- ISBN13: 9780756405717
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
October “Toby” Daye, a changeling who is half human and half fae, has been an outsider from birth. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the Faerie world, retreating to a “normal” life. Unfortunately for her, the Faerie world has other ideas…
The murder of Countess Evening Winterrose pulls Toby back into the fae world. Unable to resist Evening’s dying curse, which binds her to investigate, Toby must resume her former position as knight errant and renew old alliances. As she steps back into fae society, dealing with a cast of characters not entirely good or evil, she realizes that more than her own life will be forfeited if she cannot find Evening’s killer.
April 10th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Many and several moons ago, my housemate asked me if I’d be interested in reading a new book. This is something similar to asking a cat if she would like more catnip. After receiving my enthused yes, she gave me more details. The author needed people who were not already familiar with her work to do a quick, but thorough, read-through and provide feedback, all inside of a week.
This lay well within my skill-set, and was my first introduction to Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire. I caught one small continuity detail, but beyond that I was fairly limited in feedback beyond: Book good. And it was.
Well, I’m not sure how many revisions there have been between that version and the version I received in ARC form, but let me tell you, this book has gone from “Book good” to “Book AMAZING!”
For those reading this who like comparisons to other series. Quality-wise, I believe that Rosemary and Rue compares favorably with both the first book of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, and with the first book of the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton.
The main character, October ‘Toby’ Daye, is a changeling. This leaves her caught between the realms of Faerie and the mortal world, with obstacles and craziness from both being heaped on her head throughout Rosemary and Rue. Toby’s journey through this book is precipitated by the murder of an old friend, and a very pressing obligation to solve that murder.
It’s difficult writing a review, because I want to talk on and on about all the twists and turns, all the fascinating secondary characters, and the delight I had in seeing so much being set up for the subsequent books. At the same time, I don’t want to give any spoilers, simply because Rosemary and Rue brings wonderful discoveries of Toby’s world on every page. The degree of detail going on in the background, as she is moved forward by action scene after action scene, is just lovely.
Toby and her world feel real to me. I can picture her San Francisco, with Kelpies lurking on corners, and knowes hidden in the most unlikely of places. If someone had asked me before this book about doors into Faerie existing within a city, I would’ve scoffed. However, Seanan strikes the right balance between the gritty, mundane world of mortals and the otherworldliness of Faerie, and makes it seem natural and right where the two intersect.
Honestly, I can’t say enough good things about the world-building. How the rules of Faerie make sense, and how you glimpse threads of the broader tapestry. I believe that Toby is dealing with a world of immortal beings, with complex and intertwining stories, loves and hates, jealousies and loyalties. Toby struggles, and I believe both in the struggles and that she will find a way through, with the help of her friends, and by relying on her own wits. Toby has been hurt by her past, but she is strong, and is capable of change to face her new realities. Seanan has me rooting for Toby throughout this book, gasping and cringing and wincing and cheering by turns. I think that is the biggest change, from the previous version I read to this one, that I can and do believe that Toby will hold her own in this precarious and deadly world.
So, September 1st, get thee to the nearest bookstore and buy a copy of Rosemary and Rue. If you love story, strong heroines, and a very folklore-based take on Faerie, you’ll adore this book.
Rating: 5 / 5
April 10th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
I am a great fan of writing and reading stories about protagonists in a heap of trouble digging themselves out to win the day. Rosemary and Rue is exactly that kind of book. In less than the first 100 pages, October “Toby” Daye, a half-breed Daoine Sidhe and former street kid, is cursed twice, loses everything she holds dear, winds up in a job she hates and has an unpleasant encounter with the King of Cats. Frankly, if I were Toby and I met Seanan on the street, I would punch her.
Yes, I really loved this book. Toby is a flawed protagonist in all of the right ways. She is scared, hurt, angry, and forced to do things she would have done anyway but resents the power that is forcing her to do exactly that. Every person Toby turns to for help she knows she cannot trust. Every person who loves Toby is hurt by this lack of trust. But, honestly, the reader cannot fault Toby. She is acting in a logical and emotional-if reactionary-manner to everything that is happening to and around her.
One of the best parts about Rosemary and Rue is the fact that while it is one step into the world of the Fey, changelings, pixies, trolls, and goblins, there is still a true sense of reality. Having once lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the story is set, I can imagine the world of Oberon’s court just beyond visible sight. The places are real. The emotions are real. The pain, loss, and infrequent joys are real. So real that sometimes this is a hard book to read. Fortunately, it is a harder book to put down.
Seanan McGuire’s funny, raw, and engaging style of writing has put her at the top of my “new favorite authors” pile. I highly recommend Rosemary and Rue as a fantastic debut novel and eagerly wait to see what comes next both in this series and from the author.
Rating: 5 / 5
April 10th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Hell hath no fury like a half and half fae-human whose just spent the last 14 years as fish in a pond in the Tea Gardens of the San Francisco Bay Area, CA.
As one life finally closes shut, a new one begins as former PI for the court of Sylvester Torquill, October ‘Toby’ Daye, is still rediscovering the true meaning of starting over. But rejecting the world that got her stuck as a fish in the first place is not an easy thing to shake off and play pretend human. Oh-no, Toby gets sucked back in a brutal and final way: find the killer of a powerful and old fae, or die trying. Literally. And she’s about to come face to face and full circle with a past that never really got laid to rest.
For a debut novel, McGuire sure packs a punch. The structure of this world isn’t just well researched, but it reads as though from an authority–someone who actually grew up with the lore, rather than studying it later on. There is a texture, intelligent thoughtfulness and intimacy with how McGuire layered the fae world with the human world of SF area, which was stunningly well done and utterly believable. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book with a solid fantasy world that makes sense and with few question marks or random things just there with no cause. While this book was mostly world building and explaining it, McGuire did a good job of incorporating it into the actual storyline, rather than just lecturing it in blocks here and there. It did tend to drag at parts but because she’s so consistent and so clear in her explanations, they’re more fascinating than vexing, and that’s a rare skill.
As such, since there is a more clinical telling of the world and the complicated mystery-murder that needs to be solved, the main character of Toby wasn’t always easy to warm up to but she’s a well-written, interesting and quirky character. She had wit, charm and some sass, little abrasive tough-as-nails talk, that I liked, and miss in female leads: not childish or potty-mouthed. Her character evolution, emotionally and psychologically from the beginning, having a normal life and a family to 14 years later in which she has nothing, was believable and richly told, though at times, emotionally distant. My main problem was that Toby was given this complex about being unspecial and rather ordinary for a thin-blooded fae, yet all these power players rely upon her heavily and go to extreme lengths to prove their worth to her. I don’t mind an underdog, I love the underdog, just not a pretentious one that tells you that she’s both superwoman and not, at the same time. Secondary characters added somewhat to the storyline and showing Toby’s various characteristics but they tended to be rendered the same and flatly, but not pointlessly put in the story–they all play a part and I’m glad for that. They’re also introduced in a way that didn’t languish too long, but were given a brief background as they came up and were necessary to the plotting and unfolding of the story.
You just have to accept that the main character is the world of the fae, with most everyone showing what that world is about and what it can do. Even Toby gets pushed back to show how well developed McGuire has made this world, though the journey of Toby was refreshing and told with a talented air.
The detective element of the story was slow going, again, to exhibit the fae world and workings which I didn’t mind, but it dragged half way through when nothing really happened. The second half, there is action, but it was repetitive action–Toby forecasting her doom, getting hurt then thinking she’ll die, times 3. She continually says she’s not stupid, but everyone tells her she isn’t that smart or clever, and proves time and again that she really isn’t that smart. There were times I didn’t understand why she did something when she and I, as the reader, knew it was a stupid thing to do–i.e., going to her home when she knows people are after her and when she tells herself she shouldn’t, but does anyway. The progression of her discovery of the clues felt like meandering, tangents that felt like they were static, just there, but I realized later that that’s not entirely the case, doing two things: inserting elements for the next book as well as playing minor roles in the current case. But so much is background, that meandering, and it goes on too long sometimes. Also, you sort of know who-done-it a few chapters before, with a harried rush to the big ta-da that doesn’t live up to all the interesting and mostly intriguing build up.
Is Rosemary and Rue a perfect book? Is it any different than most fantasy/paranormal books in this genre? No, not always, but for a first time author, I have great hopes for a character with lots of strength and potential, with a fantasy wonderful world I can really fall in love with and believe in. McGuire’s got raw talent that is undeniably attractive, and I can’t wait to read the second in this series!
Rating: 3 / 5
April 10th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
I am thrilled to have had the privilege to read and review an advance copy of ‘Rosemary and Rue’.
Toby Daye is a ‘changeling’, the child of a fae mother and a human father. These mixed-race people, not fully accepted by the fae world, use magical disguises to pass as human and live quiet, ‘normal’ lives in a world that doesn’t know they even exist.
Toby was a private investigator, working on cases that affected full-blooded fae and changelings. This career came to a sudden end when a case went horribly wrong and ended with Toby being enchanted and removed from the world for 14 years. In that time, her human husband moved on with his life, her changeling daughter grew up without her, and Toby has returned to a world that she barely understands.
She attempts to build a new, quiet life working menial jobs and living hand to mouth, refusing to return to doing the investigations that destroyed her life. This situation changes when a fae friend is murdered and Toby agrees (under some duress) to solve the case and avenge the death.
I don’t want to say more because this is a story you should discover for yourself. The world is so real, the characters so well-written, that you will feel like you live there.
The book is the first in a trilogy but don’t worry, the story didn’t end with a cliffhanger. The story was complete in itself, the mystery was solved…and future occurrences were hinted at in a manner that lets me think I may have an idea what’s coming without leaving me hanging. Knowing that this is book one in a trilogy means only that I came away smiling in anticipation, knowing that I will have two more opportunities to immerse myself in this fabulous world with these wonderful characters.
Lucky you, you have THREE opportunities. You will get to meet Toby for the first time in September, and then you will anticipate the future books with the same pleasure I do.
Rating: 5 / 5
April 10th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I’m pretty picky with series books. Combine a serious case of Too-Many-Books syndrome with a general preference for originality over “comfort” reading, and you get a reader who’ll happily abandon a series after one book if that book can’t evoke any reaction beyond, “Yeah, that was pretty good.”
Happily, Rosemary and Rue, the first published novel by Seanan McGuire, is more than pretty good. (Full disclosure: Seanan’s a friend, but I’m trying my best to not let that affect my judgement.) R&R is the first book featuring private investigator October Daye. October – Toby to her friends – is a changeling, daughter of a human father and a powerful Daoine Sidhe mother. In the Prologue, a case goes horribly wrong, with disastrous consequences for Toby. When we see her again, she’s abandoned her career and withdrawn from all her friends, scraping by in the human world, wanting only to be left alone.
You can’t, as the song says, always get what you want. An old friend (if that’s the right term), Evening Winterrose, Countess of Goldengreen, is murdered, and uses a dying curse to force Toby to investigate and bring the killer to justice. (Which means Evening is Sidhe Who Must Be Obeyed, Daoine think?) So the story is both urban fantasy and a detective story, and succeeds at both.
The things that most matter to me in a book, that draw me in if done well, are world building, characterization, and humor. McGuire is strong in all of those areas. Toby’s fae-riddled San Francisco, and the Faerie lands and courts she visits, are rich with detail, often beautiful, sometimes frightening. There are different races, and mixes of races, at every turn, and McGuire has obviously not only done plenty of research, but thought about the personalities and interactions within this diversity. (I hope that at some future point, she explores the politics of pure-blood vs. mixed-blood lines within the courts.) It gave me a moment’s pause when I encountered a Kitsune among this mostly European-derived population, but then, if the Sidhe could cross the Atlantic and the North American continent, why couldn’t a Kitsune cross the Pacific?
The characters are varied, interesting, and often sympathetic. Toby herself is, by turns, noble, prickly, snarky, guilt-ridden, smart, and very, very foolish. I don’t know that I’d ever care to meet her, but I liked reading about her, and by the end, I cared what happened to her. And there are a number of supporting characters I’ll be happy to encounter again.
The humor comes mainly from the snark. A number of the characters, Toby in particular, know how to turn a funny/sarcastic phrase. I didn’t actually laugh out loud until I read Tybalt’s note in the preview of A Local Habitation, the second Toby book, but I smiled and chuckled several times. It’s a welcome bit of leavening in what’s often a grim story. (I admit, however, to a bit of skepticism that a Selkie noble, who has apparently lived his entire life in the Summerlands, would use the word “semiprofessionally” in casual conversation.)
Another strength is the richness of Toby’s backstory. As of the start of this book, she’s already had a tumultuous, accomplished life. She has a set of friends, enemies, and those in between who’ll no doubt continue to affect her life. A number of past events are alluded to, with the indication that we may learn more about them in future books.
Finally, R&R is about more than the detective plot. It’s about re-establishing connections, dealing with guilt, and (to steal a phrase from the book) finding the way home. This adds a depth, a feeling of meaning, that far too many series books lack.
R&R isn’t a perfect book. McGuire (via Toby’s first person narration) sometimes includes recaps of what’s just gone before, which isn’t necessary. I wish Toby had been a bit more active at times, less willing to have others tell her what to do. (Granted, there were reasons for it, but still.) I wanted to know more about (excuse the vagueness) how the villain of the piece knew about the existence of the MacGuffin and performed a key bit of magic. I didn’t quite accept the delay in following the final key piece of evidence.
But the bottom line is simple: I’m going to buy A Local Habitation when it comes out next March. I want to spend more time getting to know October Daye and her world. Which is more than I can say for either Harry Dresden or Sookie Stackhouse.
Rating: 4 / 5