Local Habitation (Toby Daye Book 2)

Coffee and corpses, that’s my life.

I'll be honest: it's a miracle I actually went on with the October Daye series past this book the first time around, because the first time I read A Local Habitation, I really disliked it. To the point that apparently I either evicted it from memory or maybe I was just skimming more than reading. Because early into this re-read I realized I've forgotten enormous chunks of the story. How the mystery gets resolved. Half the character cast. The entire night-haunt plotline (how on earth). The degree of Tybalt's involvement. Most of the story, really. 

I guess that's part of what made the book infinitely more exciting during a re-read. Some of the time, I recognized the characters (mostly from later books), some of the time, I had no idea what was going on, sometimes random details sprung up, sometimes I just had to guess at everything anew. That felt like solving a puzzle in a dark room, which can be a rather engrossing feeling. I also loved spotting all the random bits and pieces of foreshadowing, which are plentiful here. Some lines are downright hilarious in hindsight, knowing some of the future reveals. Some are way more ominous than I must have thought them to be originally. Some are foreshadowing for stuff I haven't caught up with yet, but armed with all my existing knowledge of the Tobyverse, I'm pretty damn sure they're foreshadowing. So that was fun.

What wasn't fun was the plot itself—I can sure tell why I struggled with it years ago. On the surface, it looks like a promising locked room mystery, but the problem is, no one is actually solving it. People don't do anything that would be sensible to do when you know one of you is the killer, such as sticking together and policing each other as a group. Toby just keeps meandering back and forth determined not to connect a single dot. Like, the entire (somewhat annoying) plotline with Alex, it was rather clear from the start and driven home when his sister chatted to Quentin, but it took Toby almost the entire damn book and Connor's on-page presence to realize something. The entire mystery and the road map to solving it was essentially spoiled/prophecied by Luidaeg before Toby even set out on the road to Tamed Lightning. Etc, etc. I mean, investigation has never been Toby's strength, she's more about confronting things head-on and getting stabbed a lot, but I feel like her detective skills were possibly at their all-time lowest here. 

This is an interesting book in the context of the entire series, because it does a lot of heavy lifting laying out the groundwork for Big Important Things down the line, introduces lots of characters and concepts, pushes forward personal arcs and the like. However, as a self-contained novel, it's quite possibly the weakest in the series. I did enjoy my time re-reading it, but only because of all the re-read-related factors.

A LOCAL HABITATION picks up soon after ROSEMARY AND RUE with Toby sent to solve a communication problem for Sylvester, ending up desperately trying to keep a shrinking group of fae and changelings alive in a knowe stalked by death. If you liked ROSEMARY AND RUE you'll probably love this too, it has a different scope and pace while keeping the murder mystery core and faery capriciousness.

This is a strong sequel with a fantastic locked house murder mystery setup in a fae-centric version of the modern world. I figured out one of the mysteries involved because it happened to involve a trope I love very much, but the main story genuinely kept me guessing as to the identity of the killer all the way up past the 90% mark. The story is very well contained, with strong continuity from the first book, but not requiring someone to have read the first one recently enough to remember extremely well before starting this one. As with any sequel, certain things will be more impactful and way more interesting if this is a continuation of the series for you rather than your introduction. I love the MC, she has the feeling of someone who likes explaining things, and a casual manner of narration that means even her longer explanations didn’t feel like infodumps. Because I did read the first book, I noticed so many places where we could have just been handed detailed recaps of events from the first book and they would have slow down the story, instead the MC’s explanations stayed focused on the most essential features of those prior events, which usually was their emotional impact and not what literally happened. It was deftly done, very fun to read, and I think it was generally enough explanation that a reader could enjoy this book either randomly by itself or as an entry in a series (since it is book two), just as long as this isn’t their very first time reading a book starring fae.

Time for the sequel check! This doesn't really wrap up anything left hanging from the first book, but it does continue at least five key relationships which were previously introduced. They weren't really left hanging, but the continuity is welcome and I'm excited for the slow burn of the MC's relationships growing and changing. The main story (murder mystery) exists entirely in this book and wasn't present in the first one, and it's resolved here too. There aren't really events left to be wrapped up later, but it drops in a few teasing notes about an ongoing thing which feels like it'll take several more books before it's time to be properly addressed. The style of this series feels like it's headed for a "murder mystery every book" sort of cadence, which I quite enjoy, so the main threads of continuity are in the people Toby cares about in her life, the ones for whom she would drop everything and either solve or try to prevent murder. Toby is still the narrator and her voice is consistent with the first book. 

Because this is a long-running series and I intend to read the whole thing, I’ll keep an informal running tally of things which it’s useful to know for continuity between books, but aren’t re-explained. I’m not a wiki so this won't be exhaustive, but it’ll help me with my sequel check to figure out if a reader could pick up each book at random and still have a good time. This time around, the Major Things Which Are Present But Not Re-Explained are: how October is connected to Sylvester; and who Devin, Dare, and Manuel were. You can absolutely enjoy the book without this backstory, but there's an immensely cathartic scene which relies on one of these pieces of information, so I definitely recommend starting the series from the beginning rather than jumping in here on book two.

The story is marred slightly by some ableism from the MC which had a small presence in the first book and continues here, with minor but casual use of ableist slurs and an unfortunate speculative focus on the role insanity might have played in the actions of the eventually revealed killer. The motives and character background are really strong up until that ending, so it wasn’t enough to detract from the satisfying feeling of clues coming together, but saying “and also they weren’t mentally stable” mixed in with the rest of the reveal dampened it slightly for me. Either it’s obvious that they weren’t all right because they were killing people, and thus the book didn’t need to say that they’re “crazy”, or they were killing people without mental illness playing a role in their actions and so it’s just not applicable except in the colloquially ableist sense, and would be better not entering the discussion at all. I loved the story and found the characters, new and old, to be very engaging, despite this issue, so I’ll definitely be reading the next one.