The Unkindest Tide – Seanan McGuire

This plot thread has been a long time spinning. When the Sea Witch’s children - the Roane - were murdered, she made a bargain with the killers’ children. They would keep the stolen pelts and use them to become Selkies - for a time. Now time is up, and she plans to cast a massive spell to restore the Roane by turning the Selkies into Roane.

(October’s power is apparently the missing piece needed for that spell. It’s not clear why August - who has the same powers and was also in the Luidaeg’s debt for a time - couldn’t do it. But that would have made this a very short book, so let’s roll with it.)

The tragedy of the Selkies has always been that the number of pelts was limited. There are as many Selkies as there were butchered Roane. For a child to gain a pelt, an adult has to give one up, and become a land-bound mortal. (The mortal Selkie-kin are still part of Faerie. And Faerie is disdainful of part-bloods and even harder on non-Faerie mortals.) The Luidaeg’s call makes the problem urgent. Those who have the skins will become Roane, permanently. Those who do not will be human, permanently. Those who were considering passing their seal-skins on in a few years have to decide now.

October and the Luidaeg come to the Dutchy of Ships - a floating neutral haven - as do representatives of Arden, October’s queen, and Dianda, the duchess of the neighboring offshore duchy. And Dianda’s estranged brother takes the opportunity to strike at her.

That subplot is a structural weakness in the book. There are two stories - the one about the Roane and the one about Dianda’s family - and either could have been told without the other. (There is one brief conversation drawing a link between the two stories, but the coupling is tenuous. The resolution of the subplot depends on a character breaking a major rule for no obvious reason.) The reason for the subplot is apparent - without it the book would have had much angst and little action - but embedding an essentially-unrelated story inside the main one is not ideal.

The book is worth reading, as all the October Daye novels have been.