Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion

This thread is open to discuss Once Broken Faith by Seanan McGuire.



Synopsis
Politics have never been October “Toby” Daye’s strong suit. When she traveled to the Kingdom of Silences to prevent them from going to war with her home, the Kingdom of the Mists, she wasn’t expecting to return with a cure for elf-shot and a whole new set of political headaches.

Now the events she unwittingly set in motion could change the balance of modern Faerie forever, and she has been ordered to appear before a historic convocation of monarchs, hosted by Queen Windermere in the Mists and overseen by the High King and Queen themselves.

Naturally, things have barely gotten underway when the first dead body shows up. As the only changeling in attendance, Toby is already the target of suspicion and hostility. Now she needs to find a killer before they can strike again—and with the doors locked to keep the guilty from escaping, no one is safe.

As danger draws ever closer to her allies and the people she loves best, Toby will have to race against time to prevent the total political destabilization of the West Coast and to get the convocation back on track…and if she fails, the cure for elf-shot may be buried forever, along with the victims she was too slow to save.

Because there are worse fates than sleeping for a hundred years.

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Starting this tonight!

promise i will start this tomorrow! we finally got assassin's creed odyssey on black friday so my reading time has taken a definite hit lol

Thru Chpt 12 - sort of sped thru the first half...

Oh my god, how cute was it that the kids had a slumber party?!?! Watching Disney movies. The Little Mermaid hahahaha!

Okay so I didnt expect the whole elf-shot cure to have this effect. And to find out Nolan and Madden were still asleep? Thought everyone would be happy about a cure. Its not like they had to cure everyone (especially those villains who deserved it). But these arguments against it sort of make sense.

Love that we finally get more of Quentin's parents finally - like putting faces to the names even though we met them briefly before.

Devann wrote: "promise i will start this tomorrow! we finally got assassin's creed odyssey on black friday so my reading time has taken a definite hit lol"

Need to tell my hubby its out. Im sure he'll be hogging the big screen for it too!

it's been out for awhile, but we waited to get it on black friday because it was like half price lol

i only vaguely remember the plot to this book so i'll have to start it before i can reply to your points so far, but from what i remember basically fae politics are just the worst and god forbid if you try to help someone instead of hurting them ...hmmm, sounds like regular human politics too -_-; but yeah you would think 'hey we can wake people up' would be a good thing ...but also you'd think maybe they could have never made it in the first place too sooo [shrug]

ok i read chapters 1-8 today and god i just hate faerie society so much. every time she's like 'we'll always be a monarchy' i'm like maybe you should start trying to change that because you seem to be literally the only person here who can get anything done ever so like ...if anyone could start the faerie senate or whatever it would be toby lol i think the luidaeg would probably be on board as well.

also the sleepover was too cute and i love that (view spoiler)[toby has basically become the token straight friend in her own house ;) (hide spoiler)]

I've only gotten though chapter five today though I hope to read until halfway today. I just want to point out (view spoiler)[was anyone else thrown to find out that Quentin's Mom Maida used to be a changeling? This was a pretty surprising twist. Oh and the weird food combination for this book is the peanut butter and tuna sandwiches that Toby has apprently amde for Raj and Quentin in the past. (hide spoiler)]

@Claudia i can't remember if i was surprised the first time or not. at the very least it seems a bit hypocritical because (view spoiler)[like i know that quentin's parents want him to be around changelings and be nice to them to 'be a better king' or w/e but also ...like what is his dad currently doing to make changeling's lives better? not much it seems. i guess you can be like 'well it's hard to do an overhaul of the whole system' but literally who else would be in a position to start change than the king of the entire friggin continent. and also quentin did NOT have a positive view of changelings at the beginning of these books so obviously the high king's palace is also not very big on changeling rights or else he would have had different views about it to start with (hide spoiler)]. i guess that might seem harsh but it's such a big deal and they seem to be taking such a 'not our problem' approach to it.

also yes, what is with the weird food in this series!

also i went ahead and requested the threads for the last two books for the 9th and 16th since it sometimes takes them several days to check the request thread

Token straight friend hahahaha!! & thanks for requesting our threads :)

I was surprised by that too Claudia, and totally forgot how Quentin thought of changelings when he first started hanging with Toby. That makes it a little more surprising that the high king and queen haven't done much about how their people treated changelings seeing as (view spoiler)[Maida had been one, unless he just doesn't "see" it since she used the hope chest and is now completely fae. (hide spoiler)] But don't think it's so much as "not our problem" approach but seems more like "don't care" approach.

@Devann Yeah that was why I surprised. Quentin had been prejudiced against changelings before October. Then to find his mom used to be a changeling and let him get those kind of ideas and keeps it hidden. I know she says she’s not ashamed but the fact that she keeps it hidden due to the fact that it would be used against her or cause others to look down on her contradicts that. And the king fell in love and married a changeling but then never did anything to change the system while he does have the power to make changes is super hypocritical.

Thru Chpt 15 -

All this politics is making my head hurt. (view spoiler)[They should take a page out of Tybalt's book and just smack anyone who challenges him. That was hilarious! (hide spoiler)]

I love when Tybalt goes all Shakespearean :D

And oh my god that scene between Arden & Luidaeg!!! (view spoiler)[I. Will. Fuck. You. Up. hahahahaha! She totally put Arden in her place.

And Toby almost dies again. Don't they all know she's unkillable?! I love how the Luidaeg cares for Toby but the Luidaeg once again mentions that she needs Toby for something else. Gah, what is it already? (hide spoiler)]

@Claudia i agree. i mean i guess i can see hiding it from the world at large at least until an opportune moment because it's definitely going to start some shit, but you should tell your children / close family i would think. also agree that he might not 'think of her as a changeling' because she 'fixed herself' which is just ...ick. i do kind of have a problem with the whole 'changing people's blood' aspect of the storyline in general because it just seems like fixing a symptom while ignoring the root problem. i guess in certain cases like rayseline it can be helpful and turning changelings into fae will help them live longer so like ...it's not all bad but it still seems very 'instead of seeing changelings as valuable in their own right we're just going to fix them by taking the human out of their blood'. i wonder where seanan is going with the whole plotline for the endgame.

@Cathy i'm starting to think the cait sidhe have the right idea when it comes to politics. solving things with violence might not necessarily be the best idea in a lot of circumstances but it is weirdly miles above the way the rest of them do it lol

@Devann Undersea have the right idea when it comes to politics too as they don't use elf shot either and so just put a smack down on their enemies.

@Cathy I think there are making a sport of ways to kill Toby or almost kill Toby. Like we need to test how indestructible she is multiple times in each book

Did anyone else notice (view spoiler)[that they foreshadowed the plot of the next book when Toby told Tybalt that maybe next time they'll just have a plain old fashion missing person case? (hide spoiler)]

Claudia wrote: "@Devann Undersea have the right idea when it comes to politics too as they don't use elf shot either and so just put a smack down on their enemies.

@Cathy I think there are making a sport of ways ..."

it IS a sport!

Not sure if that is foreshadowing as it seems TOO EASY for Toby!!!

Thru Chpt 18 - Oh. My. God. TYBALT!!!!!!

The plot has certainly ramped up. It's at that point that I don't to put it down! 1 more hour of work...

i read up through chapter 16 today.

at first i was going to say that i feel like half the problem in this whole conclave is that they should also be discussing whether or not they should ban elf shot as well because to me the answer is obviously YES but then sylvester, tybalt, and dianda stood up and actually made good points. like ban elf shot, but have the cure to use because obviously shit is still gonna happen sometimes. and then still have 'oberon's law' but you know ...extend it to include literally everyone because MURDER IS WRONG! [some obvious self-defense situations aside] like the fact that the ongoing argument by people in this series is 'well it's obviously okay to murder people who aren't entirely the same 'race' as us' just shows how awful all these people are. also that they took 'don't murder other fae' and turned it into 'come up with increasingly awful forms of torture'.

also i just imagine this is toby while sylvester is ~defending her honor~



and this just absolutely killed me:

Arden was staring at me. “That’s . . . that’s not how the fae judicial system works,” she said.
“Oh, please,” I replied. “We don’t have a judicial system. We have one law, which we break constantly, and everything else is arbitrary punishments handed down by whoever’s higher-ranked in the nobility than the person who did something wrong."

completely accurate on all counts.

Just finished and wow. I'll come back and comment on everything but just quickly -

(view spoiler)[Again Toby shows just how indestructible she is. In awe. Loved her speech to the nobles. Crazy how it took all of what happened to actually listen to a changeling and how elf-shot affects not just the purebloods but the changelings who are a part of fairy whether they like it or not.

A little irked by Sylvester at the end talking about waking Rayseline. What????? Wasn't she working with Oleander in poisoning all those people, including her mother and almost her father? Didn't she shoot the elf-shot that actually KILLED Connor? What the hell! Why is she not carrying out her sentence then????? (hide spoiler)]

i've not finished yet [just about to start chapter 17] but yeah the way these books deal with raysel is like ...kind of weird to me. i mean (view spoiler)[she did do some really bad things and i get that she was traumatized a lot as a child and also apparently her messed up bloodline came into it as well buuut ...waking her up also seems like a bad idea because faerie has no system in place to hold her accountable for her actions while also trying to help her recover and just waking her up and ~hoping she's okay~ would obviously also be a bad idea. i know sylvester got a shitty deal with both his brother AND his daughter ending up like that pretty much deservedly but i still feel like he and luna are both being purposely blind about it sometimes. (hide spoiler)]

just finished up!

@Cathy yeah Toby is certainly putting herself through a lot in this book lol

also it's nice that they made some like ~social progress~ in this book i guess but there's still a long way to go and when they made toby swear she wasn't going to try to destabilize the entire continent i just laughed because i'm like mmm you really SHOULD though. or someone should.

Devann wrote: "when they made toby swear she wasn't going to try to destabilize the entire continent i just laughed because i'm like mmm you really SHOULD though. or someone should...."

I thought it was funny that she didn't actually swear not to do it but just stated she did not want or intend to but that she couldn't promise to not end up doing it.

@Cathy Yeah I didn't understand them waking Raysel due to the fact that she did commit crimes. They are still viewing her as a victim but she stopped being a victim the moment she started hurting others. I especially expect Undersea to get up in arms over this considering it was their kids that got kidnapped. I dunno maybe she will be calmer and saner when she wakes. I doubt it though

high king: ok toby please promise not to unseat the entire monarchy system
toby: i mean who can really promise anything
high king: [nervously sweating]

Devann wrote: "high king: ok toby please promise not to unseat the entire monarchy system
toby: i mean who can really promise anything
high king: [nervously sweating]"

toby: I mean sometimes these things just happen

toby: through no fault of my own of course

That is hilarious!!!! And spot on :D

About Rayseline, Luna TRIED to say that the reason why Raysel was so crazy was because of her mixed blood. Excuses excuses... Oh wonder if they do wake her how Dianda will react. She has a bit of a short trigger but in that case was understandable.

Cathy M. wrote: "That is hilarious!!!! And spot on :D

About Rayseline, Luna TRIED to say that the reason why Raysel was so crazy was because of her mixed blood. Excuses excuses... Oh wonder if they do wake her how..."

Part of me wonders if when they wake her she does redeem herself or is less crazy? They kind of hinted it when Toby talked to her and got her to choose which bloodline to have removed. I think it would be a cop out but it kind of seems like they are building towards something with all this mixed bloodline nonsense.

On another note has anyone taken a moment to picture what the offspring of Toby: Agent of Chaos and Tybalt: King of Cats would be like? I feel like the world would explode.

yeah i can't really remember what happens with raysel when they wake her up, i guess it can't have been too crazy if it didn't make an impression on me lol

and oh god toby and tybalt's children would be out of control lol incredibly stubborn nearly indestructible cats with even more of a taste for blood than usual. save us all