Faeries

Rattle the Bones

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51v2jwmlvylHello all! It’s been a few months since I’ve last gotten to review a book. Blame my 11 month old, that’s what I do. 😉 At any rate, I’ve plowed through some books lately, thanks to being a pumping mom (TMI, I know, but whatever. That’s what it’s like to be a working mom), so I have plenty to review when I get the chance!

Today’s book is Rattle the Bones by Eric R. Asher. This is one of the latest books in his Damian Vesik necromancer series. Damian has recently come into the mantle of Anubis, which is powerful necromantic hoodoo, to by memory, and has also gotten into a war with both Gwynn App Nudd and Herne, two powerful faeries who just happen to be working together despite appearing as enemies.

Gwynn orchestrated pulling his capital of Falias out of the faerie realm and into the United States, killing millions while he did so. Damian, being a necromancer who was on scene at the time, absorbed those souls and now has quite a bit of magic punch.

In Rattle the Bones, Damian and crew have to battle a new horror that is aligned with Gwynn, Herne and some outlaw undines (water witches). These are call the dark-touched and they are super vampires or something. Kinda hard to tell what they were exactly. I wasn’t sure if they used to be vamps and then were turned into something else, or they’re something else that just happened to have some vampiric qualities.

At any rate, the dark-touched are hella hard to kill. You basically have to stab them with something fiery right through their tiny little eyes. And since they move as fast if not faster than a vamp, that’s pretty darn hard.

Damian and his friends (Zola, Sam, Frank, Foster, Aideen and more) try to take on these horrors while trying to save not only the area humans (called commoners by the supes in this realm) but other supes as well.

This book is the opening salvo in the war against Gwynn and Herne after their treachery killed off Gwynn’s wife/Foster’s mother, Cara in the last book. It was pretty clear that this was on the road to something bigger in the next book or two, since there wasn’t any sort of show down with the main bad guys. They never even made an appearance in this book.

Set-up book aside, this was a pretty fast read. Asher’s characters are fun, even in dire circumstances, and he draws across a lot of mythologies to bring things to life. I’m definitely interested in seeing where Damian goes but I’m desperately trying not to buy more books until at least Christmas. 😀 Rating: B. I would liked to have seen at least something of one of the main bad guys that have been set up in this series in this book, but if you like some good old fashioned, knock down drag out fights, this is for you.

We’re back with Lost Soul

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Courtesy of goodreads.comI know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. In my defense, I’ve recently given birth so I have soooooooo little time to myself right now. 🙂 So, here’s a review of the first book of a new little series I recently discovered that I thought was quite good.

This book, Lost Soul (and the series), revolves around Alec Harbinger, a PI who recently moved from Chicago to Dearmont, Maine. Talk about a whole different world. Dearmont is waaaaaaay smaller than Chicago, so why would a PI move from a bustling city where presumably he can get a lot of work, to BFE Maine (no offense to anyone currently living in Maine)?

Well, Alec isn’t exactly normal. Natch, considering the types of novels I read. In this series, PI doesn’t stand for private investigator but preternatural investigator, which means he’s an active magic user. And yeah, he investigates the things that go bump in the night for a group called the Society of Shadows (*gigglesnort*). They moved him from lucrative Chicago to Dearmont because he screwed up some operation in France, one he can’t remember because someone fucked with his memory. Also natch.

To make up for it, they send him Felicity Lake, a Brit who wants to be a PI of her own some day but is currently masquerading (poorly) as his assistant. I say masquerading because she’s clearly been sent to spy on him, something Alec catches on to immediately and asks her about. Honestly, that’s a little refreshing. Felicity admits to taking the assignment to achieve her dream.

Alec isn’t upset but he is willing to be sneaky and not let the Society in on the fact that he knows about their spy. She gets to stay and he gets to control the flow of information back to his father, who is high up in the Society. Win-win.

This little arc takes a bit of a back seat to a new client, whose son and girlfriend recently started acting well out of normal after a drunken weekend getaway with some friends. The boy came from a rich family in the area and naturally had a pretty bad case of affluenza (I hate that term but it is pretty perfect in describing that arrogant, stuck up rich white boy attitude, don’t you think?). Afterwards he takes to sleeping during the day, coming out only at night and spending countless hours in the woods. Very odd.

Alec’s investigation leads him to realize that the boy and his girlfriend were replaced with changelings, half-faeries who are kicked out of the Faerie realm for being less than perfectly fae. It sounds cruel since a faerie clearly had to fuck something not-faerie to make the changeling in the first place, but so far in this series, the changelings have been nothing but beastly creatures so I’m not too upset at them getting their asses kicked.

First, though, Alec has to confirm his theory and that means going to faerie, where he meets and makes a deal with a faerie queen to get home. This, I’m sure, will come back to bit him in the ass, but I don’t believe we’ve gotten to that yet. Theory confirmed, Alec now has to find the real boy and his girlfriend because the changelings need constant contact with those they replace to maintain the illusion.

While this is happening, he’s also getting hunted down by trolls sent by unknown persons. Not to mention two witches who own the local bookstore (not evil, but not prone to doing things out of the goodness of their hearts without something in trade), two newly turned werewolves and a sheriff who knows exactly what it is Alec does and investigates and actively hates him for it. In fact, the sheriff would just love to arrest Alec on general principle.

Long story short, Alec finds the boy and his girlfriend, even though the original client (boy’s mom) had fired him because reasons (she seemed like such a strong minded character at first and then was all wibbly. I don’t like that in a female character). Unfortunately, this was not before the changeling murdered the father in the family’s home.

I was a little dubious about this series at first, but I got a good deal on Amazon Kindle and a gift card for my birthday so I thought, What the hell. It was good enough that I immediately bought the next two books in the series and have recently bought the fourth, though I haven’t had the chance to read it yet given the new family sitch.

There are the obvious tropes that you just can’t avoid these days, but I feel that they’re actually quite well done and the stories are very well written. It’s very in the vein of the Dresden Files, so if you liked that series, you’ll probably like this one. They’re quick reads too. All in all, would recommend. Rating: B+. This was clearly an intro book but it gets better.

Once Broken Faith

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Courtesy of goodreads.comSeanan McGuire finally came out with the latest Toby Daye novel, Once Broken Faith. I’ve been waiting a long time for this, at least it feels like it. 🙂

If you recall at the end of the last novel, where Toby almost dies for the umpteenth time, her friend Walter figured out the cure to elf shot with the help of Toby’s nose for magic. Handy, since that was used to cure her. The problem with the cure is that it takes away the one tool the pure blood elves can use against each other with impunity. It didn’t matter to them that elf shot kills anyone with a lick of human blood in them, so long as they didn’t kill each other – per Oberon’s law.

In order to make a decision as to how, when or if this cure should be used, High King Sollys (Quentin’s father) calls a conclave in the Kingdom of the Mists. Queen Arden manages to snag waking her Seneschal, Madden, before Sollys arrives, but her brother will have to remain asleep until after a decision is made.

Being one of the people to bring about this cure, Toby is summoned to attend the conclave with her squire. Tybalt invites himself along as king of cats for the area. He doesn’t give the pureblood kings and queens the choice and really, to be polite they should have invited him in the first place. The Luidaeg also invites herself along, but who is going to stop her.

All is going smoothly for a large political convention – well, as smoothly as can be expected – when two things happen in quick succession. One, a king from the Los Angeles area (the Kingdom of Angels) gets killed and Dianda, Duchess of Salt Mist gets elf shot. Because she’s the only prominent changeling in the conclave, Toby gets immediately suspected of killing the pureblood king, even by those who know her. Which – what the hell? You know her, love her and believe in her…unless a pureblood is involved? Fuck you and your fairweather friendship.

In order to make sure the murder gets solved and they don’t accidentally start a war with the Undersea, Sollys taps Toby to solve the murder and the elf shooting. The second one is easy. Because Dianda is sleeping, Toby gets her niece, Karen the dreamwalker, to get her into Dianda’s dream to see if she saw anything. Karen is at the conclave because Evening Winterrose, who is elf shot herself, is haunting the poor girl’s dreams and demanding she speak for her at the conclave.

They find out that one of the Dukes from an inland kingdom elf shot Dianda on the assumption that Undersea can kiss his ass I guess. High King Sollys orders him to be elf shot in return, a final disposition to pend Dianda’s decision on what to do when she wakes up. Whether that is soon or in one hundred years has yet to be determined.

The murder is harder to figure out. The dead man didn’t see anything, just a weird rustling sound like tin foil being ripped and a couple of flickering shadows. After a near miss where Toby nearly dies (again. I think McGuire needs a new trope. Seriously.), she and her usual cohorts figure out that someone is using faery rings to freeze the victims for a few seconds, just enough to kill the person. Faery rings are simple ring constructs that can freeze a victim for a chosen period of time, but unlike elf shot, they are limited to the physical space of the ring. It isn’t very useful so people don’t use it very much anymore and the Luideig herself has almost completely forgotten how to do them, she’s that old.

After riding her own blood for information, Toby realizes that the King and Queen of High Mountain (Colorado) are the responsible parties. She goes after them with a vengeance because they shot and nearly killed Tybalt. Clearly they haven’t heard not to fuck with Toby’s family. It turns out that their barrow wight handmaiden was the one actually doing the deeds, but the king and queen were threatening her sister to make her do it.

Toby ends up falling out of a tower window in order to keep the elf shot victims (Arden’s brother, Tybalt, Dianda and a few others including now Quentin and Walter who happened to be in the way) safe from the crazy ass queen and her handmaiden. She survives…barely (*sigh*)…and manages to sleep her way through the end of the conclave.

The decision is made to use the cure on those who were wrongfully shot. People who were shot on accident or who were attacked as a means to get them out of the way (Arden’s brother, Dianda). Those who committed a crime for which elf shot would be the punishment (the duke who shot Dianda) would serve out that punishment. This is fair, I think, but there’s definitely loopholes that can be exploited I’m sure.

At the end of the book, we get our happy ending plus an offer from Quentin’s mother the high queen to hold her wedding in Toronto, where Quentin’s family rules from. I think in the next book, we might possibly get to Tybalt and Toby’s wedding! Holy crap won’t that be fun? And probably deadly for someone. Or perhaps we might see what the Luidaeg finally wants Toby to do. Either way, I’m excited to see what’s next.

Things I particularly liked about this book: Seanan McGuire just tosses in that Quentin is in a same sex relationship with Dean Lorden, Dianda’s son. I love that this is such a “who cares that they’re both boys” world that the bigger issue is that Quentin will some day be high king and what will that do to their relationship? Also, the book opens up with Toby holding a “slumber party” of the full and partial blood teens that she knows to give them a night of just being kids. Just a nice, normal night for the most part. I also like that Quentin’s mom is a half blood turned pure blood via hope chest, and is therefore a very approachable woman. This is one of my favorite Toby Daye books so far. Rating: A+

Destroyer Rising

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from daysgonebad.comI’ve been reading the Damian Vesik series by Eric R. Asher for a while now, and they don’t disappoint. Damian is a necromancer and now, since the events of the last book, a lot more than that. People have been bandying about that he’s a god now, a new Anubis.

This book doesn’t go too into depth on that aspect of things, just hints here and there. But in Destroyer Rising, we see Damian doing his damnedest to get over the seeming betrayal of his adopted fae mother, Cora (she was the fae king’s wife and she’d never mentioned that at all to anyone) and trying to rescue ghost girl Vicky.

Being a ghost, Vicky normally wouldn’t need rescuing. Unfortunately, she got in the wrong way of a very powerful demon. This demon is trying to use her to ascend to the mortal world. If that happens, it would be bad news for everyone. Humans are already on edge from the rise of the fae city Falias in the middle of America. Rightly so, since it resulted in the deaths of over a million people, all of whose spirits are swirling around in Damian’s head at the moment.

With the help of his mentor Zola, his sister Sam and his demon friend Mike, Damian has to navigate the Burning Lands to find the demon, perform a complex spell that no living person has ever cast and do it all in the span of about 12-18 hours.

This whole series is pretty darn good but I think this might be the best of the lost. Damian is in a bad place, but he still fights his way through it for the people he loves. I don’t know how many books are left in this series, but I really can’t wait for the next one. I can’t recommend them enough. And it’s so rare to see a necromancer as a good guy. It makes a refreshing change. Rating: A.

From a Drood to a Kill

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courtesy of Amazon.comObligatory SPOILERS message be here. This book just came out so if you haven’t read it, skip this review.

Ah Simon. I do adore your writing. I am so sad that you’re going to be wrapping up your Secret Histories, Nightside and Ghost Finders novels. If you haven’t heard (and I think I may have posted on this earlier this year…? Maybe?), Simon R. Green has been diagnosed with diabetes and in anticipation of that perhaps having health complications, he is wrapping up his series quicker than he originally planned. He is then going to write individual novels a la Shadows Fall.

At any rate, I just finished up From a Drood to a Kill. This novel picks up, naturally, where the last one left off. Eddie’s parents are missing and he is heading to Drood Hall to demand they help him. Eddie and Molly make a right mess of the Hall and a bunch of Droods who, in theory, know how to fight but in reality just don’t Eddie’s skills. They make it to the Sanctity where they bargain with Maggie, the current Matriarch, for Drood help.

Since Eddie wants their resources for a private quest, he needs to do one for them. And only Eddie. Molly gets sidelined, which she isn’t happy about, but she takes the time to go visit her equally impressive and troublesome sisters, Isabelle and Louisa (or is it Isabella and Louise? Can’t remember and too lazy to go back and find the right page to check). It seems that some intelligence is leaking from Britain’s latest high tech listening station, nicknamed the Big Ear. No, I don’t know who came up with that name. Its a little ridiculous. Okay, it’s a lot ridiculous.

The mission delivered and agreed to, the Armourer (Jack Drood and my personal fav.), gives Eddie his old Bentley (man, I wish I had that car. It would be awesome) for the trip. The Bentley is much more than just a car. Or even much more than one of James Bond’s cars. It can travel through dimensions, among other things, so it allows for a trip across Britain much quicker than driving a regular vehicle or taking a train.

Of course, the mission starts out with a bump. The Bentley gets sidetracked, kidnapped to the subtle realms by a group of rogue fae that includes a former aunt of Eddie’s, Melanie Blaze. Eddie preps himself for a fight, because faeries don’t just give up, when Melanie…just gives up. She lets him go when just moments before she was planning on using him as a bargaining chip with the Drood (good luck with that). Utterly perplexed, Eddie completes his mission without having to kill anyone (his new vow, tough one to keep for a Drood).

When he finishes, he finds out exactly why Melanie gave up so easily. The one Drood she’d really wanted to deal with, the Armourer Jack Drood, died. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Not Jack! I was so upset by this! Even though it was established that Jack was really quite old, it was a hard it. It was such a likeable character. Luckily enough, it wasn’t murder (which is something of an issue with Droods) but just old age. Rare that an agent can die peacefully at home.

After a solemn ceremony on the Drood estate, a wake for friends (plus Eddie and Molly) gets held at the Wulfshead, Eddie’s usual club. People come from all walks of life to say goodbye to Jack in grand, drunken fashion. Including Cedric Drood, the Sergeant-at-arms, that Eddie doesn’t get along with in the least. They put their animosity aside for the night to celebrate Jack’s life. Eddie learns there was more to his beloved uncle than he ever knew. It doesn’t make him feel good, that he didn’t even bother to learn these things. He always thought he’d have the time to talk to Jack more, I suppose.

After the party, which goes off without a hitch oddly enough, Molly gets kidnapped. Right out of the Wulfshead, which is supposed to be impossible. Angry, grieving for his uncle, Eddie goes on a tear to find her. Kidnapped by the grandiosely (and self) named Powers That Be, Eddie kicks arse and takes names as he tries to find their home base of the Shifting Lands.

Molly has been kidnapped for the Big Game. A supposedly private and hush-hush event strictly for the Powers That Be and their amusement. They kidnap people who owe debts so large (usually on their soul and/or body) to powerful beings (Heaven, Hell, Powers, Dominations. You name it, they’ve probably done it) that they could never repay those debts even in death. Like Molly, who made deals upon deals with Good and Bad in order to gain the power to destroy the Droods for killing her parents.

The Big Game is a fight to the death and the last one standing has all of their debts paid for by the Powers That Be. To make things interesting, the Shifting Lands are ever changing based on the mood and force of will the players can enforce upon it. One minute, it can be your place of power, the next it might be your opponent’s place of power.

I won’t give away what happens with that. Its really too good and I wouldn’t do it justice. It was obvious from the writing that this series is, indeed (and sadly), winding down. That doesn’t make it any less interesting or well written though. In most cases of Simon’s writing, I would say you really don’t need to read the previous book to get the gist of this one. And while that is true to a certain extent with From a Drood to a Kill, I think it would definitely make more sense if you read Casino Infernale before reading this book. That one was absolutely amazing and the events in that have a direct impact on those in From a Drood to a Kill. Hell, I suggest you read the whole damn series. Its so much fun and the titles are delightful puns on James Bond titles. Rating: A.

A Fiend in Need

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Oh where do I start? A Fiend in Need is written by Maureen Child. This is apparently the second book in the series. I won’t be going back to read the first one.  I’ll likely not read any sequels. And probably not any of her other books.

My issues:

-She wants to write her main character, Cassidy Burke, as some sort of new found slut (new found because she got preggers at 16 and has been a single mom until 32). She can’t write the word vagina. She insists on calling it hoo-hah. Really? You’re an adult woman. You’re likely writing for adults as well. You have no trouble writing penis but vagina gives you the heebie-jeebies? Grow up. Even if you don’t want to use the word vagina, you can use dozens of other words that are far more sexy than hoo-hah. There is a thesaurus online. Please try it.

-Cassidy is Buffy the Vampire Slayer if Buffy came into her powers on her 32nd birthday. Of course, she can’t call Cassidy that so she’s a “Demon Duster”. *facepalm* How about hunter? Executioner? Assassin? Butcher? Well…maybe not butcher. My point is random demons hissing out “Duster!” just doesn’t work for me.

-Cassidy is a cleaning lady. She finds demons by…squirting them with homemade Windex. It doesn’t kill the demons, but it burns.  Apparently the main ingredient is oregano. *sigh*

-Her human ex who knocked her up wants back in her life. She has a demon lover. Because not all demons are bad.

-Everybody in the town suddenly knows about demons. But no one talks about them. I have no idea why.

In this book, she place bodyguard to a hot (surprise, surprise) Faery. Turns out there are demon queens and the local demon queen wants to use this Faery as a sex slave because sex with a Faery pumps up whatever powers you have. Natch. The demon queen puts a hit out on Cassidy which, unfortunately, is not successful. The book is filled with a bunch of little fights which lead to the inevitable final showdown. The night before, Cassidy and the Faery do the horizontal mambo where in they ‘bond’ (sexy bond obviously) and the Faery dude gives all his power (and thereby his life) to Cassidy so she can beat the demon queen. And she does.

I had to force myself to finish this book but I was skimming by the end. It was something like 3.99 on Amazon. It isn’t worth it. Rating: D. I’m sure it appeals to someone out there. But if you want good quality urban fantasy, check out Jim Butcher or Simon R. Green.

 

Ashes of Honor

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Okay, so putting this out there ***MAJOR SPOILERS***. You have been warned.

Oh. My. God. Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod. Ashes of Honor is fantastic. This might just be my favorite of Seanan McGuire’s October Daye books. We pick up with plucky Toby some months after Connor has died and Gillian has chosen to be human. At the very start of the book, she is doing something dangerous, confronting a group of teenage Changeling druggies. But these drugs aren’t the usual drugs of pot or heroin one might think of as being rampant in a city just as San Francisco. This drug is called goblinfruit and while harmless to purebloods, it is addictive and fatal to Changelings.

Toby is confronting them without back up and with only her knife. These kids are armed with mortal weapons and are of the opinion that Toby needs to die. Why? Because in the very first Toby Day novel, Rosemary and Rue, Toby killed Devin, the man that took care of most Changeling kids. So they shoot Toby but it doesn’t kill her. Toby’s mom messing about with her blood to make her more than a mere Changeling makes her very hard to kill. That doesn’t stop her friends from worrying.

Speaking of friends, Tybalt has been sent after her by May and Quentin, arriving just in time to dispense some Cait Sidhe justice on the stupid young drug dealers. He then takes her home where another surprise is waiting for her, Etienne the Senechal for Shadowed Hills. Etienne has a problem. Namely, he had a daughter by a human some sixteen years ago and never knew it. And now, that daughter has come into her fae powers and has disappeared.

Disappearing happens to be Etienne’s trick. He’s Tuatha de Dannan, a teleporter. And his daughter is too. Only she’s a lot more powerful than dear old dad. Apparently on occasion Changeling children are more powerful than their full blood parents because something goes (genetically, I’m assuming) wrong and they have none of the innate blocks on their powers that pure bloods have.

The problems start piling up as Toby takes Quentin to visit her aunt, the Luidaeg (Sea Witch) for a tracking charm. It seems that an out of control Changeling Tuatha can rip the very fabric of Faerie apart at the seams. Etienne’s daughter, Chelsea, has apparently already been to places that the long gone Oberon had sealed off for his own mysterious reasons. And because everyone in Faerie lives by Oberon’s Laws, this could mean tons of trouble.

Toby has to track down Chelsea and the ones who took her while dealing with a Tybalt who has finally, FINALLY confessed his feeling to her. SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I have been waiting for this forever and a day! Not to mention that one of his subjects is attempting to usurp Tybalt’s throne and the Countess of Dreaming Glass, Treasa Riordan, is up to something.

This was an amazing book and I am sooooo tempted to re-read it right now. Seanan McGuire, you had better write the next book because I’m drooling for more! Rating A+

One Salt Sea, Again

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I just reread the Toby Daye novel One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire and I fell in love with it again. This is the latest published Toby Daye novel and I cannot wait for the next one to come out. Toby has been given the title (and knowe) of Countess of Goldengreen. This previously was held by someone who had been murdered in the first book. The Queen of Mists gave it to Toby out of spite. But that isn’t Toby’s immediate problem.

The immediate problem is that Toby has been tapped by her aunt, the Luidaeg (apparently pronounced Lu-shak or similar according to the handy pronunciation guide), to stop a war between the Undersea and the land dwelling fae. The Luidaeg is incredibly powerful, being the first born of Oberon and Maeve…but apparently she cannot do anything to harm harm the children of Titania (most land-dwelling fae). I see this as a convenient way to rein in her abilities so she doesn’t become the deus ex machina of the series.

On top of that, Tybalt is back and sniffing around Toby. I really hope they shag in the next book because the UST is so thick between the two of them. There didn’t seem to be much chemistry written between Toby and her chosen love interest Connor, a Selkie from Half Moon Bay. It just seemed like she chose him because 1) Tybalt disappeared after the last book because the Cait Sidhe were decimated by poison and 2) She’d had something forbidden with Connor before she’d turned into a fish (in the first book).

I thought this was really the best book in the series so far. I enjoyed the plot quite a bit and I really dig the character of the Luidaeg. She’s a bit like House in her temperament and she’s far too old to really care about what anyone thinks. I sincerely hope they explain why everyone is so afraid of her in an upcoming book. I’d rate this book as an A and I really, really can’t wait for the next one!

One Salt Sea

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Just recently finished the new October Daye novel One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire. Oh. My. God. AMAZING…and yet FRUSTRATING.  It is clear that McGuire is going somewhere very complex with Toby Daye. I think  I’m mostly frustrated that I haven’t figured it out yet.  That being said…I can live with the frustration. My husband hates watching movies with me (sometimes) because I figure out the ending half way through. So not being able to see what’s coming in this series out weighs the frustration.

So, Toby is trying to settle in as Countess of Goldengreen…just as war breaks out with the underwater fae. Unfortunately for her, the knowe of Goldengreen is right up against the Pacific. Of course. 🙂 Enter Tybalt, King of Cats. And will he EVER admit that he’s totally in love with Toby?! Okay, rant over. Tybalt offers to have his Cait Sidhe, some of the fiercest warriors in the faerie realm, to guard Toby’s knowe since most of Toby’s wards in Goldengreen are half-breed Changlings or less.

Meanwhile, The Luideag calls in the favors Toby owes her. What does Toby have to do? Stop a war. No biggie. Turns out the reason behind the war is that someone, presumably a land faerie has made off with the two sons of the Duchess of Saltmist. The Duchess suspects the Queen of the Mists (the land queen). The Queen of the Mists just wants war. Despite having some sea fae blood in her, she apparently has bigoted feelings towards the sea fae as a whole. Too bad the sea fae are BAMFs and the land fae have been sitting on their collective arses since the last war more than a hundred years ago.

To keep her friends from getting killed, Toby uses her detecting skills to find the missing boys. On the way, she takes a squire (Quentin), turns into a mermaid to visit Saltmist and (*spoiler alert*) loses her paramour, Connor. Now Connor was a nice enough person but ever since the first interaction with Tybalt, I was rooting for the two of them to get their acts together.  Connor was a little wimpy for my tastes but hey.

So this one is a must read. It’s really good. And it has a nice little cliff hanger. A+ Buy it!

The stories of October Daye

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I just found a wonderful new series.  Seanan McGuire takes you into the world of half-faerie/half-human PI October ‘Toby’ Daye.  When I first came across the book, I was a little leery about the oddly named title character. After reading the book and understanding that she isn’t human and wasn’t raised as a human, it makes more sense. The books all take place in modern San Francisco and around the central character of Toby Daye.

Toby is a changeling (part Fae, part human) and doesn’t really belong to either world.  Changelings are generally treated as second class citizens among the Fae and all Fae hide themselves from humans in this series.  Toby is a Knight of a local Fae duchy, of which there are many. There are also many different kinds of Fae.

The first book, Rosemary and Rue, starts out intriguingly enough with PI Daye trailing a couple of people suspected of kidnapping the wife and daughter of her liege, Duke Sylvester of Shadowed Hills.  Only she isn’t as careful or as concealed as she think because they turn her into a fish.  Yes, a fish.  For fourteen years.  The book is a little vague as to how she becomes un-fished but apparently the spell just ends after fourteen years.

Toby, of course, finds it very hard to reintegrate into modern society.  Technology is much farther along than she remembered. Her lover and daughter thought she had run out on them and want nothing to do with them.  Having failed at her initial task fourteen years ago, she wants to distance herself from her court out of a feeling of shame, even though the wife and daughter were returned. All she wants to do is get a steady job and hide from the world.

Life with the Fae is never, ever simple and she’s called back in to the world, literally.  She receives a phone message from an old friend/enemy, a pure blood faerie by the name of Evening Winterrose.  Evening gets murdered but before she goes, she places a curse on Toby. The only way to lift the curse is to find Evening’s killers.

With the threat of death over her head, she has no choice but to get back into the investigation game and back into court life.  I won’t go into too much detail, but with the fact that there’s a fourth book on the way (can’t wait!), you can safely assume that Toby survives.

The characters are well written and the story was compelling enough that I zipped right through the second and third books (Local Habitation and An Artificial Night). McGuire brings the world to life. Magic, though present, isn’t the be all end all answer in the novels.  Toby Daye has definite limits to her abilities.  If she uses too much magic, she gets magic burn (a nasty migraine). She almost dies in all three of the books and only survives through the help of friends.

I highly recommend these books.  They are amazingly well written and entertaining.  McGuire does a wonderful job in bringing the Fae world to life. I rate all three books as solid A reads and I cannot wait for the next one to come out. I received a number of books for Christmas and I haven’t read any except Rosemary and Rue because I’ve been too obsessed with these novels. 😀