Book Review | When Sorrows Come (October Daye #15) by Seanan McGuire

I received this book free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

When Sorrows Come (October Daye, #15) by Seanan McGuire
Published by DAW on September 14th 2021
Pages: 384
Genres: Urban Fantasy
Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley
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Also by this author: Indexing, Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation

Toby's getting married! Now in hardcover, the fifteenth novel of the Hugo-nominated, New York Times-bestselling October Daye urban fantasy series.

It's hard to be a hero. There's always something needing October "Toby" Daye's attention, and her own desires tend to fall by the wayside in favor of solving the Kingdom's problems. That includes the desire to marry her long-time suitor and current fiancé, Tybalt, San Francisco's King of Cats. She doesn't mean to keep delaying the wedding, it just sort of...happens. And that's why her closest friends have taken the choice out of her hands, ambushing her with a court wedding at the High Court in Toronto. Once the High King gets involved, there's not much even Toby can do to delay things...

...except for getting involved in stopping a plot to overthrow the High Throne itself, destabilizing the Westlands entirely, and keeping her from getting married through nothing more than the sheer volume of chaos it would cause. Can Toby save the Westlands and make it to her own wedding on time? Or is she going to have to choose one over the other?

Includes an all-new bonus novella!

*sigh* The sorrows came for me, that’s for sure.

When Sorrows Come was a ridiculous stretch of material that should’ve been just another novella in this unnecessarily prolonged series. Now, to back up, I am a longtime fan of this series specifically and have no issue with long series’ in general but only if it’s needed. That’s not to say that there isn’t a need because McGuire continues to introduce new and intriguing plot points (even in the later installments) but the issue is in how she divvies out the new stuff. New material is doled out sparingly with the remainder of the standard 350-page novel simply being regurgitated recaps for readers that may choose to start the series at any point (except, why lol), however, multiple pages being dedicated to explaining each and every backstory is simply absurd. For those of us that have been reading Toby from the very beginning, it’s a bit of a disservice to us, forcing us to wade through details that we already know. I know that some may say that new stuff did happen in this installment! Except did it? Setting aside the issue with the recaps, the basic plot points are also starting to feel stale. I mean honestly, how many times can Toby get stabbed or save a kingdom before we all start getting déjà vu?

My opinion of Toby has started to change as well what with her whining ad nauseam about the wedding, about all the people in her life that care for her and want her to stop getting stabbed (and just want her to eat regular meals), about her responsibilities, etc. The whole way this plot played out regarding the wedding we all knew was coming was pretty irritating too (especially the fact that Toby seemed to have no idea how politically important her wedding and the ceremony was, the intricacies and details that went into the ceremony, and the fact that none of this was explained to her until just about the day before the event.) The larger plot point that has yet to come full circle is the only thing that has me convinced I’ll be picking up the next installment of this series. All of the other details are wearisome and I’ve grown tired of the constant repetitiveness and am well past ready for this series to come to a close.

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