she Firstborn too???
Also I amend my wish for a spinoff to be The Adventures of Quentin and Raj (guest starring Chelsea). I ship Raj/Chelsea. I ship it so hard.
September 3 2014, 08:33:39 UTC 2 years ago
I didn't remember that! Was there any details about that murder? I just thought, what if (1) Dawn was someone Evening actually killed off to take her place in the Mists? or (2) Dawn IS also Evening, just that someone had killed her, so she couldn't go back as Dawn anymore. I think either might be possible if Toby did not personally know Dawn (because then, she would be able to tell from Evening's magic) but if she did, well, that's kind of out the window.
+1 on the Adventures of Quentin and Raj, guest starring Chelsea.
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September 3 2014, 04:23:10 UTC 2 years ago
My money is on Janet from the Tam Lin song. In An Artificial Night, Toby got taught Tam Lin as a children's song and it talks about how Janet broke Maeve's ride, which, in turn, made her go away. Annie also mentions that Oberon prevents evening from "wiping out the competition" in regards to Amandine and her children. Competition for what / for how?
But more than anything? I love Quentin. And more than anything beyond that? I want to see what happens with the Selkies. We were given a year count-down at the end of One Salt Sea. I want to see me some more heartbreak!
and as always, thank you for writing a novel i was so excited to get and read and re-read.
September 4 2014, 00:45:43 UTC 2 years ago
I forbid ye, ladies all, that wear gold in your hair
To travel down to Carterhaugh now young Tam Lin is there.
We know from Artificial Night that there's a truth under the Tam Lin story.
I bet you are on to something.
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September 3 2014, 04:45:59 UTC 2 years ago
1. Massive revelations with teasing gaps in them.
2. Toby bleeds a lot.
3. The Luidaeg is awesome, also massive revelations with teasing gaps in them.
4. Toby bleeds a lot.
5. Massive revelations with teasing gaps in them.
6. Toby gets cleaned up.
7. Toby bleeds a lot.
8. Toby gets cleaned up again.
9. Toby bleeds a lot, also drinks more blood, triggering more massive revelations with teasing gaps in them.
10. Simon Torquill makes a remark about Toby's lack of humanity, thereby chiming uneasily with my musings on how on Earth Toby can still have more blood left to bleed out.
11. Toby bleeds a lot.
12. Book wraps itself up nicely, feeling reassuringly like a story despite all the teasing gaps in all the massive revelations.
But seriously, it's rare -- and weird! -- for a book consisting mostly of revelations given on the one hand and withheld on the other to feel so satisfying. Stories that rely on mystery are often taunting you with what they are withholding in a way that can make the wait for more information unbearable on the one hand, and the payoff slightly disappointing on the other. But this book tells you things, and makes them meaningful, and somehow manages to keep doing this in a way that is perpetually satisfying in terms of what is revealed and perpetually interesting in terms of what is not revealed. The story just keeps coming out like Toby's infinite blood, and never gives the slightest hint of anaemia.
There's so much more to learn! I'm already speculating on the identity of Amandine's mother. Of course, she could have been born like Athena, fully grown from Oberon's head, but I feel like this would imply a wisdom that the other characters are sure she does not have. (I like the Janet-from-Tam-Lin idea mentioned above, though. I think my favourite possibility is that Amandine's mother might have been mortal. It would just seem sort of thematically appropriate). Then, too, there are all Arden's hints from the last book about the Last Among The First, which are sort of glanced at by the storyline but not mentioned by any of the characters directly, and which I will patiently wait to be enlightened on. I also really, really want the disappearance of the Lord and Ladies to be Toby's ultimate case, but I guess we'll have to wait and see if the story is leading there or not.
September 5 2014, 08:00:58 UTC 2 years ago
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September 3 2014, 06:02:20 UTC 2 years ago
Like oh, I don't know...who the hell is Amandine's mother?! I'm racking my brain trying to think what figure of significance could be old enough to be her mother (even given that she's the youngest of the Firstborn) while not already descended from Oberon in their own right. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Amandine's the ultimate changeling, and her mother was mortal - these being the interesting mix of truths and lies, as if this is true, it would basically upend everything Faerie believes about the limitations of changelings and their place in Faerie.
Its highly significant to me that just as we see Toby really coming into her own and confidently wielding her power to alter the balance of one's blood...the power that allowed her to choose to become more Faerie than human.....immediately after, we learn that Amandine is the daughter of neither of the Queens. That literally the only line in all of Faerie with the power to choose just what they will be, is descended of unknown lineage.
So now, what I'm wondering is this: we know that every race in Faerie has their own unique magic and skills, derived largely from which of the Big Three their Firstborn claimed as parent (children of Oberon wielding blood, children of Titania flowers, and Maeve water. My question then: is the unique magic of each Faerie race random, or is there a pattern to it all? And if the latter, did Oberon, Titania and Maeve have some measure of influence over what magic each of their children would possess?
Because suddenly Amandine and Toby's ability to shift the balance of their own blood seems very interesting to me. If Oberon and his queens DID have the power to influence or even choose what magic their children would possess, then what better magic to gift his only changeling daughter with other than the ability to choose her own fate - live a mortal life like her mother, or choose her father fully and shift her blood to completely Faerie. (Note again how heavy an emphasis this book placed on Faerie's tradition of a child choosing which parent to claim, and this being the basis for all things like inheritance, succession, etc).
So mark me down as someone who thinks Amandine's mother was mortal, a Scottish woman most likely, who raised Amandine until she was old enough to shift the balance of her own blood and become fully Faerie like her father. And I think this has something to do with why she was the Last Among the First, and Oberon and his queens vanished not long after. I think something changed, once the full implications of what Amandine was capable of became clear - making herself into a Firstborn capable of siring a whole race of immortals despite being born mortal herself....that had to upset some delicate supernatural balance, and somewhere in there I think is why the King and Queens had no more children after her and vanished not much later. It was the ultimate fusion of Faerie and the mortal realm, and would have definitely marked a shift in what it meant to be Faerie.
September 3 2014, 06:02:36 UTC 2 years ago
And on a tangential note - is it just me, or is anyone else wondering if somehow, in some way, August isn't October's half-sister, but in fact is October herself? (Or the other way around, more accurately). Not sure how this would work yet, and just a hunch based on a bunch of random observations, but....Simon made it clear that Amandine was as obsessed with finding or regaining their daughter as he was. They just took extremely different views of how to go about that. Add to that the way Evening almost seemed to go back and forth as to whether she viewed Toby as mortal, a changeling, or full Faerie. Sometimes she was saying Toby was one thing, sometimes the other, but there was a definite thread of 'just how mortal are you, Toby, if at all' in there. Something that was supported by a couple of things said by other characters throughout the narrative too. And also Amandine's insistence that Sylvester leave her alone while she raised Toby with Toby's human father, that she wasn't to be interfered with until she was ready to come back to Faerie on her own terms....
Fact is, we don't really have any idea of what Amandine and Toby are actually capable of, and neither do most of the other characters I think. Plenty of characters remember Amandine being pregnant with Toby, Evening makes a point of saying she was at Toby's christening herself....but what if August did die, and Amandine somehow used her magic to retain the essence of August's blood and put it into her new unborn child? I'm not sure how that would work yet exactly, but I feel like maybe there's something there, like Toby was somehow meant to be August reborn, like while pregnant with her Amandine altered her blood (and blood magic according to this book is the magic of memory and theft) and mixed the essence of her lost child into her new one?
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September 3 2014, 08:23:56 UTC 2 years ago
Tybalt and leather pants. YEAH.
Absolutely love the Luidaeg. I love the subtle shift between her and Toby after her death, how they seem a lot more natural and comfortable around each other. That said, I also love the same between Toby and Quentin. I imagine it must feel good for Quentin to not have to be secretive about his past. I missed Raj, I'm glad to see him again and have him around for a bit longer.
Disappointed at Sylvester, but I suppose I'm not surprised. I wonder if it's ever possible for Simon to go back to his mulled-cider-magic ways?
Not looking forward to Evening waking up, and I'm thinking it will be sooner rather than later.
AHHH LOVE THIS BOOK. And I have to say I'm impressed you managed to keep this all in for so many books, your control is amazing hahah.
September 4 2014, 00:53:15 UTC 2 years ago
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September 3 2014, 08:27:46 UTC 2 years ago
I am constantly amazed by Toby's newly expanded power set. It feels right, if shocking, and I have to wonder, when all is said and done, what exactly she will be able to accomplish. The sudden shocks and twists in this book just kept coming. All the pieces coming back from where they'd been seeded in earlier books. It is my absolute favorite so far, as much as it sets the stage for a whole new world to come.
September 3 2014, 12:55:50 UTC 2 years ago
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September 3 2014, 09:25:28 UTC 2 years ago
I still don't know where this will all end up, but I hope to see the whole story.
September 5 2014, 08:08:10 UTC 2 years ago
September 3 2014, 10:07:12 UTC 2 years ago
But holy moly. I'm dying now over what /Amandine's/ lineage is. *grins* You are a tease, Seanan. I had a freak out over the cover and I made comments about Amandine.. and while the book wasn't about Amandine, it really boils down to her lineage, her family and what questions were raised in the questions you answered.
So August-- I had to laugh. Of course it's another month. "What will they do when they run out of months" indeed. But August! A half-sister that is a Dochas Sidhe and she went off towards Blind Michael's lands and where is she nooooow. How long ago was that, that she vanished? Simon. Boy Howdy, Simon. When he showed up-- and then kept on popping up, trying somewhat to be helpful, but not at the same time? Simon is confusing the hell out of me. D: But this is a goood thing.
Evening. Holy mother of sweet cheeses, I was not expecting that curveball. I wasn't expecting to her to A. Be alive, B. be Firstborn (and the Firstborn of Quentin's line!) and C. /Be the bitch that gave the knives to kill Luidaeg's children/. O.O Powerful, scary, ruthless... D: I'd love to have her locked away in the old road forever, but... she's Firstborn. I don't know if that will keep her down for long.
Oh and while we're speaking of Luideag... my roommate and I were actually discussing things that could go wrong in the book before we read it... and the Luidaeg getting hurt/killed was one of them and then wondered who or what could be strong enough to take her out was strong indeed. O.o Well, wasn't expecting that little prediction... *shakes head* I almost cried and hugged the book and couldn't imagine the series without her. I have the strong urge to re-read Rosemary and Rue now so that I could catch all the things that were said that I may have missed.
After all my babbling here-- Seanan, I absolutely loved it and am eagerly awaiting the next for all the questions that may be answered and those questions that will arise again. ^__^
September 4 2014, 00:56:54 UTC 2 years ago
In the middle of the night I was all, "okay, what Firstborn is still around that could have done this....Michael's dead, I don't think it's up Acacia's alley, um....????" WELL PLAYED, SEANAN, WELL PLAYED. DIDN'T SEE THAT ONE COMING DESPITE THE NAMES.
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September 3 2014, 13:20:02 UTC 2 years ago
Seeing Bridget and Chelsea again was nice. And the part with Toby thinking Quentin and Tybalt were dead was heart-wrenching. And OMG! Toby bringing the Luidaeg back from the dead. The Luidaeg actually getting killed in the first place. Evening turning out to be alive and one of the nastier Firstborn. Everything involving Simon! And have I mentioned wanting to punch Evening? Because I really want to punch Evening.
I feel really sorry for the entire Torquill family at this point. "Epically screwed-up" doesn't even begin to cover it. I also feel sorry for Toby with everything she's learned, and with her essentially losing the family she thought she had. Even though she has real support now, that's still pretty painful. Oh, and Amandine's issues suddenly make a whole lot more sense.
So...yeah. This is an amazing book. This series just keeps getting better with every installment- and it was pretty damn good to start with. ^_^
September 4 2014, 00:57:58 UTC 2 years ago
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September 3 2014, 14:21:45 UTC 2 years ago
Thank you for the wonderful stories!
September 3 2014, 23:51:52 UTC 2 years ago
Seanan does love her some Shakespeare.
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September 3 2014, 14:46:54 UTC 2 years ago
I feel very sad about the estrangement between Luna, Sylvester, and Toby, and hope that when Rayseline wakes up, she'll be able to heal the rift somewhat.
On the other hand, Toby & Tybalt forever! When they fell into the ocean, I was afraid that was part of Oleander's prophecy coming true, the one about "you will lose your heart's desire"...
And May, Jazz, Quentin, Raj, the Luidaeg, Arden, Chelsea, even Etienne, continue to be awesome :)
And it was good to see some hope for Rayseline and for Simon, too.
Squeee! Time to re-read books one through seven!
September 4 2014, 20:22:37 UTC 2 years ago
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September 3 2014, 15:17:08 UTC 2 years ago
I was going to wait until this morning to start reading, but I just couldn't. I devoured the book last night. Loved it, loved it, loved it. So many questions, so much to think about, and also, Toby and Tybalt *hearts*. And The Luidaeg. I think she's my favorite character.
I'm going to reread it now, hopefully more slowly, and then I'm going to start back at the beginning. I may even take notes. Or more likely I'll just get caught up in the story and forget everything else.
In short, thank you, Seanan, you are, as always, one hell of a fine writer.
September 5 2014, 09:30:21 UTC 2 years ago
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