It's A Fine October Daye

One of my favorite joys in life is discovering a new author to love.  Recently (this past year) I have discovered Seanan McGuire (who also writes under the pen name Mira Grant).  Most of her work is in the urban fantasy round, straying into horror on occasion.  I like her work because she adds a plausibility element to all of this "make-believe" that a lot of fantasy and horror authors are missing.  For me this is a big deal because if I cannot at least try and believe the premise of the book, it takes me out of the world and makes for a much harder read (I'm looking at you Divergent).  I have read several of Ms. McGuire's books and decided to start on her October Daye series starting with the first one Rosemary and Rue.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

We start with a prologue in which we meet our heroine the changeling (half faerie, half human) private investigator October Daye.  We learn that October (or Toby as most people call her) has a fiance and young daughter at home. Toby is on a case to find the missing wife and daughter of her liege lord in the faerie realm the Duke Sylvester Torquill.  For her trouble Toby ends up being transformed into a koi by the bad guys and spends the next 14 years in a pond.  Flash forward 14 years and 6 months and Toby is trying to put her life back together.  She feels burned by her faerie side, doing her best to avoid all things fae and just focus on holding down a job long enough to pay rent.  Her fiance and daughter want nothing to do with her, having moved on in the 14 years of her absence.  This all changes when the Countess Evening Winterrose is murdered and lays a deadly curse on Toby, compelling her to find her killer or die trying. Toby starts her search by visiting the crime scene and "riding" the blood of Evening, a skill she inherited from her faerie mother.  By tasting the blood, Toby not only makes the binding of the curse stronger, but gets some clues on where to head next. She also finds out that Evening was killed by iron, a cruel and specific way to torture or kill someone with any faerie blood in them.  She starts by telling the Queen, who reacts in what can only be described as an insane way and is ordered to leave with no help.  Next Toby goes Home, a place run by a changeling named Devin who takes in wayward half-bloods and essentially owns them until they find a way to break free.  Toby spent some time there in her youth before being knighted by the Duke and has a

love/hate relationship with Devin. Devin agrees to help her for a future unnamed price and has two of his kids, the siblings Dare and Manuel act as body guards/escorts.  Toby follows the clues and finds a legendary hope chest hidden in Evenings things.  This hope chest supposedly holds wonders that are only spoke about in stories, one of them being the power to transform a changling into a full human or full faerie, just by holding the box, Toby can feel a strange power flowing through her.  Knowing how dangerous this box could be, she leaves it in the possession of Tybalt called King of Cats, the leader of the Cait Sidhe or cat faeries.  Toby knows it will be safe with him 'cause they really don't like each other and he will not want to be in her debt. Toby finally goes to see Sylvester and his court, finding a warm welcome by not only him, but his wife, who was returned to him along with their daughter 10 years after they vanished. Nobody knows what happened to them, Luna (the wife) won't say and Rayseline went a bit cuckoo and is now a bit of a sadistic freak.  More talking and blah blah blahing and we find out that Rayseline's Selkie husband Conner and Toby had a thing back in the day, making it a bit awkward.  Toby continues hunting around despite everybody telling her it is to dangerous, but the curse will kill her if she doesn't find the answer so off she goes.  She gets shot by iron multiple times, gets patched up by various people multiple times and finally figures out that the killer was Devin.  Devin killed Evening to try and procure the hope chest, made bitter by the fact that he feels he deserves the immortality of the fae and it wasn't given to him.  In the ensuing fight Dare is killed, as is the young lover of Julie another Cait Sidhe, causing all sorts of inter faerie court problems.  The curse is lifted and Toby is reinstated as a PI to continue her work as a faerie/human detective/knight.  Also she gets to keep this weird rose thorn cat goblin thingy.

A synopsis will never capture what I really love about this book and that is the complex, yet follow-able world building that is done, especially on the faerie side.  The author spends a lot of time making sure we know that faerie is not just a willowy little creature with wings and rose petal slippers, they come in all shapes and sizes and varieties and they are well represented here.  I love that not only are various types of faeries represented, but different cultures as well.  We have the Japanese Kitsune, the Undine which is a bit more of a Greek concept, Selkies from Irish/Scottish myth, the Persian Manticore, and of course all of your more typical Fair Folk type denizens.  All of this is further enhanced by the author clearly defining the various types of faeries and how the various mixes of blood produce different reactions and abilities.  For one example Toby's ability to "ride" blood comes from her Daoine Sidhe mother, while another character combines the sadisticness of the reclusive Peri (another Persian myth) and the socialness of  the Tuatha de Dannan (Gaelic myth) to make a being who not only enjoys people, but really enjoys inflicting pain on them.  The author has taken artistic liberties with the strictly old school myths, turning them into a world that is both completely new and familiar at the same time.  The hierarchy, politics, rules, traditions and class structure are fairly well explained and add a layer of authenticness and the feeling that these beings have been here for centuries.  The magic is well thought out and has rules and restrictions that feel authentic which again helps with the plausibility factor. I especially love that most magic users have a specific taste and smell that helps identify who the use is, for example Toby's magic manifests as copper and grass cuttings.  There were a couple things that did bug me.  I was not feeling the actual character of October Daye, especially compared to the main character Verity in her one of her other urban fantasy series (InCryptid).  Toby seems a lot more of a reactionary character, a bit of a blank slate for the other characters to act against.  She is a changeling who

has lots of friends (and enemies and frenemies) in convenient places. While I like the idea that she is not
super woman, that she can (and does) get truly injured in a very believable fashion (finally a recovery that takes more then 10 minutes, even with her super faerie healing powers) I feel she too often wanted to prove her self, got hurt, needed rescuing, then promptly went out and did the same thing with the same results several times over...for no real reason.  I understood the whole attraction/maybe love thing with Devin, but then the author tossed in some possible thing between Toby and Conner that felt...hmm...I'm not sure how to describe what bugged my about it.  I guess the fact that the vast majority of Toby's history is given to us in a few vague, moody, wisps, but we yet all of her motivations are based on her past.  I guess it is difficult to empathize or identify with Toby because we don't know why or how or what is really motivating her. So she tells us that her and Conner may at one time in the very distant past have possibly maybe been able to fall in love, but didn't and that is why she is now a zillion years later so attracted to him...even though...well we don't know because that is all we have to go on, some nebulous maybe feeling from her unknown past, we don't even get to know Conner enough to see his appeal.  In the end the world building trumps the story and most definitely outshines the main character.  Any time I want to read about one of the other characters instead of the main one, it throws up a bit of a red flag. Oh one other thing I liked was all of the subtle references to Shakespeare. Ophelia from Hamlet is mentioned in perfect context and Tybalt King of the Cats is such a wonderfully direct reference to my favorite character in Romeo and Juliet that I must admit I squealed out loud.  Overall I enjoyed the world Ms. McGuire has built and will probably be back to visit it again in her further books, but not until I have exhausted the InCryptid novels with my sassy spunky not so vague Verity.  I give this book 6 out of 10 rose goblins.
Do you like your cultural fairy tales all mixed up or do your prefer them separate and pure? Do you love it as much as I do when an author sneaks in some Shakespeare?  What does your magic smell like?  Do people give you funny looks when you squeal out loud when you read?