I absolutely loved reading this book! After the ending of Be the Serpent, I needed to know how this story would go! That this reality that Titiana had created, and how it put Toby in this servile role to August, as sisters, because Toby's a changeling...it was infuriating!

Tatiana is the basis of everything wrong with Faery. Sure, Oberon didn't make things better, but that's because he was clueless. Which is bad in its own right, that kind of neglect, but he didn't chose all these wrong things. I don't think Maeve, wherever she is, is causing this harm, but she hasn't done anything as of yet that says, I am Maeve, and I disapprove of this, I fight against this. And that first part is the key qualifier there.

It was interesting to see Toby like this, it was almost like the first book, where she didn't know much about her magic. She does know that she's the daughter of a Firstborn, and that her talent lies with blood, she's just never been allowed to use it, let alone train with it. So watching her learn to use it again was really great!

The thing is, that Toby made a life for herself, that she's very close with August, and there are good things and bad about what she knows about the true reality. But it was still hard, because seeing Tybalt, and knowing what he's worried about, that was hard to read!

Loved how everything worked out! I'm so excited to see how this is going to affect things going forward. I mean, I think it's supposed to last that certain amount of time, but who knows? I love that we're getting another full length book this year and maybe it will go a bit further in time then this one, but I can't wait to see what happens next!

The story of Candles and Starlight was really fantastic! I loved that we got to be in this character's head at this point in time, right before, and the aftermath of, Tatiana's created reality, and why things were the way they were when Toby and company collected them in the main story.

Loved reading these stories, and I can't wait for Tybalt's story of this time! I just love this world and this series so much!

Another fantastic addition to the October Daye series! Toby lives in Summerland with her father, Simon, sister, August, and mother, Amandine. She is a changeling, born to serve her parents and sister. But, in typical Toby fashion, she manages to land herself in trouble. This is obviously an alternate reality, with most of the characters we have seen before. Not everyone has been affected, and slowly, with their help, things are set to right.

A great bonus novella featuring Rayseline, it was really interesting to learn more about her, and her motivations.

Thank you so much Netgalley and Daw for the ARC! Seanan Mcguire never disappoints!

What a tangled web we weave...

Seanan McGuire did a terrible thing. Be the Serpent, book 16 in her October Daye series, ended shortly after a triumphant battle in which Toby and her friends defeated Titania, the evil Summer Queen of Faerie, and forced her to submit to a geas that by all rights, should have kept Toby and her friends safe -- Titania cannot harm Toby or her family. but Titania is ancient and wily. Her final words to Toby are

“I can’t hurt you.” She finally smiled. “But I can make you someone else’s problem.”

And then, in the final chapter we met a new Toby, living with her mother Amandine the Liar and her pureblood sister August as a servant, with her husband Tybalt nowhere in evidence. Clearly Titania found a loophole to subject Toby without "harming" her, within what her geas understands as harm.

So this is where Sleep No More begins. Toby is living in an illusory world crafted by Titania. This is a Toby you will hardly recognize. She is submissive, a timid servant. And it is not just Toby. Titania's Brave New World covers several faerie realms in the vicinity of San Francisco. Everyone there has been brainwashed to perceive a distorted history that makes a world as Titania believes it should be. Several things that Titania believes should not exist do not exist in Titania's illusory world. For instance, shapeshifters (Cu Sidhe and Cait Sidhe among them) died out long ago, and the Undersea is uninhabited.

Titania is powerful, but not all-powerful. She is one of these people -- you probably know some in Real Life -- who is so smart she's stupid. She is the queen of illusions, but her ability to alter reality itself is limited. That leaves cracks in the edifice she has constructed.

The exploitation of the first crack is a splendid little story involving some of my favorite characters from the October Daye world <spoiler>January O'Leary, Li Qin Zhou, and their adopted electronic dryad daughter April</spoiler>. I really enjoyed this. After the opening of that first crack, though, the story becomes more of a slog. The illusion Titania created is complex and built of many parts, and it takes Toby and the allies she gradually gathers (and you, her reader) time and effort to work their way through them in detail.

Toby's husband Tybalt is a minor character in Sleep No More. Presumably he is off somewhere else doing other important stuff most of the time. Indeed, we know from the publisher's blurb that book 18, The Innocent Sleep, will tell Tybalt's story during this time.

Seanan, you are not yet forgiven. We're still mad about the cliffhanger and the wimpification of our badass heroine. Perhaps The Innocent Sleep will clear your account.

CANDLES AND STARLIGHT

As usual, McGuire ends the book with a bonus novella. This one is called Candles and Starlight, and is temporally contemporaneous with Sleep No More. It is told in the first person, by Toby's sort-of-cousin Rayseline, the daughter of her sort-of uncle Sylvester Torquill. Raysel has had a super-messed-up childhood and is still afraid of a bunch of powerful fae. Near the end of Be the Serpent Raysel and Toby managed to make Toby Raysel's legal guardian for a year. Raysel is looking forward with gleeful anticipation to a year of living in Toby's home with Quentin, May, etc.

She doesn't get it, because she and Toby are caught in Titania's spell almost immediately. Candles and Starlight tells her story from that point until the moment when she appears in Sleep No More.

I thank NetGalley and DAW for an advance reader copy of Sleep No More. This review expresses my honest opinion. Release date: 5-Sep-2023.

Thank you Seanan Mcguire, DAW, and Netgalley for this free ARC in exchange for a review.

There's a reason this is the only series I've stuck with for this long; it's worth it. There's only one previous book I didn't love, and this addition was great too.

The only thing I didn't like, was how <spoiler>angry Tybalt was with Toby. I get him being angry about what happened, but why at her, when he knows it's not her fault? I'm guessing we were supposed to find that romantic somehow, but really it just made him seem immature.</spoiler>

Other than that, it was as good a read as the rest of the series in general, so if (as is likely) the series continues, I continue on with it.

Do you remember the Doctor Who episode Turn Left? The alternative-history, alternative-world, "could have been" episode that wasn't huge on pushing the main story forward, but was an astonishing character study that is genuinely one of the best episodes of Who ever made? Sleep No More is the Turn Left of the October Daye books, and it's brilliant. And more powerful in that there is a companion novel in The Innocent Sleep. Any other pov would have detracted from October's journey, but knowing that we'll get the other side of the story is genuinely a having your cake and eating it too situation.

Of course, this is a Seanan McGuire book, so that ending is going to knock your socks off. Possibly my favourite of all of the October Daye or October Daye adjacent stories ever written