One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire Review: When Belonging Becomes Dangerous
In One Salt Sea , the fifth October Daye novel, Toby Daye has finally begun to acquire what the earlier books repeatedly denied her: a place in Faerie. She has a title, a squire, allies, enemies and the beginnings of a household. That should amount to stability. Instead, it gives the world more precise ways to wound her. The first four books are, in large part, about re-entry. Toby begins the series trying to live beside Faerie rather than inside it, but murder, debt, blood and obligation keep pulling her back. By the end of Late Eclipses , the distance has mostly collapsed. Her body, political position and understanding of her own history have all changed, while the people around her have become something more permanent than a supporting cast. One Salt Sea is the first novel forced to live fully after that transition. Toby is no longer merely surviving encounters with Faerie. She is becoming someone who belongs to its political and social world, however reluctantly. McGuire’s cha...