Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

"All magic hurts," says October "Toby" Daye, and she'd know better than most.

Rosemary and Rue begins in 1995, when Toby, a half-faerie/half-human P.I., runs afoul of some nasty faeries while trying to solve a kidnapping. Toby is cursed, rendered out of commission for fourteen years, and in the process loses the happy human life she'd been trying to build.

It's been six months since Toby was released from her curse. She wants nothing to do with the fae, but the fae won't let her go that easily. When Countess Evening Winterrose, with whom Toby shared an uneasy friendship, is murdered, she lays a geas on Toby in her final moments: Toby must solve the crime or forfeit her own life. Rosemary and Rue tells the story of Toby's investigation of that murder, and of her reunions (some happy, some not) with the faeries she knew in the past.... Read More

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

October (Toby) Daye is a changeling — half fae, half human. She’s been living in the mortal world, trying to avoid nasty faerie politics, but she’s suddenly been thrust right back into it when a pure-blood faerie countess is murdered and Toby has to solve the crime before succumbing to a curse.

I don’t read a lot of this type of urban fantasy, so I can’t compare Rosemary and Rue to most of its peers — I can only compare it to what I normally read. Coming from that angle, my opinion is that Rosemary and Rue is a well-written novel with some fine world-building and characterization, but it’s not an excellent novel.

The world-building is quite extensive and heavily based on faerie lore. I loved the way that San Francisco was divided into faerie duchies. This was innovative and interesting and I learned a few things but,... Read More

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

It’s hard to resist a book that begins with the narrator getting turned into a carp in the Japanese Tea Gardens at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

In Seanan McGuire’s Rosemary and Rue, October Daye is a private investigator who happens to be a changeling as well. A “changeling,” as the term is used in this urban fantasy series, is a child of mixed fairy and human blood. Toby Daye is the child of one of the Daoine Shidhe (according to the helpful pronunciation guide at the front of the book, that’s pronounced “doon-ya shee”) and a human, one of those second-class citizens of Faerie who chose to follow her fairy heritage as soon as she knew there was a difference. Not that she doesn’t live in the “real” world; she does, in San Francisco, to be precise. But San Francisco is also the location of Shadowed Hills, the court of Sylvester T... Read More

A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire

I was a little disappointed in Rosemary and Rue, the first October Daye novel, but I could see tons of potential there and looked forward to the rest of the series. A Local Habitation blows it out of the water, and blows most of the urban fantasy on the shelves out of the water while it’s at it.

In this installment, Duke Sylvester Torquill asks Toby to check up on his niece, January, who hasn’t been returning Sylvester’s calls. Jan is the countess of a small territory that lies between Sylvester’s and that of a rival duchess, and is also the head of a software company. Toby arrives to find a bigger mess than she expected. Someone is murdering Jan’s employees, one by one. Toby’s mission: to solve the crimes without creating a diplomatic incident. This becomes a nail-biting race against time when the major players all get stranded at Jan’s company campus, essentially locked in with ... Read More

An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire

October Daye, private investigator to San Francisco’s faerie nobility, stumbles upon her most troubling case yet. Two of her friends’ children vanish without a trace, and a third falls into an enchanted sleep from which no one can awaken her. Toby pokes around and learns that other children have been disappearing as well, both fae and human, and that an ancient and sinister power is behind the kidnappings.

Seanan McGuire wisely plays to her strengths — and Toby’s — in An Artificial Night. McGuire is a terrific writer, but concealing the villain’s identity isn’t always her strong point. It works well, then, that An Artificial Night is not a whodunit. Toby and the reader learn pretty quickly who is responsible, and the real questions are whether Toby can defeat him and how steep the price will be. The first two Read More

Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire

Before I start my review, an aside about the cover art. Chris McGrath has really outdone himself on the cover for Late Eclipses. Wow, that’s gorgeous. It’s also an actual scene from the book, and every element in the scene is important to the story, from her ball gown to her leather jacket to the items she holds.

Moving along to the book, Late Eclipses features a mystery that hits close to home for Toby Daye. Lily, the Lady of the Tea Gardens, falls ill… but it’s supposed to be impossible for Undines to get sick. Then other friends of Toby’s become ill too, and Toby suspects the involvement of an old nemesis of hers, Oleander de Merelands. But no one else has seen or heard from Oleander, and Toby herself has been feeling rather strange lately… could it be that she’s losing her mind?

I love reading the October Daye novel... Read More

One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire

It’s been a month since the defeat of Oleander de Merelands, since the Duke’s mad daughter Rayseline went on the lam, and since October Daye was brought back from the brink of death and restored to the power level she should have had all along.

This is a lot to deal with, and now there’s a new problem in Faerie. The two sons of a mermaid Duchess have been kidnapped. Unless they can be found, the sea fae will declare war upon those of the land, with disastrous casualties for both sides. If anyone can find the boys before it’s too late, it’s Toby, though it’ll mean facing her fear of the water. In a reversal of the fairy tale “The Little Mermaid,” Toby goes to the sea witch (a.k.a. the Luideag) for a spell that will enable her to survive underwater. She investigates both land and sea in her search for the boys… and then the case takes a turn for the very, very personal.

... Read More

Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire

Seanan McGuire has caused me to abandon work and kept me up nights more than any other author I’ve read recently. Her work is so compelling that I absolutely must find out what happens next. Ashes of Honor was no exception to this rule. It’s the sixth and latest in the OCTOBER DAYE series, and offers up new surprises about the knight and hero of the Court of Shadowed Hills, Toby Daye.

Toby is surprised herself when Etienne, another of the Court’s knights, approaches her for help. Etienne never seems to have approved of Toby, as he’s a more traditional sort of guy — one who lives in the realms of Faerie rather than the real world of its approximate location, San Francisco. But when he learns that he has unknowingly fathered a changeling, and worse, that the changeling, now a teenager and just starting to come into her powers, has ... Read More

Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire

It sometimes seems like Faerie reserves the hardest choices for the children.

It’s been a year since the events at the end of One Salt Sea — events that left October Daye deep in mourning. Since then, she’s been taking unnecessary risks and feeling directionless in her life. But now a new emergency has arisen that requires her attention. Etienne, a fellow knight of Sylvester’s court, has a changeling daughter he never knew about. He only just learned of her existence because she’s gone missing.

It’s surprising enough to Toby that the straitlaced Etienne was incautious enough to father a changeling in the first place, but the real bombshell is that the daughter, Chelsea, possesses a staggering amount of teleporting ability. She could be anywhere, and her travels are opening doors into Faerie realms that were supposed to stay closed. Her talent also makes he... Read More

Apex Magazine is an online journal published on the first Monday of every month, edited by Catherynne M. Valente. Valente’s submission guidelines give you a clear idea of what to expect to read within Apex’s pixels: “What we want is sheer, unvarnished awesomeness.… We want stories full of marrow and passion, stories that are twisted, strange, and beautiful.” The January issue definitely meets those requirements.

“The Itaewon Eschatology Show” by Douglas F. Warrick is a story that cries out to be labeled “New Weird.” It’s about an American in Korea – though why he is there is a complete mystery – who is a “night clown.” This means that every night he, along with his friend Kidu, dresses up and mounts stilts to perform magic for the ex... Read More