"Rosemary and Rue"
"Rosemary and Rue" by Seanan McGuire, Book 1 of the October Daye series
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Review: I very much enjoyed this book. Once I started reading it I couldn't set it down. The world that McGuire built is very absorbing and interesting. I'm always a fan of series that reach back to traditional Celtic mythology.
The main character, October (Tobe) Daye is a changeling - half-fey, half-human. Aside from an early idyllic childhood life's been rough on her, though she had always managed to find her way out on top eventually. However, her latest adventure was just too much for her. She had been hired by her friend and liege lord to track his brother and find where the brother was keeping the liege lord's wife and daughter. Unfortunately, things went very wrong and she spent 14 years as a fish. Once she returned to normal she withdrew from everyone that she had known previously and tried to live her life as much like a normal human as possible. However, she's dragged back into the fey world by the death of a long acquaintance/friend of hers, and more specifically by that friend binder her to find the friend's killer.
The story is engrossing, and I love all the different characters we meet along the way.
The biggest problem I have with the book is that Tobe is a little too weak - she doesn't have much magic, and despite the fact that she's supposedly a very good PI, we don't see any evidence of that in this book. Instead she stumbles around from clue to clue until the solution is shoved in her face. To her benefit, it was shoved in her face by people that she had asked for help. I'm also willing to write her apparent lack of investigations skills off to 14 years of rustiness and the fact that she hadn't really been living or thinking until the binding forced her to rejoin the rest of the world.
Despite that problem with the character, I absolutely loved this book and went out and bought the 2nd book in this series as soon as I finished this one.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Review: I very much enjoyed this book. Once I started reading it I couldn't set it down. The world that McGuire built is very absorbing and interesting. I'm always a fan of series that reach back to traditional Celtic mythology.
The main character, October (Tobe) Daye is a changeling - half-fey, half-human. Aside from an early idyllic childhood life's been rough on her, though she had always managed to find her way out on top eventually. However, her latest adventure was just too much for her. She had been hired by her friend and liege lord to track his brother and find where the brother was keeping the liege lord's wife and daughter. Unfortunately, things went very wrong and she spent 14 years as a fish. Once she returned to normal she withdrew from everyone that she had known previously and tried to live her life as much like a normal human as possible. However, she's dragged back into the fey world by the death of a long acquaintance/friend of hers, and more specifically by that friend binder her to find the friend's killer.
The story is engrossing, and I love all the different characters we meet along the way.
The biggest problem I have with the book is that Tobe is a little too weak - she doesn't have much magic, and despite the fact that she's supposedly a very good PI, we don't see any evidence of that in this book. Instead she stumbles around from clue to clue until the solution is shoved in her face. To her benefit, it was shoved in her face by people that she had asked for help. I'm also willing to write her apparent lack of investigations skills off to 14 years of rustiness and the fact that she hadn't really been living or thinking until the binding forced her to rejoin the rest of the world.
Despite that problem with the character, I absolutely loved this book and went out and bought the 2nd book in this series as soon as I finished this one.