Be the Serpent

core novel 2022 October Daye

Record

First published	2022
Original language	EN
Work type	novel
Canon status	core
Reader rating	4.45 (5,311 ratings, collected 2026-09-14)
Page count	384
First-edition ISBN	9780756416867
Internal chronology	16

Synopsis

Be the Serpent is the sixteenth novel in the October Daye series. It opens with Toby recently married and taking an official, family-supported break from her usual duties as a knight errant, granted by the Queen in the Mists, a rare stretch of normal life for her. That peace does not last: Toby learns that an old friend and ally has secretly been an enemy in disguise the entire time, a discovery that pitches her into a fight for her life, her community, and everything she has believed to be true. Tied into the unfolding crisis are debts from the long-past Broken Ride that are now coming due, obligations Toby must settle whether or not she was the one who originally incurred them, drawing long-running threads of her history back to the surface.

Where it sits

• Universe: October Daye
• Series: October Daye core; position 16 of 19 in the series' recorded order
• Author: Seanan McGuire

Notes

• From the series record (October Daye): Long-running urban fantasy series; the main novel sequence only. Distinct from McGuire's Wayward Children. Numerous companion novellas/short stories exist and were not researched.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.

• Reading order, within the series October Daye: position 16 of 19: previous When Sorrows Come (2021) · next Sleep No More (2023)

Sources

• Seanan McGuire's own site: The October Daye Books
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Daye
• https://seananmcguire.com/TobyB16.php

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