Reviews and Comments

I’m a couple of books into this series, and there are some things I really like:
it feels like a tabletop game in which everyone lovingly handcrafted their characters in great detail, in communication with each other and the GM — by which I mean the side characters are interesting and feel like they have not only backstories but ongoing stories of their own. The backstories might occasionally intercept, I suspect, based on a few hints.
while “enemies to lovers” isn’t my favorite trope (it’s fine), “people who under-estimated each other develop real mutual respect” is … and I also like a slow-burn romance; I think both are where we’re headed with this series.
there are many good lines, including several that made me laugh aloud.

Things I don’t like:
what a deeply cishet world this is, with a distracting amount of sexism — I can't tell for sure whether that nonsense is Watsonian or Doylist, but I will try to give the author the benefit of the doubt, here
the main character’s motivations are sometimes very thin and hard to buy into; but then, her vampire hate is lampshaded by another character, so I am holding out hope that there’s more to it

Neutral:
I know foreshadowing is hard to get right; while sometimes it’s done well, other times you know who the villain is when he first steps onto the page

I received this as an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this one! The heroine is believable; the love interest is (minor spoiler, here) a genuinely great guy and not some controlling jerk; the side characters are great; and the love story hits several fun tropes along the way. It doesn't hurt that the Outer Banks is one of my favorite places on earth and home to more than a few important memories, along a whole spectrum of emotion.

It always feels a bit uncomfortable reading a romance book about an author, though, because it makes it harder to really bury yourself in the fiction--or maybe that's just me. I waste brain cycles wondering what's autobiographical, in a way I don't if the book is about a scientist or a teacher or a real estate agent. Which is probably unfair. Still, this one made me extra uncomfortable because the whole premise is that the author needs to Go Through It in order to write her book, which is a love story. I feel like I'm seeing something I shouldn't, even when it's lampshaded for me like it is here.

If that's not a problem for you, and you like f/m romances that share both characters' perspectives (one chapter from hers, one from his, all in third person), this is a fun read that offers several laughs, written with love for a beautiful place and the creatures who share it.

I really waffled on the number of stars to give this, since I'm trying to rate this not just as a standalone book (which deserves 4 stars), but as the stand-in for a full series review (which is much closer to a 3). I'm ... half way? through the series? as I write this, and I'm invested enough that I plan to finish. A few of the plots feel a bit sloppy (e.g. a character introduced part-way through a book as an antagonist, given part of a reconciliation arc, and then killed off later in the same book), but with a series this long, not every book is going to hit right for every reader.

Things I like:
This series is LGBTQIA+- and poly-friendly, despite some outdated language choices (to be fair, the first book is from 2006, and the author seems straight to me; it's all pretty forgivable). At least one primary character is bisexual, and several are poly. As we do in the real world, they have queer and poly communities around them, as well.
The metaphysics seem well-thought-out.
The overarching plot holds together well so far.

Things I dislike, or that would make me unlikely to recommend it:
There's rape. At first it's merely alluded to, as an important part of one character's backstory, but then it happens "on camera," as it were, in more than one book.
Some of the sympathetic male characters are pushy/controlling in ways that I find off-putting.
One of the primary narrators is awfully whiny, even after a lot of time spent in "character growth" arcs, and I don't find her sympathetic at all. Her romantic plot is also less-than-convincing, though there are moments about learning to live with a partner that feel true to life.

The audiobook narration is generally fantastic, though it pains me when, several books in, the narrator forgets how to pronounce "youkai." There are a couple of other words that are inconsistent between books, as well, but this is a common problem for long series.

I do recall myself saying, at some point in the past, "My kingdom for a female lead with a STEM degree" (though I think I was talking about paranormal romance, I bet I didn't specify). This definitely succeeds, there!

The main and side characters are all delightful, with a villain you love to hate. The best friends of the romantic leads are particularly charming, with lots of witty banter. Although it's an m/f pairing, it isn't a book full of straight people, which I appreciated (and which makes the setting more believable, as well).

I'm super squeamish about professor-student pairings, but this one's a young professor (tenured early) and a PhD student, with no formal professional relationship (no advising, no classes in common, etc.), in a large enough department where that's presumably realistic. It's still enough for me to take off a star from an otherwise fantastically done book, but your mileage may vary; I've taught graduate classes, and I want a PhD, so it probably hits me differently.

Occasionally, the dialogue is probably a little more undergraduate STEM level than is realistic for experts in the field, which pulled me out of the story a bit, but that's entirely understandable: a book has to appeal to a broad set of readers to sell copies. And if they'd spoken at too high a level, I, not a biologist, wouldn't have been able to follow, either.

Anyway, I happily recommend it, but with a content warning about sexual harassment of a woman in STEM.

I received this book from Netgalley for free in exchange for an honest review. (I also preordered a copy, though, and I'll buy the audiobook when it comes out.)

Speaking of the audiobook, I feel like Seanan McGuire should probably send Mary Robinette Kowal a care package of throat lozenges. This is the first full-length book in the series not to be told from October's point of view (though Tybalt tells quite a few of the short stories in this universe).

Having Tybalt retell the story of Sleep No More is a cool artistic choice, and it allowed me to slow down on my first reading in a way I often don't with this series, since I was not in any rush to find out what was going to happen. I don't think I like Tybalt quite as much, as a narrator, as I do Toby--he comes off as just a tiny bit codependent and too worried about their unborn baby--but I still found it to be a five-star book.

(I received this book as an ARC, but I also already had it preordered.)

Was I mad when book 16 ended on a cliffhanger? You bet.

Did Seanan McGuire make it up to me (to all of us)? Yeah, I really think she did.

I was leery about how this one was going to go, because the cliffhanger/situation in question touches on one of my least-favorite tropes; it's just an uncomfortable thing for me. But it's handled well and ultimately used to explore sides of these characters we haven't seen before, or have only seen hinted at. At least one gets something very like a redemption arc, which I also appreciated.

Other things I enjoyed: we don't give an undue amount of on-screen time to our antagonist. We get to see some old favorite characters, and they get to impact the story. The ending feels appropriate.

I was left with a couple of questions, though: Where were May and Jaz? Did she say, and I missed it? And Danny?