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A review by atagarev
A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire
1.0
I ended up being pretty disappointed by this book. It has the same strengths and weaknesses as the last one but where I expected some progress and improvement, all I got was just more of the same except even slower and more tedious.
Basically all the setup from book #1 turns out to be irrelevant to this story as we once again spend nearly the entire book setting up side characters that will likely never make another appearance. Meanwhile the central "mystery" is so immediately obvious and straightforward that October might take the gold medal for most bumbling and incompetent investigator in a genre full of them. Figuring out what's happening by less than a hundred pages into the book only to watch the experienced investigator struggle with it for another three hundred pages is just frustrating to read. The only justification for her not immediately solving the mystery is that all the side characters have a suicidal determination to keep all their immediately obvious and critical yet boring secrets as long as possible while they are getting picked off like flies. Honestly, I don't even understand why many of these things are kept secret except to prolong the tedious story- there are clear and immediate benefits to sharing that information and no downside to doing so yet character would rather get murdered than share. There is some red herring subplot about spies but it makes less and less sense the more you think about it.
In the end this is a book that lives and dies on its mystery but the mystery is just too predictable. All that we are left with is to read hundreds of pages of October trudging back and forth down hallways in a confusing building and making the same mistake over and over again. I think I could have easily skipped the middle 80% of the book and not missed any important information or event.
Basically all the setup from book #1 turns out to be irrelevant to this story as we once again spend nearly the entire book setting up side characters that will likely never make another appearance. Meanwhile the central "mystery" is so immediately obvious and straightforward that October might take the gold medal for most bumbling and incompetent investigator in a genre full of them. Figuring out what's happening by less than a hundred pages into the book only to watch the experienced investigator struggle with it for another three hundred pages is just frustrating to read. The only justification for her not immediately solving the mystery is that all the side characters have a suicidal determination to keep all their immediately obvious and critical yet boring secrets as long as possible while they are getting picked off like flies. Honestly, I don't even understand why many of these things are kept secret except to prolong the tedious story- there are clear and immediate benefits to sharing that information and no downside to doing so yet character would rather get murdered than share. There is some red herring subplot about spies but it makes less and less sense the more you think about it.
In the end this is a book that lives and dies on its mystery but the mystery is just too predictable. All that we are left with is to read hundreds of pages of October trudging back and forth down hallways in a confusing building and making the same mistake over and over again. I think I could have easily skipped the middle 80% of the book and not missed any important information or event.