Rosemary and Rue Review

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire
Narrator: Mary Robinette Kowal
Series: October Daye,
Published by Penguin on September 1st 2009
Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
Genres: Faery, Fantasy
Pages: 368
Format: Audiobook
Goodreads

October "Toby" Daye, a changeling who is half human and half fae, has been an outsider from birth. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the Faerie world, retreating to a "normal" life. Unfortunately for her, the Faerie world has other ideas...

The murder of Countess Evening Winterrose pulls Toby back into the fae world. Unable to resist Evening's dying curse, which binds her to investigate, Toby must resume her former position as knight errant and renew old alliances. As she steps back into fae society, dealing with a cast of characters not entirely good or evil, she realizes that more than her own life will be forfeited if she cannot find Evening's killer.

 Julie’s Review:

I have a whole bunch of mixed feelings about Rosemary and Rue, so let me just share them all with you.

Firstly, being a fae book, there’s always the business of courts and queens and people being snobby. The majority of the book does not take place in a faery court, and I’m happy about that, because that gets to be boring often. But it wouldn’t be a faery book if I didn’t hate the faery queen.

This book includes quite a few fae creatures, but doesn’t really take the time to define them to you. So you kind of already have to understand faery world critters a little bit. But it has a cait sidhe clan, so I’m happy. No really, if you don’t already know that cat shifters are (one of if not) my fave critters, then yea now you know.

Also our main character is named October, which is kind of fun and awesome. And she has a cool back-story (being cursed and living as a fish for 14 years can make anyone hate everyone). Also, she can taste blood and see what happened to someone and feel their emotions, so that’s pretty awesome.

The narrator kind of makes me flip flop. Her voice was good, and she even did a lot of accents. BUT. She took a lot of breaks. Mid-sentence. Too many pauses. For my liking. Especially when she was doing the asian accent – I’m sorry but she kind of made Lily sound a little… challenged? Too bad she narrates the rest of the series… maybe I’ll get use to her style.

OK well now I want to complain about Toby. Sorry this may be a spoiler, but she basically doesn’t DO anything. Other than follow the leads she gets from the blood, she keeps getting herself nearly killed and then having to be rescued. And even at the very end when she figures out who the killer is, she isn’t even the one to end things. The brother and sister “kids” who were basically sent to keep and eye on Toby were almost a more intersting character pair than the main character herself. Dare almost hero-worshiped Toby and I don’t know why since Toby just hated on her the entire time. I can’t stand it when the main character is treated as the hero when the main character doesn’t really do much. I’ve seen it a lot before and have complained about it.

Now I thought Evening was a pretty cool character, and her curse was really powerful and interesting stuff. The supporting characters were pretty awesome with all they do to help Toby on her quest and to keep saving her life.

Also the book takes place in San Francisco, so I’m familiar with the setting and that is fun.

So, mixed feelings shared. Who else has read Rosemary and Rue and what do you think? I decided to pick it up after this lovely guest post that lists this as a favorite Urban Fantasy rec. Maybe the rest of the series gets better, since there are quite a few books.

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