The Innocent Sleep by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I generally always enjoy all the October Daye novels, they're usually pretty self-contained (read bite-sized) stories that don't require extra bits to enjoy. I'm not talking about cliffhangers, either.

This one, however, is a bit unusual in the series. We've got Tybalt as our main PoV and it takes place during all of the events of Sleep No More, the previous novel in the series.

On one hand, it feels like a rather interesting side-novel that gives this ex-king of cats a great deal of agency -- something that has been lacking in the rest of the series.

On the other, it absolutely feels like it should have been either a companion novella or interspersed with the OTHER novel as one huge novel instead. Indeed, I would have welcomed a big honker of a novel with October and Tybalt dancing around each other in this otherwise great story. Together, they shine. Separate, it feels like we're just getting the same story again, from very different points of view.

I didn't dislike it, mind you. I just think it could have been given a wonderful shine instead of seeming to re-tread a lot of ground. I would have loved to feel the immediacy of experiencing the same scenes side-by-side.

Still... it was a good novel. Solid, regardless.


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