Line #3 YMMV/OctoberDaye


1	* CompleteMonster:
2	** ''An Artificial Night'': [[PsychopathicManchild Blind Michael]], the [[BigBad leader]] of TheWildHunt, has his followers kidnap [[WouldHurtAChild children]] and painfully transform them into his thralls. Reducing fae children to riders and humans into steeds for his army, Blind Michael's abuse of said children is so severe that many break under the pressure and die as a result, with him then using the magic from their bones to fortify the powers within his land. Blind Michael kidnaps the nieces and nephews of October "Toby" Daye to force them to participate in his latest Hunt, trapping the consciousness of one niece and intending to make Toby his bride. When his plan is foiled, Blind Michael goes into a rage and takes it out on [[DomesticAbuse his current wife]], Acacia, who he also regularly abuses, scarring her with his knife and stating his intent to keep his current thralls under his draconian enslavement for eternity.
3	** ''Late Eclipses'': The assassin [[MasterPoisoner Oleander de Merelands]] is wanted for [[HistoricalRapSheet countless deaths over multiple kingdoms]], including the murder of former good-hearted king Gilead. Seeking revenge on Amandine for a previous slight, Oleander takes Simon Torquill as her unwilling lover. Years later she conspires with her pawn, Rayseline, to have Toby take the fall for her misdeeds, gleeful that she would be executed for it. Oleander has a friend of Toby killed to frame her for it and later poisons the entire court of cats, killing many, including infants, while hoping Toby would take the fall for her crimes. Boasting her killings will [[FameThroughInfamy make her famous]] even after her death, Oleander makes one final attempt on Toby's life before being stopped.
4	* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The more bigoted/traditionalist purebloods raise changeling children to be servants to their pureblooded relatives, in a similar way to how American slaveowners would frequently raise mixed-race children they created by raping enslaved Black women to be servants to their "owner's" legitimate white children.
5	* GrowingTheBeard: While the first novel, ''Rosemary and Rue'' was praised by critics for its WorldBuilding and interesting cast of characters, it also received complaints of having too much InfoDump, a weirdly slow pacing and Toby being a PinballProtagonist. The second book, ''A Local Habitation'', rather than building properly on the first, essentially serves as the literary equivalent of a BottleEpisode, trapping Toby and a couple characters in a single location away from most of the settings and elements introduced in book one, and also received criticism for Toby carrying the IdiotBall repeatedly. Later novels would improve on this and give the series, a faster pacing, a well-crafted MythArc and deeper emotional resonance that would turn it into one of the most acclaimed UrbanFantasy book series. This improvement was first felt in the third novel, ''An Artificial Night'' which truly explored Toby's psyche, began to set the seeds for some of the series' overarching plot, and had much deeper emotional stakes.
6	* NightmareFuel: Lots, especially if you're not fond of blood.
7	** The fate of all children taken by Blind Michael. Those of Fae are tortured and abused, forced to ride over and over again until they come to find joy in the Ride itself. Those born mortal? They are the rides, transformed slowly and methodically until their minds break.
8	** In ''Ashes of Honor'', Toby finds herself kidnapped, with her hands bound by twine. However, thanks to her new super-healing powers, she can be a bit more cavalier with her own physical well-being... so she [[spoiler: scrapes her wrists against the walls until the twine breaks, scraping away a good portion of her actual wrists as well]]. Doubles as NauseaFuel!
9	* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Cliff. In her narration Toby gives him a lot of grace, stating that from his point of view, she abandoned him and their daughter. However, what ''actually'' happened from his point of view is that one day, Toby disappeared from her (dangerous) job without a single trace, then reappeared many years later, naked and very obviously traumatized. The police file on her disappearance states that she was abducted and held captive, which is the story Toby sticks to, isn't far at all from the truth, and is the obvious reasonable conclusion that people who knew her should accept. Granted, it might have been emotionally easier for him to stubbornly insist that she'd abandoned him rather than something terrible happening to her after her original disappearance, but that doesn't really excuse it. It certainly doesn't justify his going along with Miranda's insistence that she's lying when she returns and all evidence available to them should back up her story.

Context YMMV / OctoberDaye