#toby daye

Happy Toby Daye day to those who celebrate!

Here are some memes I had cooked up and had forgotten about to catch you up to speed with what's up in Faerie up until SILVER AND LEAD.

We all know how Toby is...

We also know how the Firstborns are... And Toby has a rather complicated relationship with the Firstborns in her life, ok?

And, look, Firstborn's issues came from somewhere... Mommy, Daddy, The Heart.. whatever it was...

And, if there's one thing Toby doesn't care about, that's stagnation, that's lack of change. Some might even say it's in her nature, in her blood. King-breaker and king-maker our Toby is.

And, look, some of Toby's plans are... questionable... and reckless.. and maybe a tad suicidal? But that's what heroes are for, right? Right?

But also, what is the lead for, Seanan?! WHAT IS THE LEAD FOR?!

And, look, SILVER AND LEAD is book 19 in the series by @seananmcguire. The best time to have started them was yesterday, the second best time is now.

See that you do.

Don't get me wrong, I can get all the supernatural romance I want. The sexy vampire trope will endure long after im dead.

But I miss the noir aspect, the murders with murky motive, the simple favors complicated. The flipped script of the Femme fatal as the the PI and the alpha male matched in wits if not always im power. I like the supernatural summits at Sizzlers and the demon summoning in dorm rooms. And I love how much each series was a love letter to its city! Even cities I think of as shitty were rendered magical by the love of these authors and thier charecters.

And yeah, a lot of the series I read were a little to found of making shit up about other cultures mythological especially native American and african diaspora religios.

And there was a rather toxic strain of not like other girls/cool girl that I can acknowledge. But there was also something freeing about the girls who were mouthing off and doing it afraid.

But god do I love the genre and miss it

They were fun mystery/adventure/political thriller that allowed for delightfull blend of magic and pop culture reference.

I think they have been replaced by Isekai's (which are also good)

I binged all of the previous books, all of the online and Patreon stories in the month leading up to release. (I hadn't actually meant to go through it quite so fast, but I might have inappropriately prioritized sleep and any other hobby in that time frame.)

Anyway, I was just thinking this morning about how incredibly well Seanan McGuire portrays the more subtle aspects of abuse and generational trauma. It feels so rare in books to get any real sense of the lingering effects, you know? There's a lot of "I've triumphed over my abuser by saying or doing exactly the right thing, continued on to a beautifully successful life and it's all coming up roses now!" But acknowledging that even overcoming the danger doesn't mean everything is fine or goes back to how it was. Toby's constant checking of the back seat tends to be portrayed in an almost light hearted way, but it's still affecting her so many years later that she's trained Quentin to check as reflexively as she does. She almost died. And yeah, she goes on to do that a LOT, and as she gets better about bouncing back from that, it obviously bothers her less. But the anxiety still lives on even though she defeated the asshole who attacked her. And we see the actual truly lingering effects of Tybalt's trauma around the death of his first wife in childbirth in the ways he tries to cocoon Toby in this book. And I think it's easy to overlook that May, Quentin, and to some extent Raysel are also fixating on keeping Toby home as a proxy for not losing her again like they did in Titania's fucked up remaking. They survived, they WON, but they are not ok. And I just really appreciate the acknowledgement of the complexities of surviving and living with the aftermath of trauma and abuse.

Character, book, and author names under the cut