I personally think that a hundred years’ sleep sounds pretty fantastic…

And so here we are – with Once Broken Faith I’ve now reached the limit of the Toby Daye series as published so far – but thankfully, not for long as The Brightest Fell comes out next week and like a good addict I will very definitely be downloading on the day of release.

Following the world-changing events of A Red-Rose Chain, where a cure for elf-shot was discovered, High King Sollys has shown up in the Kingdom of the Mists and called a conclave, where every fae ruler will gather at Muir Woods in order to decide whether the cure should be released for all, or buried and forgotten about.

With the various fae kingdoms all having very different opinions on the make-up of their kingdoms and the usefulness of elf-shot as a weapon, it’s not long before the interminable debating begins. Unfortunately for Toby, it’s also not long before one of the fae Kings in attendance turns up murdered and a bunch of Toby’s allies are elf-shot, and so the race is on for her to uncover the perpetrator and get the assent of the various rulers to use elf-shot, or burn away the last of her humanity so that she can wait for her friends to awake from their centuries of slumber (lemme just take a moment here to shake my fist at McGuire for the things she’s put Tybalt though since he’s hooked up with Toby.)

As exciting and addictively page-turning as ever, with the stakes constantly being raised, I tore through this in less than a day. It’s always fun to see the wider world of the fae and those that inhabit it, and it’s especially fun to see the various pieces for the end-game that the Luidaeg has alluded to from the very start being lined up. I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.

My copy of Once Broken Faith also came with a bonus short story, Dreams and Slumbers, featuring Queen Arden Windermere as she attempts to wake her brother Nolan, needs a favour from the Luidaeg and makes a new friend in the shape of Cassandra – older sister of Oneiromancer Karen, niece of Toby and a seer in her own right (able to read air, apparently). It was interesting to see someone other than Toby try to fix some faerie problems but, while a decent enough peripheral character, I don’t find Arden interesting enough to clamour for more time with her as the focus.