beccastareyes

Rosemary and Rue: An October Daye Novel (Toby Daye, #1)

Rosemary and Rue: An October Daye Novel by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
For a book that managed to hit a rough spot with me on the first page, I liked Rosemary and Rue.

The rough spot was in the pronunciation guide. The author (or someone) noted that kitsune* was pronounced kit-soon, when the closer pronunciation would be kee-tsoo-neh -- Japanese transliteration doesn't leave silent letters. For that matter, I wasn't too thrilled with the use of a kitsune character in a book about fairies, because it felt like an afterthought to have a Japanese fox-spirit in a book about mostly British/Irish-patterned fairies, using a lot of the same rules (i.e. no iron, magic dissolved by the dawn, etc.). (For that matter, why are the ancient fairy courts in the San Francisco area like the ones from English/Irish/Scottish legends, rather than using legends that were common in the Bay Area? I mean, some of the pure fairy characters were living there before the Spanish even showed up and named the place after Saint Francis. I could see some of the fae names being ones that are tied to the meaning, not the sound -- so Lily would be Yuri to a Japanese-speaker and Lirio to a Spanish-speaker.)

Ob. Disclaimer: Yes, I want non-European/Abrahamic folktales and mythology used in my fantasy. But when it feels like everything is built in a European (British/Irish) foundation and the rest of the world's beliefs are added in after the fact, it kind of makes me want to see the other way around, outside of East-Asian comics/animation.

Now that I've gotten my rant out of my system, let me just say that I did like the book. I have a weakness for fairies and one for urban fantasy, and the setting was interesting. So, we have an urban fantasy setting -- sandwiched within and in between the mundane world are the fair folk, who have gateways to their own kingdoms and the occasional tryst or marriage with mortals, sometimes leaving a changeling child. Changelings pretty much occupy the lowest rung of fairy society -- add in the fact that as soon as the magical glamours that all changelings are born with fade, they get told to choose whether to be a human or a fairy. The 'human' choice usually ends up with the kidlet dying and the fairy choice usually ends up with them sprinted off to the Summerlands until they can be trusted enough to throw up glamors. It is unsurprising that changelings end up kind of fucked up, and usually end up finding some kind of protector who may or may not be benevolent.

Toby Daye (her mother thought 'October Daye' was a cute name) had been doing pretty well for a changeling. She had a PI job, managed to become a changeling that earned a knighthood in a fairy court, and had a human husband and daughter (who didn't know Toby's ancestry or that some of her cases were for the fairy Duke she owed fealty towards, so life wasn't perfect). Then she gets turned into a koi and lost for fourteen years while trying to chase down the Duke's missing wife and daughter -- not a spoiler, since this happens in Chapter 1. Husband doesn't understand what happened, Toby can't face her old boss/liege-lord and life is hard when the mortal world declared you legally dead. So she's all 'fucking fairies, I'm gonna live a mortal life', which seems to involve finding a low-end job that lets her be nocturnal and not have to deal with the fact she doesn't look quite human unless she throws up a glamor.

The fairy world respects this choice and Toby is left alone to wallow in her own failure...

Of course not, since otherwise there wouldn't be a story. Toby is dragged, kicking and screaming, back into politics when a fairy noble is killed and she gets geased into finding the murderer. The plot is interesting, and Toby is an interesting character, trying to cope with the fact she crawled her way up from the gutter and, when things were finally going right, everything went crashing to pieces. She's a little less cracked by the end of the book -- well, kind of -- but the book leaves a lot of threads dangling for a sequel.

Also, for all my ragging on the book in the opening parts of this review, I like some of the elements -- rose goblins, for example, which are cat-sized creatures made of petals and thorns. I'd rather like hearing more about the non-humanoid branches of fairie -- we get the rose goblins and kelpie mentioned. Also, folks like the Selkie and the Cait Sidhe (humanoid-cat shapeshifter fairies that live half-feral in the streets of San Francisco). (Heck, that makes me kind of want to collect animal-spirit folktales and write something myself, but I digress...)

Plus, it's nice to see a female urban fantasy hero who does not appear to be falling into 'paranormal romance' territory -- not to pick, but there does seem to be a gender split in urban fantasy heroes.

So, I think this is one for the 'pick up the sequel when it comes out' pile.

--
* Japanese for fox, but when used in English it has the connotations of fox-spirits.

View all my reviews >>