Synopsis: Everyone in the Bay Area knows about Blind Michael, the unseen, dangerous figure whose Hunt sweeps the Berkeley hills on full moon nights. He’s a familiar hazard of life in the Kingdom of the Mists, and most people don’t waste time worrying about him. October “Toby” Daye certainly doesn’t. She has better things to worry about, like paying the electrical bill on time. So it’s understandable that she’d be upset when Blind Michael suddenly starts taking an interest in people that matter to her, like the youngest children of Mitch and Stacy Brown. (FromSeananMcGuire.com)
I make it a habit to avoid fairy stories because modern interpretations usually lack the pain and fear and loss of traditional fae tales. I don’t enjoy putting myself through misery, but the watered-down and sparklier versions kids read these day are too plastic, too PG, too Disney for me to take seriously. McGuire suffers from no such white-washing. Her fairies are dark, broken, and dangerous. They need humanity as much as they despise it. In the classic style, McGuire’s fairies take what they need when they need it, and few of them worry about how it affects us. They steal clothes, money, blood, and children …
This is where An Artificial Night begins: children are missing. Of course, it’s missing fairy children that get Toby’s attention, but to her credit she doesn’t back down when she discovers that human children are missing too. Chasing down the path of the lost kids takes Toby through one of Oberon’s children and into the realm of another. She endures a changed shape, altered perceptions … she’s hunted, enthralled, beaten, tortured, and abused. It’s a path that only heroes choose to walk, because only heroes are broken enough to throw themselves thoughtlessly into the face of danger over and over again.
Which, of course, is exactly what Toby does, no matter how close to death she comes – and did I mention May, her Fetch, who shows up on her doorstep to usher in that death? Yeah, that happens. By now we’re not so surprised at Toby’s self-destructive behavior, but sometime before the end of the book is the realization that she’s doing this to herself on purpose, and just possibly might want to stop.
McGuire’s third novel in the Toby Daye series makes me cry like a wounded child for the first seven chapters or so. She goes on to present a story much darker than what’s come before for Toby, and one that is arguably her best to date. It isn’t a happy story, even when Toby seems to have found her way back into the light. It is a good story, a complex story, and one I recommend you get your hands on.
I reviewed the first two books in this series as well;Rosemary and Rue is the first and A Local Habitation is the second.
Seanan McGuire, An Artificial Night, DAW Books, 2010. 368 pages. ISBN0756406269.
Filed under: Reviews Tagged: book reviews, detective story, fairie, female main character, seanan mcguire, series, urban fantasy
