NIGHT AND SILENCE – Seanan McGuire | Looking For a Good Book

I always look forward to reading a new Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant book. I do think she’s one of the finest fantasy writers currently working.

October Daye is feeling frustrated at being unable to help the people she wants most to help. Then, to add to her complicated life, her daughter Gillian (with whom she has a struggling relationship), is kidnapped. October’s ex-boyfriend and his new wife accuse October of being the kidnapper, but they also aren’t behaving in normal (for them) behavior. Are they hiding something?

It’s pretty clear to October that Faeries are involved somehow, but she can’t imagine any of them would even remember that October had a child and even less likely that they would have any reason to take Gillian if they knew about her.

I haven’t read the entire October Daye series (though I’d like to go back and read the first books) but of these that I have read, I felt that this was the darkest (in tone) of them. And I liked that. This gave much more depth to the series (not that it didn’t have depth before that) giving October discomfort and anxiety that has built up over the course of the series, and coming to a head with this latest issue. McGuire really captures Daye’s sense of hopelessness, which is something she’s really not used to.

And, as always with a McGuire story, this is well plotted and executed. We’re brought on a journey that is intense and very real.

The last quarter or so of the book features a separate novella, “Suffer a Sea-Change” (though I’m a little confused by this … in the contents section of the book it says to read “an excerpt from “Suffer a Sea-Change” but at the end of the book it says “Read on for a brand-new novella by Seanan McGuire: SUFFER A SEA-CHANGE” … is this an excerpt, or is this the novella?).

This novella was really tremendous. Essentially it is Gillian’s point-of-view narrative of what has happened to her. Rather than have alternating view-points throughout the book, we get the October Daye story – exciting and intense – and then, if we should read on, we get the story that Daye doesn’t know. Really well done!

As usual, I highly recommend this Seanan McGuire book … but be careful, you may get hooked on what is now a twelve book series!

Looking for a good book? The twelfth book in the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire, Night and Silence, is a dark, thrilling urban fantasy that will have you wanting to read the entire series.