Rosemary and Rue

Rosemary and Rue

*****
Seanan McGuire


I know - this book has been out long enough for the sequel to be out now, and even though I bought it the week it came out I just finished reading it.

I liked this book a lot, but I'm not super excited about it like I get about some other books. I liked it, but I didn't love it. There's a lot of good scenes in it. The dialogue is good. The heroine, October Daye, is half human and half fae - and justifiably a touch angsty - she lived for 14 years as a fish, losing her man and her daughter in the process. That would be enough to make me angsty. I enjoyed the bits and pieces of her previous life. A lot happens in this book.

October (Toby) has just recently returned to the land of humans, after spending 14 years living as a fish. Instead of keeping in touch with her fae compatriots, she tries to tamp down her fae half, except the parts she needs to disguise her self (from being recognised as fae) and the bits of magic she needs to trick humans into thinking she's paid a fare. She works in a grocery store when our story takes off. One of her longtime acquaitances - a close "frenemy" a friend you could just as easy be an enemy with- dies and binds October into searching for her killer. From there on out October is in a lot of danger. People - or rather fae - keep trying to kill her, almost succeeding a few times. In fact, there was a point where even I (me, who is {am?} usually very good at suspending belief, or versions of reality so I can sit back and enjoy a book) was thinking, "Come On! what more can happen to her?" And one more thing would indeed happen to October, causing an extreme amount of blood loss. Everytime she was injured there was a whole lot of blood loss. It's fantasy - she can bleed from one end of town to the other and get saved, I don't care - but this just happened A. LOT. I just kept thinking, "geez, give this girl a break soon {heh, not a real break}- how much can she TAKE (or lose)?" I think I actually became just a little tired of reading about all the blood she lost (at least three times- maybe more, it all runs together in my memories - just a sea of blood loss....people were wading down the sidewalks with galoshes on....WAIT! I'm lying, sorry- but they could have been there was so much BLOOD)

Thankfully, there was a point where she healed enough to solve the crime (only to be injured again, sustaining another drenching blood loss). In fact, there was a rather good mystery within this book, almost a old-fashioned who-dunit style - but with fae, {and lots of BLOOD!}

I think I want to buy the sequel, A Local Habitation, which is currently available. The narrative on this novel was good, the dialogue was fine, there were clues to let me think about who the culprit might be, lots of action (unfortunately mostly in the form of injuries to October, but it's action) and the promise of happiness for October. Not quite a HEA, but satisfying. There's no arguing that Seanan McGuire is a talented writer (OMG, she also writes poetry and songs! and comics. and makes icons, or pics! It's like she got all the talents of five lifetimes and it's all jammed into one head) and I would recommend this book to whoever enjoys a good urban fantasy, or whoever enjoys reading about fae in contemporary settings. The spine says "Fantasy"

According to Ms McGuire's website there are at least four books coming out, maybe more after.

1. Rosemary and Rue (this book, right here, available right now)
2. A Local Habitation (in stores now, released in March)
3. An Artificial Night (coming in September 2010)
4. Late Eclipses (TBA, although there is a fourth cover up, which says Winter Fluch - anyone know how to pronounce fluch?)
5. un-named

Challenges
Speculative Fiction Reading Challenge
2010 Cat Book Reading Challenge one of the secondary characters is a Cait Sidhe -shapeshifts into cat-like beings
2010 Countdown Challenge - 2009 - completing the 2009 portion of this challenge.