Finding a complementary short story to Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series is always a pleasant discovery, and it’s an even better one when, as is the case of this short work I found in the Baen Free Library, it deals with events and people other than Toby and her circle of friends and family, widening the background of this complex and many-faceted Urban Fantasy series.
(click on the link to read the story online)
It took me a little while to find my bearings in The Fixed Stars, until I understood that it tells of an old battle between Faerie’s firstborns and their changeling descendants, here called merlins – the reason for which I understood once their leader came on-stage, a powerful, revered warrior named Emrys. The story is told from the point of view of a firstborn, watching the besieging merlin army camped under the walls of Broceliande castle before what will be the decisive battle. The narrating firstborn goes here under the name of Nimue but says this is only one of many, and when at the end of the story her brother calls her “Annie”, my theory about her real identity was confirmed (and my pleasure at being right and meeting her here): compelled to always tell the truth, Nimue plays a dangerous gamble in the bloody game between the fae and their mixed-blood descendants, one that will end badly no matter what, since she’s aware that “the nobility […] was eager to wet their swords on merlin blood. The fact that the men outside our walls were our distant descendants didn’t matter to them. My brothers and sisters had raised their children to believe that nothing outside of Faerie had value”.
The leanings of Nimue’s heart are quite clear here, and they go a long way toward explaining her attitude in later times, when she will often lend her gruff but precious help to a certain changeling…
A sad and lovely story, and one I’m very happy to have found.
My Rating: 
Space and Sorcery 
I’m going to start my next Toby book very soon. I’m in the middle of three others at the moment so once I finish a couple I think that one can be next on my list.
Lynn 😀
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Which one is it in the series? The last two books are full of surprises – not all of them pleasant, of course, but still… surprising 😀
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This was an interesting one. It’s a drastic, drastic tone change from the Luidaeg’s usual, I didn’t feel like I really recognized her here. She’s my favorite character so I was excited enough to go find the story when it came out, but i was a little buzzkilled when she didn’t seem so much like…herself. Though as you pointed out, you do see the ancestry of her helpfulness here.
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I believe the difference comes from the fact she had not had to deal with the great tragedy that befell her in the past, so here she is understandably not the Luidaeg we all learned to know and – of course – love 🙂
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Could be. It felt very…formal, as well.
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I honestly had no idea she had all these short stories floating around too, and with her being so prolific with all her novels and series already. I’m not caught up on the Toby Daye series at all, unfortunately! 🙂
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I’ve often wondered how many pairs of arms she possesses 🙂 and equally often imagined her typing on two/three keyboards at a time! “Prolific” does not even start to cover it…
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Nice story! Who knows, I might even give October a second chance 😉
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Once you get past the… hurdle of the first two books, if you manage to stay onboard and to take the story and the characters to heart, you will be in for an amazing journey.
And I hope you will one of these days… 🙂
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