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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
October Daye spent years paying for the capriciousness of a cruel fae. Now freed from her prison she just wants to be left alone, live her life and have nothing to do with the fae. But when one of the fae who helped her after the spell cast against her wore off is murdered, she finds herself reluctantly hunting down the killer. But the killer knows she is investigating and has set assassins on her trail.
Rosemary & Rue is pretty good urban fantasy. It's not perfect and there is one thing in particular that I didn't much like about the book but overall it's entertaining and kept me guessing almost to the end.
Rosemary & Rue is pretty good urban fantasy. It's not perfect and there is one thing in particular that I didn't much like about the book but overall it's entertaining and kept me guessing almost to the end.
This has a lot of fun things and incredible world building. I love the descriptions of fae and how they interact with modern society. It's pretty interesting.
Toby is a pretty solid protagonist, not too tough, not too soft, not too mean, not too nice, etc. She has some glitches though. For example, not three chapters in and the narrator feels the need to tell us 1) she's not stupid, 2) she's not a moron, and 3) she's not dumb. And I mean using those words, not merely showing us ways in which she's clever or bright.
But my biggest frustration with her is that she makes assumptions on why people are angry with her and refuses communication. I dislike miscommunication plots, they're just so frustrating.
There was a lot of action, but it felt like not much happened. Oh, but Toby got beat up. A lot. Like.... a lot.
Toby is a pretty solid protagonist, not too tough, not too soft, not too mean, not too nice, etc. She has some glitches though. For example, not three chapters in and the narrator feels the need to tell us 1) she's not stupid, 2) she's not a moron, and 3) she's not dumb. And I mean using those words, not merely showing us ways in which she's clever or bright.
But my biggest frustration with her is that she makes assumptions on why people are angry with her and refuses communication. I dislike miscommunication plots, they're just so frustrating.
There was a lot of action, but it felt like not much happened. Oh, but Toby got beat up. A lot. Like.... a lot.
This feels like an early book of a beloved author. It dragged a bit, but overall a fun story with fairies in San Francisco. McGuire is good at ambiance, and this feels like a hard boiled detective novel even with magic and fairies and rose goblins.
Update 9/08/14 -- Even better on the re-read! I plan on following through on this series, now that the author's written more, and I've heard they've gotten GOOD.
10/29/09 -- What started out as a fairly generic urban fantasy quickly turned into a suspenseful fantasy murder mystery, exploring a San Francisco with close connections to the world of Faerie. I loved the way Ms McGuire included Fae from many different mythologies (especially the Caith Sidhe--Tybalt was an instant favorite character). Looking forward to the upcoming sequels!
10/29/09 -- What started out as a fairly generic urban fantasy quickly turned into a suspenseful fantasy murder mystery, exploring a San Francisco with close connections to the world of Faerie. I loved the way Ms McGuire included Fae from many different mythologies (especially the Caith Sidhe--Tybalt was an instant favorite character). Looking forward to the upcoming sequels!
Total urban fantasy. I liked this story about a fledging half-blood detectove where the fae world meets are own. October Daye is a great character who has been dealt too many hard knowcks in the past. And now, with a curse upon her to find a purebloods killer, October must once again put herself in danger to solve someone else's problem.
Rosemary and Rue -3 stars
About: After years being trapped in a body of koi fish, Toby is finally free only to realize that the world moved on without her. Confused and unsure, she is avoiding old places and acquaintances, wanting only to be left alone and lick her wounds, but fate has different plans. One savage murder later and Toby is forced to get back to world of Fae and discover who killed her friend.
There was a time urban fantasy was the only thing I read. I went through every name worth knowing in genre, but for some reason I kept putting October Daye on the side. Some time ago I picked my uncracked paperback and realized what reason was: October sounded completely different and way less cool than Mercys or Kates out there and similarity was what I wanted at the time. Ironically, the older me is intrigued for exactly that reason.
-So, first impression I had of Toby is that she must be one of the unluckiest uf heroines I encountered. Prologue sets us in year 1995. and we find out that Toby is a PI and that she has a loving husband and young daughter home. She is also a changeling, half fae/half human and the guy she is following is Simon Torquill, twin brother of her liege Sylvester Torquill. Shit goes wrong in all the ways and Toby ends up cursed to live as a koi fish in a Japanese Tea Garden for 14 years. But the real bitch about this? It's not that nobody looked for her because they did, human and fae alike. It's the fact that curse just suddenly stopped. She wakes up in her body not knowing anything while the world moved on. It's this unexplained thing of curse simply giving away after period of time that sounded so cruel to me. So, you know, I already heavily sympathized with her- her family not knowing about her true nature doesn't have understanding and wants nothing to do with her, she has no freaking idea about new technologies or events that shaped the world in her absence and she has a shitty job and dingy apartment. So, this is where Toby is when I first got to meet her and from there it only goes down:
- she is basically forced into avenging her friend's murder or she dies in horrible pain.
- she doesn't have any resources available to her because Queen of Fae is fickle, possibly insane drama queen who can kill you just like that.
- she has to ask for favors from:
1)a fae royalty who mocks her and treats her with contempt and disdain;
2) from her boss, Sylvester Torquill, whose wife and daughter's abduction she feels she screwed up all those years ago,
3)the homicidal fae they scare fae children with and
4)ex-lover/friend who doesn't like fae very much.
This is... a lot.
It's not just the baggage, relationships unresolved and friendships unmended we are dealing with here. It's all that at once thrown at the person who very much isn't ready to deal with any of it, even if it is for her own good. I guess, it's this forced way McGuire pushed Toby to fix some things in her life post-koi incident that bothered me. She suffered a trauma. And her getting back into her own body didn't fix it- it only gave birth to another trauma of losing child, friends, lovers and confidence. So, making her go through all that was a bit too much... Maybe it's because by the time she met the Queen I heavily sympathized with her, so if that was the goal, well done, Seanan, I love Toby, now please, give that girl some sunshine.
-Which brings me to this: Why Toby? Why was she the one to be bound by the deadly promise, as if she is the only one able to do Evening's bidding? Look, I do struggle with this mostly because, consequentially, she is the person to deal with pretty much everything when, honestly, she is.. not all that powerful? I don't get it why all of them leave it to her to handle some things. She doesn't have strong magic skills, only moderate, because she is a changeling; she doesn't have any particular physical or weaponry training (ffs, she barely has a weapon) and she gets hurt really damn easily. It's true that we are said she is knighted by Sylvester Torquill, but we are also said it's only because she is very good at finding things, partly because of her hereditary talent for reading blood and partly because she is a good detective. But she doesn't engage, she leaves that to the knights who earned their place in battle. So, how on earth is she constantly thrown into battle, sent to handle things way out of her league, power range or set of skills? I am honestly baffled. At this point I am not even convinced why she was a first changeling to be knighted when she hasn't shown anything that would explain that precedent. This means she was more of a tool for Sylvester for when he needs detective work and sniffing the blood out, but not his champion. So... why? Why send her to tasks clearly meant for champions and that's obvious to everyone from the start.
I guess it has more to do with setting the base for this world which seems to be populated by rather unsavory, crazy powerful individuals and introducing them all at once while pulling Toby through grinder and showing her at her most vulnerable just seemed overly disproportionate in book #1.
-The best thing, though, is that is a really interesting world. Seanan rooted her fae characters in mythology, so they are scary and ambiguous and utterly inhuman. And there is so many interesting things teased. She just kind of mentioned them, as the background piece of information about the supernatural world and they are so tantalizing, you want to know more.
-Also, I can imagine that some plot threads will develop over course of several books:
1) first mystery is what happened with Simon and Oleander... Where are they?
2)What really happened to Rayseline and why is she so so vicious and disturbing?
3) Is Toby going to get her daughter back in her life?
These are all huge questions left opened and probably not going to be resolved quickly.
But some other we may see... like, why is Tybalt so hard on Toby? I mean, we all kind of feel there is more to it, but he is a unbelievable dick to her in this book, so as romantic interest, I am not sold on him and that's perfectly fine with me considering the trauma Toby went through. But he is intriguing, I'd want for him to show a bit more complexity that will distinguish him from other cat shifters/ supernatural royalty characters I read about.
All in all, there is some grit and likability in Toby I am strangely attracted to, even if I don't really understand what makes her such an important player. And I am rooting for her enough to see how some of those big and bigger issues going to resolve.
On to [b:A Local Habitation|6782465|A Local Habitation (October Daye, #2)|Seanan McGuire|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309537085l/6782465._SY75_.jpg|6984561].
"By the oak and the ash, the rowan and the thorn, I bind you."
About: After years being trapped in a body of koi fish, Toby is finally free only to realize that the world moved on without her. Confused and unsure, she is avoiding old places and acquaintances, wanting only to be left alone and lick her wounds, but fate has different plans. One savage murder later and Toby is forced to get back to world of Fae and discover who killed her friend.
There was a time urban fantasy was the only thing I read. I went through every name worth knowing in genre, but for some reason I kept putting October Daye on the side. Some time ago I picked my uncracked paperback and realized what reason was: October sounded completely different and way less cool than Mercys or Kates out there and similarity was what I wanted at the time. Ironically, the older me is intrigued for exactly that reason.
-So, first impression I had of Toby is that she must be one of the unluckiest uf heroines I encountered. Prologue sets us in year 1995. and we find out that Toby is a PI and that she has a loving husband and young daughter home. She is also a changeling, half fae/half human and the guy she is following is Simon Torquill, twin brother of her liege Sylvester Torquill. Shit goes wrong in all the ways and Toby ends up cursed to live as a koi fish in a Japanese Tea Garden for 14 years. But the real bitch about this? It's not that nobody looked for her because they did, human and fae alike. It's the fact that curse just suddenly stopped. She wakes up in her body not knowing anything while the world moved on. It's this unexplained thing of curse simply giving away after period of time that sounded so cruel to me. So, you know, I already heavily sympathized with her- her family not knowing about her true nature doesn't have understanding and wants nothing to do with her, she has no freaking idea about new technologies or events that shaped the world in her absence and she has a shitty job and dingy apartment. So, this is where Toby is when I first got to meet her and from there it only goes down:
- she is basically forced into avenging her friend's murder or she dies in horrible pain.
- she doesn't have any resources available to her because Queen of Fae is fickle, possibly insane drama queen who can kill you just like that.
- she has to ask for favors from:
1)a fae royalty who mocks her and treats her with contempt and disdain;
2) from her boss, Sylvester Torquill, whose wife and daughter's abduction she feels she screwed up all those years ago,
3)the homicidal fae they scare fae children with and
4)ex-lover/friend who doesn't like fae very much.
This is... a lot.
It's not just the baggage, relationships unresolved and friendships unmended we are dealing with here. It's all that at once thrown at the person who very much isn't ready to deal with any of it, even if it is for her own good. I guess, it's this forced way McGuire pushed Toby to fix some things in her life post-koi incident that bothered me. She suffered a trauma. And her getting back into her own body didn't fix it- it only gave birth to another trauma of losing child, friends, lovers and confidence. So, making her go through all that was a bit too much... Maybe it's because by the time she met the Queen I heavily sympathized with her, so if that was the goal, well done, Seanan, I love Toby, now please, give that girl some sunshine.
-Which brings me to this: Why Toby? Why was she the one to be bound by the deadly promise, as if she is the only one able to do Evening's bidding? Look, I do struggle with this mostly because, consequentially, she is the person to deal with pretty much everything when, honestly, she is.. not all that powerful? I don't get it why all of them leave it to her to handle some things. She doesn't have strong magic skills, only moderate, because she is a changeling; she doesn't have any particular physical or weaponry training (ffs, she barely has a weapon) and she gets hurt really damn easily. It's true that we are said she is knighted by Sylvester Torquill, but we are also said it's only because she is very good at finding things, partly because of her hereditary talent for reading blood and partly because she is a good detective. But she doesn't engage, she leaves that to the knights who earned their place in battle. So, how on earth is she constantly thrown into battle, sent to handle things way out of her league, power range or set of skills? I am honestly baffled. At this point I am not even convinced why she was a first changeling to be knighted when she hasn't shown anything that would explain that precedent. This means she was more of a tool for Sylvester for when he needs detective work and sniffing the blood out, but not his champion. So... why? Why send her to tasks clearly meant for champions and that's obvious to everyone from the start.
I guess it has more to do with setting the base for this world which seems to be populated by rather unsavory, crazy powerful individuals and introducing them all at once while pulling Toby through grinder and showing her at her most vulnerable just seemed overly disproportionate in book #1.
-The best thing, though, is that is a really interesting world. Seanan rooted her fae characters in mythology, so they are scary and ambiguous and utterly inhuman. And there is so many interesting things teased. She just kind of mentioned them, as the background piece of information about the supernatural world and they are so tantalizing, you want to know more.
-Also, I can imagine that some plot threads will develop over course of several books:
1) first mystery is what happened with Simon and Oleander... Where are they?
2)What really happened to Rayseline and why is she so so vicious and disturbing?
3) Is Toby going to get her daughter back in her life?
These are all huge questions left opened and probably not going to be resolved quickly.
But some other we may see... like, why is Tybalt so hard on Toby? I mean, we all kind of feel there is more to it, but he is a unbelievable dick to her in this book, so as romantic interest, I am not sold on him and that's perfectly fine with me considering the trauma Toby went through. But he is intriguing, I'd want for him to show a bit more complexity that will distinguish him from other cat shifters/ supernatural royalty characters I read about.
All in all, there is some grit and likability in Toby I am strangely attracted to, even if I don't really understand what makes her such an important player. And I am rooting for her enough to see how some of those big and bigger issues going to resolve.
On to [b:A Local Habitation|6782465|A Local Habitation (October Daye, #2)|Seanan McGuire|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309537085l/6782465._SY75_.jpg|6984561].
adventurous
emotional
tense
fast-paced
Straight up UF and a good first-book to a series.
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes