fandom mode: [books] Review: Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire
Rosemary and Rue
by Seanan McGuire
A review by Indigo
Full Disclosure: seanan_mcguire has been a good friend of mine for over a decade. I've roleplayed with her online for probably 85% of that time. So I'm very familiar with her prose style, and of course this makes me a little biased.
That said, the power of her blonde awesomeness extended across the country. How so? I was having lunch with erispope and we were chatttering happily about this and that, and the subject of Urban Fantasy came up, as it often does with us. I mentioned enthusiastically that I was looking forward to Rosemary and Rue. She smiled and mentioned she had a copy. After I got through gawping and stammering, I asked her how. She grinned and reminded me she works for a bookstore and an ARC turned up. So she lent it to me so that I could write a review.
I personally am a big urban fantasy geek, so the pronunciation guide at front was just a cool add-on, but for readers who are just stepping foot in the genre, that's an awesome feature.
If you've read the other reviews, you know the basics. If not, let me go over them quickly:
October Daye, Toby to her friends, is a changeling - the child of a human/faerie pairing. As such, she can live in both worlds, but is not entirely of either, for obvious reasons. After an event from her past went horribly, tragically, heartbreakingly wrong, she decided to shut off her connectivity with faerie altogether. But an old friend, Countess Evening Winterrose, has died...only it was murder most foul, and the Countess' last act was to charge Toby with finding out the whys and wherefores of who killed her -- or quite literally die trying by cursing her. As a result, Toby now has no choice but to run hither and yon all over San Francisco, trying to avoid asking the fae from the past for help as she races against time to solve Evening's murder before the curse does her in.
Now that the basics are over, here's my take. I pored through the book. I started reading it Saturday night, and finished reading it about mid-evening Sunday with breaks for things like sleep and food. My plan is to go back and read it again, more slowly. But I was left with a lot of thoughts on this first book in the series.
Seanan weaves a cinematically beautiful, vivid and visual world. I have never been to San Francisco. I know it from pictures, descriptions from friends, and what I've seen of it in television in movies. Seanan's descriptions are so vivid I feel very nearly like I visited the city, walking beside Toby. There's a scene on the Bay Bridge that really had me holding my breath.
As if that weren't enough, she describes the faerie places in San Francisco and the way into them from the human world in loving detail. I was stricken breathless by the beautiful but dangerous razor-sharp glass roses in Shadowed Hills, and the way into the Undine's knowe in the Japanese Tea Gardens. The faerie themselves get the same loving attention to detail -- the Kitsune, the Undine, the bridge troll, the adorable rose goblins, and so on. My persistent feeling is that all this beautiful imagery would make an extremely awesome movie, but they shouldn't let anyone but Seanan do the screenplay or it would fall painfully short.
As for characterization? Toby already started out with a plus mark for me. But she's a damn fine character. She's -- hallelujah -- not blonde. She's not a girlie girl who cares about her hair and nails, and she's more comfortable in jeans than in heels. She prefers leather to velvet. But she's also stubborn, suffers from painfully earned self-doubt and self esteem issues, and those cause her to get in her own way when it comes to letting people in or when it comes to asking -- or failing to ask -- for help. She hates being vulnerable, even as it makes her that much more endearing to the reader. To describe her as plucky would be an understatement -- one at which Toby would probably glower and make a crude remark. She's a tough cookie, somewhere between admirably determined and "too dumb to stay down". But that's really going to be something a reader loves about her. And the many regrets she experiences give the "Rue" in Rosemary and Rue a double meaning.
The story is fleshed out and coloured and given layer upon layer of depth by the vast array of characters we meet from Toby's past and present. There are a few I loved and hated within the first few lines I read about them. And since we only got sample tastes of many of them, I am looking forward to the next two books so I can see more of them!
This is a first book, a debut, but the storytelling is crisp and sharp with a saucy tip of the hat to the hardboiled pulp detective. The slower moments make sense and are not jarring to the reader, and the pacing never really slows down entirely, even while Toby's lying unconscious. There are a couple moments that made me go "!!!" for want of a better way to put it, and Seanan's use of tropes is delicate -- like a fine brush adding exquisite detail to an already elaborate painting.
Having read -- no, devoured -- this one, I can say already that I am looking forward to 2010 and the other two books in the series as much as I am dismayed there are only three books in the series.
Rosemary and Rue comes out September First. Get yours!
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Rosemary-Rue-October-Daye-Novel/dp/0756405718
Barnes & Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Rosemary-and-Rue/Seanan-McGuire/e/9780756405717
Borders: http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=0756405718
Indigo.ca: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Rosemary-And-Rue-Seanan-Mcguire/9780756405717-item.html?pticket=dbugoji05vkfwpvqyjwnkw2n3XgEOZWkTQBT4NCJuTFwPdVh3%2fg%3d
by Seanan McGuire
A review by Indigo
Full Disclosure: seanan_mcguire has been a good friend of mine for over a decade. I've roleplayed with her online for probably 85% of that time. So I'm very familiar with her prose style, and of course this makes me a little biased.
That said, the power of her blonde awesomeness extended across the country. How so? I was having lunch with erispope and we were chatttering happily about this and that, and the subject of Urban Fantasy came up, as it often does with us. I mentioned enthusiastically that I was looking forward to Rosemary and Rue. She smiled and mentioned she had a copy. After I got through gawping and stammering, I asked her how. She grinned and reminded me she works for a bookstore and an ARC turned up. So she lent it to me so that I could write a review.
I personally am a big urban fantasy geek, so the pronunciation guide at front was just a cool add-on, but for readers who are just stepping foot in the genre, that's an awesome feature.
If you've read the other reviews, you know the basics. If not, let me go over them quickly:
October Daye, Toby to her friends, is a changeling - the child of a human/faerie pairing. As such, she can live in both worlds, but is not entirely of either, for obvious reasons. After an event from her past went horribly, tragically, heartbreakingly wrong, she decided to shut off her connectivity with faerie altogether. But an old friend, Countess Evening Winterrose, has died...only it was murder most foul, and the Countess' last act was to charge Toby with finding out the whys and wherefores of who killed her -- or quite literally die trying by cursing her. As a result, Toby now has no choice but to run hither and yon all over San Francisco, trying to avoid asking the fae from the past for help as she races against time to solve Evening's murder before the curse does her in.
Now that the basics are over, here's my take. I pored through the book. I started reading it Saturday night, and finished reading it about mid-evening Sunday with breaks for things like sleep and food. My plan is to go back and read it again, more slowly. But I was left with a lot of thoughts on this first book in the series.
Seanan weaves a cinematically beautiful, vivid and visual world. I have never been to San Francisco. I know it from pictures, descriptions from friends, and what I've seen of it in television in movies. Seanan's descriptions are so vivid I feel very nearly like I visited the city, walking beside Toby. There's a scene on the Bay Bridge that really had me holding my breath.
As if that weren't enough, she describes the faerie places in San Francisco and the way into them from the human world in loving detail. I was stricken breathless by the beautiful but dangerous razor-sharp glass roses in Shadowed Hills, and the way into the Undine's knowe in the Japanese Tea Gardens. The faerie themselves get the same loving attention to detail -- the Kitsune, the Undine, the bridge troll, the adorable rose goblins, and so on. My persistent feeling is that all this beautiful imagery would make an extremely awesome movie, but they shouldn't let anyone but Seanan do the screenplay or it would fall painfully short.
As for characterization? Toby already started out with a plus mark for me. But she's a damn fine character. She's -- hallelujah -- not blonde. She's not a girlie girl who cares about her hair and nails, and she's more comfortable in jeans than in heels. She prefers leather to velvet. But she's also stubborn, suffers from painfully earned self-doubt and self esteem issues, and those cause her to get in her own way when it comes to letting people in or when it comes to asking -- or failing to ask -- for help. She hates being vulnerable, even as it makes her that much more endearing to the reader. To describe her as plucky would be an understatement -- one at which Toby would probably glower and make a crude remark. She's a tough cookie, somewhere between admirably determined and "too dumb to stay down". But that's really going to be something a reader loves about her. And the many regrets she experiences give the "Rue" in Rosemary and Rue a double meaning.
The story is fleshed out and coloured and given layer upon layer of depth by the vast array of characters we meet from Toby's past and present. There are a few I loved and hated within the first few lines I read about them. And since we only got sample tastes of many of them, I am looking forward to the next two books so I can see more of them!
This is a first book, a debut, but the storytelling is crisp and sharp with a saucy tip of the hat to the hardboiled pulp detective. The slower moments make sense and are not jarring to the reader, and the pacing never really slows down entirely, even while Toby's lying unconscious. There are a couple moments that made me go "!!!" for want of a better way to put it, and Seanan's use of tropes is delicate -- like a fine brush adding exquisite detail to an already elaborate painting.
Having read -- no, devoured -- this one, I can say already that I am looking forward to 2010 and the other two books in the series as much as I am dismayed there are only three books in the series.
Rosemary and Rue comes out September First. Get yours!
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Rosemary-Rue-October-Daye-Novel/dp/0756405718
Barnes & Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Rosemary-and-Rue/Seanan-McGuire/e/9780756405717
Borders: http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=0756405718
Indigo.ca: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Rosemary-And-Rue-Seanan-Mcguire/9780756405717-item.html?pticket=dbugoji05vkfwpvqyjwnkw2n3XgEOZWkTQBT4NCJuTFwPdVh3%2fg%3d