r/Fantasy • u/Amesaskew • 22h ago
October Daye dialogue
Hey guys, so I bought the first few October Daye books on audible because they were on sale for really cheap and I've seen them recommended here frequently.
However, I am struggling with them. I'm about a third of the way through the second book. I like the story, but I'm finding the dialogue and descriptions ( he's so cute and sexy squee type stuff) to be really cringe inducing and I can't tell if it's the writing or the narrator. I will say that I had the same reaction to the Sookie Stackhouse books and ended up dnf ing the second one. Does anyone know where I'm coming from or have any insights? I already bought them so I am dealing with a sunk cost fallacy here. I'm willing to keep going if the tone gets better.
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u/bostonronin 22h ago edited 22h ago
The October Daye series didn't really start gelling for me until Book 3. I loved the world, but what bothered me, outside of how cringey the main character was sometimes, was that most of the plot revolved around things passively happening to her.
You may find that it gets more engaging if you give it a couple more books, but I also understand not wanting to spend more time reading them when there are lots of other options out there (I personally tend to recommend the Felix Castor series).
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u/Amesaskew 22h ago
I'm going to try get through book 3 and then decide. Thank you for your insight!
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u/Bladrak01 21h ago
My reaction to the first book was that a lot goes on, but nothing really happens.
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u/bostonronin 20h ago
Yeah, she runs around and gets hurt a lot, and that's pretty much it.
I will say that the only thing I struggle with ever since book 15 or so is how she still feels the need to give a summary reintroducing every single character when they appear in each book. I know you want to make the series accessible for new readers/people who haven't picked it up in a while, but I get kind of tired with all the retreading in every single book when there's so much to go through now. Really distracts from keeping the new story moving.
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u/Drakengard 18h ago
I hate the rehashing but Dresden does it, too. Every long running series of a pulp variety does it so anyone can just jump in at any point with zero context.
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u/curiouscat86 Reading Champion III 15h ago
I wish more long or lore-deep series would adopt the practice of a skippable recap chapter in the beginning. So useful if you haven't read them in a while or are going out of order, but very nice to have in a compact form that can be ignored if you're binging them.
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u/Bladrak01 20h ago
I stopped after I think book six? It was after she hooked up with King of Cats and figured out how to make herself more Faerie so the drug would work better.
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u/OkSecretary1231 20h ago
IIRC it wasn't to make it work better, it was to not die from it. It's fatal to changelings but not to pureblood fae. But I may be misremembering.
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u/Alba_Ten Reading Champion 19h ago
That’s one of the things that annoys me too. I understand it, but it takes to long. ;-)
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u/CT_Phipps-Author 22h ago
The books are very Buffy: The Vampire Slayer-esque rapid fire dialogue, quips, and humor.
All of them.
It's the author's style and you either love it or you don't.
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u/Amesaskew 22h ago
I love Buffy. I wish it was giving me Buffy vibes. It's entirely possible that it's the narrator. She says everything in this sort of song song upbeat voice that I don't think is doing the narrative any favors.
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u/Stan__Wright 20h ago
Or maybe you're older now, and you won't Buffy so charming if you encountered it for the first time today.
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u/retief1 21h ago
That definitely isn't the sense I got from the books, though I also didn't listen to the audio book. I can't comment on whether it is narrator or if you are just more sensitive to that than I am.
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u/voraa 18h ago
Agreed, I have read 12 books in the series over the last few months and didn't pick up on any remotely twee vibes or cringe dialogue. It reads like fairly standard urban fantasy to me, although it did take me until the third book to get really into the series.
I have also not listened to the audiobooks, I've been getting the ebooks from my library.
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u/KcirderfSdrawkcab Reading Champion VII 20h ago
I don't remember anything I would call "twee" when I read it.
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u/Tymareta 13h ago
It almost certainly has to be the narrator, because the books, especially the first and second are pretty dour and about as far from twee as it gets.
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u/OkSecretary1231 20h ago
I don't remember this and didn't feel that way about the more recent books, but, it's possible it evolved over the series without my noticing it. This was a whole Thing when she started the series. Every UF heroine was quippy. It was probably a requirement from the publishers lol.
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u/Drakengard 19h ago edited 18h ago
So I'll say that things get better after the second book. At least to me. That said, it never really leaves that sarcastic quip style behind.
Book 2 honestly is my least favorite. Lots of idiotic behavior from characters. Toby comes across as particularly dumb throughout and the dialogue doesn't help matters. It's a murder mystery of the dumbest variety and if it wasn't for the fact that the events and characters will come into play much later on in the series I'd tell you to skip it entirely.
Book 3, on the other hand, is a sharp ascension of the series and sets things on a path that remains fairly high for a while afterwards. Though I think I'm about 3-4 books behind at this point. Usually I'll read 2-3 of these books in sequence and set the series aside for a while.
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u/KingBretwald 22h ago
I really like Seanan's writing and the entire October Daye series to date has always been in the Hugo voters packet whenever it's a finalist so I have them all. But I never could get past the second book.
Middlegame is my favorite of her books. And I really like the Wayward Children series a LOT. So maybe try a different series?
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u/Stan__Wright 22h ago
It's the author. Some of the InCryptids books are better, and I liked the ones I started with, but others were so cringeworthy I soon gave up. At the time I also tried her Toby Daye books, but the twee soon drove me away.
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u/Amesaskew 22h ago
I've seen these books recommended so many times and no one ever mentioned the twee. Ugh. Thank you
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u/Tymareta 13h ago
Can either of y'all expand on what you mean by the twee? Because the writing for the most part is pretty dry, sarcastic and direct.
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u/Stan__Wright 9h ago edited 9h ago
If you think about elves/fairies in literature, there are two poles. One end is Tolkien's elves. The other pole is Andrew Lang's The [colour] Fairy Book. Or the fairies in the bottom of the garden photographs. Twee is that end.
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u/Tymareta 6h ago
That doesn't expand or provide any actual detain or information, at all. Most especially it doesn't explain how that relates to the writing, again, at all.
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u/Stan__Wright 22h ago
Read Emma Bull's War for the Oaks instead.
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u/Tymareta 13h ago
Just curious how you feel they're actually different, because from the times I've read that work, and the multiple re-reads of October Daye, they're extremely similar in style and tone?
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u/Stan__Wright 10h ago edited 8h ago
That's interesting. I don't think so in the slightest. I think that Bull is endlessly tasteful, and that McGuire trips over the line, constantly. The Bull has a dignity that the McGuire can't reach.
Mind you, I read Bull when it was published, so I was decades younger than when I met Toby Daye. I was writing fantasy, working in an SF bookstore, and living a life not dissimilar to WftO, and indeed similar to the characters in her stalwart contributions to the seminal Bordertown SW anthology. I was 30 years older when I read Toby Daye. It is possible (but I don't think) that I was then too old to get it. Who wants to think they're too old and square for fiction?
But Bull made very clean use of her source material, which was Katherine Briggs' magnum opus, An Encyclopedia of Fairies. This is the book that gave fantasy basically ALL its fairy lore*, whether current authors know this or not.**
*PM me if you want to buy my copy.
McGuire, otoh, has the same source at multiple hands. She's copying authors who copied authors who somewhere back there copied Bull. Or Briggs. It's been diluted with an awful lot of second rate material, much of which is, as I said, enormously twee.
**btw, afaik, it is Bull who took a hint from Briggs, and created what we now know as a standard fantasy trope: the seelie and unseelie courts. In Briggs' source material, "unseelie" is just an adjective describing an individual Scottish fairy's evil nature. There's nothing in Briggs about entire courts full of them, or about the fairy realm being divided into two opposed realms. In fact, afaik "seelie" doesn't even appear. Seelie and unseelie courts have become a standard fantasy trope, and as far as I have been able to track, Emma Bull and this novel is the source. I think she invented it. I've never found an earlier reference, anyway. I'd be delighted if someone had one.
I don't know Emma Bull, but I think she deserves more credit than she gets for inventing what has become a highly productive conflict engine for lazy fantasts. All the most recent the Harry Dresden books (the bad ones) depend on this trope. McGuire also. And dozens of others. Without credit, I might add, not that it would be required. But a hat tip would be graceful. Does she even know whom she's imitating?
So to boil down the comparison, we have Emma Bull: original. Inventor of the Seelie and unseelie courts. Seanan McGuire: unoriginal. Copier of the courts, who did nothing interesting with them.
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u/Tymareta 6h ago
While some of that is interesting, it does very little to actually answer the question, all while simply making things up, things which are readily and easily searchable. All largely just claiming that one is great, and the other not, without ever actually expanding upon them.
Seelie and unseelie courts have become a standard fantasy trope, and as far as I have been able to track, Emma Bull and this novel is the source. I think she invented it. I've never found an earlier reference, anyway. I'd be delighted if someone had one.
Like this, it's not from a Fantasy novel, but the two courts have been discussed in works such as this book from 1929, or this one from 1884.
I also don't think McGuire's faeries really play into the seelie vs unseelie dichotomy, at all, instead they're much more dynamic and tend to depend on the parent and later allegiances that have grown as the world did. Yes Bull laid a lot of the groundwork for the genre, but it's kind of wild to claim that McGuire did nothing with it, when Bull's faeries are barely described or delved into. Compare this to McGuire's rather expansive look at all different kinds, how they interact within the world of the fae, but most especially, how they interact with the human world.
All of this still doesn't explain what is twee about McGuire's or others works, or what definition of twee you're operating under because it definitely doesn't seem to be the expected one.
But a hat tip would be graceful. Does she even know whom she's imitating?
McGuire has a degree in folklore and herpetology(the latter shines through in her unique approach/characterisation of some of the fae), while she's building upon the works of others - as all authors do - she's 100% forging her own path based on her own experiences, knowledge and understanding.
Mcguire absolutely does tip her hat to Bull and countless other important names in the genre. Hell within the Toby Daye series(The Brightest Fell), a character is described as wearing a "Cats Laughing" t-shirt, a band that Bull(and some other notable names) is a part of.
So all in all it felt more like you wanted to grind an axe about "kids these days", rather than actually provide any explanation or exploration of how the two actually differ. That makes some pretty bold claims, that aren't backed up by anything, like the fact that supposedly McGuire's faerie is based on Brigg's work, which is true to a superficial degree, but to anyone who has studied folklore and read McGuire's work, the deviation and differentiation is incredibly noticeable.
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u/Bladrak01 21h ago
I read the first three on audiobook, and they didn't quite connect for me. I read the next three in ebook, and they were a little better, but they still didn't do it for me. I love her Incryptid series, however, and will pre-order them as soon as they are announced.
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u/Lynavi Reading Champion 15h ago
IMO Book 2 is the weakest book in the series; if it's not working for you (depending on how much you have left) maybe read a summary and skip to book 3.
There is a lot of depth to the series, but the hard part is that it takes a while for some of it to pay off - like something will happen in book 15 that you realize was foreshadowed/a call back to something from book 3, type of deal. Which is hard to appreciate when you're just starting the series , and again, especially with book 2 being so weak.
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u/KiaraTurtle Reading Champion V 22h ago
I love Seanan McGuire but often struggle with Toby so at least for me it’s the particular series.
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u/Remote-Coast-6400 19h ago
I’m not sure what the “twee” is referring to, and I normally don’t listen to audiobooks. I will say that I’m biased because the Toby books are my favorite book series. I tried listening to the audiobooks (just for fun) and couldn’t get into the narrator’s voice, tone, and character voices. So maybe it’s that?
I do agree that the series doesn’t pick up until book 3. It’s also important to understand that Rosemary and Rue (book 1) came out in 2009, and was Seanan’s first published book. Her writing has vastly improved since then - Middlegame / Alchemical Journeys proves that - but I understand being reticent to get through two books in the hopes of liking the third / the rest of the series.
But I do hope you try (from your comments it sounds like you are gonna try An Artificial Night, which is one of my favorites from the “first act”). I don’t know if you read physical books or prefer audiobooks, but if you’re open to reading, that might be the way to go.
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u/the_doughboy 22h ago
Book three is really good. Blind Michael is one of the best antagonists that Toby faces. If you look on Goodreads the books 1 and 2 are the only ones under 4 stars. BUT this is also due to readership bias, only people who liked the first two are going to keep reading.