“ Someday I ’ll fancy out why everything in Faerie seems to finish up in San Francisco , ” the narrator chew over inRosemary And Rue , Seanan McGuire‘s debut novel . Whatever the reason , the city multitude with fae … and some of them twist deathly .
Oh , and there are spoiler in this review , mostly for the first third of the volume .
Rosemary And Rue is the first book in the October Daye series , about a half - fairy , half - human detective who solves crimes at the carrefour between the magic and mundane . At least , that ’s what happens in this first book , which involves shape gearstick , ocean witches , the top executive of computed axial tomography , and a gun that shoots iron bullets ( which are deadly to fairies . ) McGuire ’s translation of San Francisco , with fairie kingdom conceal all over the Bay area and pixies hiding in Golden Gate Park , is truly enchanting , especially when she ’s bringing out the downsides of magic being everywhere . At one detail , our hero , October , visits the court of the Faerie Queen , who metamorphose her metric ton - shirt and dungaree into a ballgown — and then does n’t change them back , force October to pad through mud and crime scene wearing an airy scrubs that gets increasingly turbid .
We weretalkingabout noir fantasy a while back , and Rosemary And Rue is n’t really that noir — it ’s more like classicurban fantasywith a murder mystery . It ’s not quite paranoid , dark or virtuously gray enough to be noir , and McGuire ’s characters are mostly fundamentally squeamish , with a few foul oddity here and there .
https://gizmodo.com/the-new-noir-fantasy-shows-magical-cities-in-decay-5362187
Rosemary And Rue starts out with a blast , one of the best openings to a novel I ’ve translate in long time : October “ Toby ” Daye is working as a private detective on a case for her lead , Sylvester Torquill , whose married woman and daughter have been kidnapped . Toby is tailing a defendant , Sylvester ’s brother Simon , and she call her human hubby and mostly human daughter to let them know she ’ll be late come home . And then she follows Simon into a gob — with help from a dark ally , he turn October into a Pisces , and immobilise her in the koi pool in Golden Gate Park ’s Japanese Tea Garden . She stays there for the next fourteen years , until the trance at last wear off and she changes back .
Toby ’s husband and daughter want nothing to do with her because they think she abandoned them . And she ’s ashamed of her bankruptcy , so she ca n’t go back to her friends in Faerie . Instead , she accept a line of work on the graveyard switch at the Safeway ( when her trick can conceal her fairy sport most easily ) and keep to herself . Until one of her closest friends in Faerie gets murdered and arrange a binding on October — either she finds out who the killer was and brings them to justice , or she ’ll die too . work the murder , of course , means refund to the populace of the fae , which is full of dour corners and deathly surprises .
The corking strength of Rosemary And Rue is in its worldbuilding : Faerie San Francisco feel like a real city , and it ’s not voiceless to imagine that mythical creatures and wizardly glamor lurk in every alley in haoma and behind every Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in Golden Gate Park , and super - powerful occult forces are living in rent - ascertain apartments in the Tenderloin . Every human relationship in Faerie turn out to be pregnant with obligation — everybody owes debts to each other , which are viewed as the risky kinds of encumbrances , and there ’s a taboo on enjoin “ thank you , ” lest you inadvertently take on another constricting debt .
The other bully matter about Rosemary And Rue is that October is a great fantasy heroine , from her contentious family relationship with her cats to her many anguished jazz That Can Never Be . She ’s caught between her fairie and human heritage , and can never really be at home in either culture . Plus — and this is the closest the novel descend to being noir - ting — half - full-blood fairy hybrids , like October , front discrimination and mistreatment at the hired man of a magical cosmos that reckon them as inferior , or even sorry , as a odium . The novel is full of these cast - off , ill-treat and misbegotten “ half-wit , ” and October is the biggest underdog of them all — despite having been knighted for retiring gallantry , that we only pallidly pick up about .
After explore McGuire ’s fairy metropolis for one glum slaying whodunit , I ’m on panel for more , and looking forward to seeing how October ’s convoluted WWW of commitment and obligations plays out over the course of the next few Quran .
Now for the bad news : Rosemary And Rue has a couple of serious flaws , on top of occasionally cheesy written material . First of all , it work much better as an urban fantasy narration than as a murder secret : October is a frightening detective , who mostly hit around making a objective of herself until the bad guy wire finally take a shot at her . She does n’t do all that great a job of take in leads , frequently ignores the most obvious line of probe , and want others to steer out the obvious to her . And there ’s really only ever one defendant in the murder who make sense , so it ’s not much of a shock when it turns out to be that someone .
And the other major trouble is that McGuire tries so backbreaking to make Rosemary the first book in a series , it falls a bite flat at times as a suffer - alone novel . The book has an tremendous , sprawl supporting cast , and October has a lengthy , involved backstory with every unmarried one of them . There were a few here and now where I think I must have miss a page , because the narrator starts verbalise about a character whom she ’s have a history with — and then I realized the book had n’t mentioned this character before . Long after you mean you ’ve met all of October ’s old frenemies , the book keep bringing in new characters who are n’t new to October . And this usually means the story has to grind to a stoppage for a few page , while October spoonfeeds us more stuff that happened before the Holy Scripture began . At times , this feels like the 10th book in a series , rather than the first . There are almost no characters in the book whom October does n’t already know .
Despite both of those subject — which sense a morsel like “ first refreshing ” pains — I ’m still a huge sports fan of the world McGuire has created , and eager to become more acquainted with her urban center of fag , rose hob and kelpie .
book reviewBooksSeanan McGuire
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