Previous book here. Review goes behind the spoiler cut. Four stars.
Spoiler space
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
It's the wedding book! It's a happy book! I'm not sure why the sad tittle for the wedding book (the author admitted she wanted to write a happy book in 2020), but this is a fun delight.
So Toby's wedding has been being put off for approximately forever. She's not gonna do wedding planning, and there's been various weird complications coming up (regarding Simon, recently), and apparently Toby getting travel banned from other kingdoms was an issue...which has oddly been resolved by Toby's mother now being out as a Firstborn? Anyway, Toby just said "fine, y'all handle it" to her friends, and they've been handling it. However, she's surprised as heck to find her now-stepbrother/honorary brother Dean making out with a banshee on her doorstep. That banshee turns out to be Quentin, who's made the mildest of deals with his buddy the Luidaeg to switch species temporarily so he can go home to Canada and see the wedding without causing issues. So when's this wedding again, Toby asks? Oh, we're leaving tomorrow, pack for a week....
Anyway, much to my delight, Toby and her wedding army arrive in Canada and we finally get to check out the High Throne area. But...y'know, rumors have gotten around about this "kingbreaker" lady and when she comes to town, someone decides to use that as a great opportunity to try to take King Aethlin out.
I love this plot idea so much, I can't even tell you. I've really enjoyed the books in which Toby takes out a bad ruler and replaces them with a rightful one who will treat their people right, and this feels like a final trilogy in it. I find it a bit bizarre that Toby now has a bad reputation elsewhere because of this because HELLO, WRONGFUL RULERS, and if you're a good ruler and the rightful ruler of your kingdom, Toby would have no interest in kicking you out! And we know she likes Aethlin and Maida even besides their being Quentin's parents and thinks they do a good job.
But....in this book we find out that the rulership of North America was once up between Canada (Kingdom of Maples) and New York (Kingdom of Oak and Ash), but a group of Roane came forward to warn everyone that Oak and Ash were going to be poisoned with iron in around a hundred years, so that really shouldn't be the location. Nowadays, most faeries can't even live in NYC and Toby makes a comment about there's nothing sadder than a fae theater kid who can't go there.
Anyway, as you might imagine, the king of Oak and Ash might be just a wee bit resentful of this whole thing, and decided to take advantage of a known kingbreaker coming to town, and his supporters argue that he should be the rightful king of North America. Hmmmmmm, that's a dilemma, isn't it? What if you like the current ruler but there's some ambiguity? (Okay, so not a lot of it, but I did notice how the charter was written and it could have been written better....)
And then there's the added complication of Quentin technically being NOT a blood relation of the King at this moment in time....so what happens if something happens to his dad....?
So anyway, Toby's getting into fights, she's investigating a bunch of imposters, and she's having a good time before the wedding1 This isn't a huuuuuuuuuge book on revelations, but there's a few. It's overall just a good time with a happy ending that I loved.
(Though I will note that if you had hopes for Oberon, he's IN the book and attends the wedding, but only speaks twice the entire time and his return is being hidden from the general public until such time as he recovers enough to deal with public demands. I get it, but....y'know, that's kinda dull!)
Quotes (all Toby unless spelled out otherwise):
- "If six months ago, you'd told me I would be the one to bring Oberon, King of all Faerie, home from his long exile, I would have laughed in your face. If you'd gone on to tell me I was going to declare myself a Torquill in all but blood, formally emancipate myself from my mother's line of descent, stand witness to a marriage which technically made Dianda Lorden my stepmother, and still be expected to worry about my wedding, I would have looked at you like you'd just grown a second head. Or possibly a third one."
- "Sometimes I think being May must be deeply confusing. And then I remember that being me is deeply confusing, and amend that to "being a person" is deeply confusing, and move on."
- "Weird is what we do around here. Weird is the only way we know how to live." (I want this on some merchandise.)
- "I have flipped off more nobles in the last six months than in my entire life previous, and that's saying something."
- "If monarchs are that much against being overthrown, they shouldn't do things that would make it sound like a good idea. The rot at the root isn't the revolution, it's the ruler who refuses to resign. King-breaking is a symptom of sickness, not the cause."
- "The first time I heard him purr, I thought I might die of joy on the spot."
- "I'm letting May and Stacy handle the details in part because I don't want to cock it up, which you know I'd do if I touch anything--" Dean was snickering behind his hand, presumably because I'd said "cock." Sometimes surrounding myself with teenagers feels like a questionable life choice. I glared at him."
- "Blundering into trouble isn't my superpower, but it might as well be."
- Tybalt: "I am shocked, shocked that you have managed to involve yourself so quickly in an apparently ongoing crisis of the monarchy."
- "Simon and I have a complicated history, to understate things so dramatically that they barely make sense."
- Quentin: "Just hurry up and make out with the architecture before somebody sees you."
- Nessa: "As if anyone could not know who you are? King-breaker and chaos-chosen, who's been overthrowing regimes up and down the Pacific coast as if it were some sort of wild game. The High King speaks of you with both admiration and horror."
- "I am a breaker of the unbreakable," I said, aiming for the level of pompous portent that Tybalt could put into asking for a toaster waffle."
- King Aethlin: "Half the time I'm a King of Faerie. The other half, I'm standing in line at Tim Hortons and some asshole in a hockey uniform has just taken the last sour cream glazed. We have to wallow in the aesthetic when we get the chance."
- "I will overthrow your kingdom myself." -Toby, "threatening genially." King Aethlin: "Your reputation precedes you, Sir Daye. Could you please not make jokes about sedition?"
- "Fuck you. I'm sorry, was that disrespectful? I meant fuck you, Your Majesty." -Quentin to his dad, LOL. Chelsea has LITERALLY gotten popcorn to watch this.
- Nolan on his sister: "She's going to be so happy to hear that you don't vex her on purpose, you're just like this. All the time. No matter how important the people you might be insulting are."
- Why Toby uses knives: "Because any other kind of weapon would keep the violence at a sensible distance, and we can't be having that." -Quentin
- "We live in stories, but we're not stories, and sometimes the best endings are the ones no one sees coming." -Luidaeg
- January "once had an argument in my presence entirely in Klingon, just to prove she could. Being fae doesn't make you immune to being a massive nerd. It just gives you more time to really plumb the depths of your potential nerdery."
Comments