Rosemary and Rue is the great book set in the world of Faerie. Our heroine, October Daye, is of the tragic variety. She's a Changeling who was working as a private detective, following another Fey, when she was transformed into a fish, losing years of her life in the process. Eventually, she gets back her original form but the world around her has changed - there are cell phones and scads of new technology, and all of her human friends (including her husband and child) have moved on, thinking that she just up and disappeared one day. So do her fey friends, but at least they can know the truth of what happened.

In Rosemary and Rue, Toby's out to find out who killed Evening Winterrose, one of the people she knew before her transformation. She has no choice but to solve this murder; if she doesn't figure it out, she'll die.

With that kind if incentive, Toby quests for all she's worth, which makes for a great story. Seanan McGuire has put together a great book. Toby's an interesting protagonist and you really want her to succeed in her mission. There's also a lot of good mythology, with some neat types of fae around. The next book, A Local Habitation, is slated to come out next month so I'll definitely be hitting the bookstore then!

Originally published at http://ireadgood.wordpress.com ( )

October (Toby) Daye is a half-fairy PI with a young daughter and a loving fiance—until an investigation gone wrong turns her into a fish for over a decade. When she’s freed, she has nothing left and just wants Fairy to leave her alone. Of course it won’t, forcing her to go back to the corrupt lover she left, the court whose knighthood she wants to forget, and obligations enforced by magic. And also, her sovereign’s son-in-law is flirting with her, except that his wife is crazy, possibly because Toby screwed up that investigation all those years ago. It’s a good debut, giving information at the right pace and creating an engaging urban fantasy world. I’ve seen criticism that Toby isn’t much of an active force—things basically just happen to her at a pace she can barely survive—and that’s true, but given the plot, just being able to hang on is a virtue. Plus, she starts out with a pretty damn good reason to be depressed, reactive and angry. Try it out for the worldbuilding, and maybe Toby will take more control of her destiny in later books. ( )

Mine must be the dissenting voice with regard to this book. The fantasy element is one in which the style of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet is applied to a San Francisco that is half human and half Faery. Her Celtic mythology is mixed in with descriptions drawn from Japanese anime. She muddles the tradition of "changelings" (human children switched at birth with faery children substituted instead) when more accurately, she meant "halflings". October Daye is a halfling with one human and one fae parent. The author consistently calls her a changeling, but the use of the word is inaccurate and consequently disconcerting in the world she presents. Similar inaccuracies (that detract from her world-building) run throughout the text. Nor was the pacing of the book as rapid as it needed to be; in every chapter, there seemed to be a point when the heroine once again had to reiterate her pain and angst rather than just getting on with her job of discovering a murderer. The fact that this is a debut novel may make this all forgivable but it doesn't encourage follow-up with the next series installment. ( )

Solid work from a new (to me) author. I will be looking for more. Good stuff. ( )

Rosemary and Rue, by Seanan McGuire, is the first of a series of books featuring the changeling character October "Toby" Daye. As the product of human and Faerie blood, changelings are not entirely welcome in either world, and although Toby once forged a place in Faerie as a knight for the Duke of Shadowed Hills, she has since repudiated all connections to that world. In fact, Toby apparently lived quite an event-filled life before the book even begins: she was engaged to and had a daughter with a human man before her "private investigator" status in Faerie landed her in a fourteen-year imprisonment in a koi pond. As the action begins, she works as a grocery clerk, is unable to speak to her daughter, and exists in a voluntary state of friendlessness. The setting may be fantastic but the action is a straight-up mystery, revolving around the death of one of Toby's old allies, Countess Evening Winterrose. The Countess has cursed Toby with discovering the truth of her murder with cold iron, and the task becomes a race against time as well as Toby's forceful reintroduction into the world of Faerie. Although there is a lot of (necessary) exposition and explanation of the laws of Faerie, etc., this is a solid series opener with some intriguing characters that left me hopeful that some of the many threads left hanging will be picked up in the next volume. ( )