One Salt Sea
108. Seanan McGuire, One Salt Sea
Warning: minor spoilers for previous Toby Daye novels.
In this fifth installment of the Toby Daye series, Toby’s seemingly stable life takes a dramatic turn for the worse when the sons of the Duke and Duchess of Saltmist are kidnapped. Saltmist is a powerful Undersea duchy, and the frantic Duke and Duchess have accused the land fae of orchestrating the kidnapping. Sea and land fae are now on the brink of a war that will end in terrible slaughter, unless Toby can find the missing children and return them safely to the Undersea. With the help of her friends and allies, Toby may be able to save the day once again; but when her own long-lost daughter Gillian is threatened, she realizes that a happy outcome can only be achieved at a horrible cost.
So far I’ve enjoyed every book in this series, and this novel is another strong installment. Based on the plot summary on the back cover, I didn’t think the story would be particularly complicated, but McGuire manages to raise the stakes very compellingly several times throughout the book. The plot also opens up a lot of intriguing questions for future books in the series, regarding both Toby’s newly discovered skills and the wider world of fae politics. There are a lot of external changes to Toby’s world in this novel, but there’s not much internal character growth, so in that sense this book feels very transitional. Of course, that makes me all the more eager to see what will happen in the next installment, Ashes of Honor, which comes out next year! My only other complaint in this book is that there’s not enough Tybalt - but I have faith that I’ll be seeing more of him soon. All in all, you should definitely continue with this book if you’re already following the series; if not, start with book 1, Rosemary and Rue.