Review Be the Serpent

EricMesa

June 18, 2025 - 3 minutes read - 598 words

This is the lowest rating I have given an October Daye book. It mostly comes down to the final chapter, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

This should have been a book I loved. It had ALL the lore. We almost (as far as I know) know the answers to all the things - what happened to Oberon and his wives. How was The Ride broken and what were the consequences. What has The Sea Witch’s plan for Toby been all along? We now know all that and more. Also at this point Toby is firing on all cylinders. She knows how to rely on her friends and family. Everything was going to well until we got to that final chapter….

A few nitpicks, though. While McGuire does explain it away (I think for the second time in this series), it’s starting to get bonkers that everyone is in San Francisco. It’s almost, but not quite as bad as everything in Star Wars happening on Tattoine even though it’s supposed to be a backwater planet (hence why Luke was hidden there). Second, I think Toby has earned the right to talk back to the Sea Witch. I think it’s fine and in character the way she speaks to kings and queens. It stretched my credulity to the breaking point to see her talking back to Oberon without consequence. As the series has been alluding (and we kind of learn in this book) they are functionally gods with almost or about the same level of powers that we ascribe to the Judeo-Christian God. It was a bit much. McGuire tries to get us to accept it by having Toby realize she’s being dumb, but I find it hard to believe Oberon didn’t just explode her. (That was one of the more believable scenes in book 2 of Gideon the 9th when god loses his temper and vaporizes someone)

OK - time for why this book bothered me so much, my wife was ahead of me because she was listening to the books and has the opportunity to listen while running the household. She couldn’t wait to see what I thought because she hated it. She hated it because it was a non-stop book without any room for the characters to breathe. I agree that the climax came REAL early in this book. (It was like having a Sanderlanche start in chapter 3) But that didn’t bother me. What bothered me was the rug pull we got with the last chapter. Toby often has to deal with the consequences of her punch first, ask later attitude to problems, but usually the consequence is 1 or more books later. Here I felt betrayed by the author. We had a “compact” based on the way the series has gone for the past 15 books. Every ending hasn’t been a happy-go-lucky ending; people die, Toby cries, etc. I wasn’t expecting a perfectly happy ending. I was expecting an ending. We basically ended up with this book and the next two (I know book 18 is book 17 again from Tybalt’s POV) essentially being one book broken into 3 and that just pissed me off.

Anyway, as I’ve said at least once, but probably more than that, if you’re this far into the series, read this one and keep going (because this one doesn’t truly have an ending….ugh!). Nothing here (other than the ending) that is different from what has come before. You’ll enjoy it all (and MAYBE the ending?)