Skip to main content

★★★★★ October Daye, Blood and Knives and All

Rosemary and Rue

Seanan McGuire

Rosemary and Rue is the first book in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series. It was McGuire's first book, published in 2009, based on an idea she had in (or before) 1998, when she was just 20 years old. Therefore, it is a bit immature and clunky. Or, at least, that is what McGuire claims in her Foreword,

This is where everything begins. Parts of it seem a little clunky to me now, because I’m so far down this road; I have trouble looking at the earlier books and seeing anything but the flaws. But this was the book that started the story, and if I force myself to read it as something someone else wrote, I can absolutely see that this would be one of my favorite books if I’d found it on the bookstore shelf. I hope it can be one of yours. Toby is the first and in many ways most important of my imaginary friends. I love her so much.

Blood and knives and all.

To be honest, that is not how it strikes me. If I had been handed this novel with no knowledge of its history, I would not have sussed out that it was the first published work of a 31-year-old author. As it happens, I have read all McGuire's Incryptid books and many of her separately published stories, and I can see that the McGuire who wrote Rosemary and Rue was in some respects a less skilled writer than the one she since became. But it is still an extraordinary debut.

Rosemary and Rue introduces us to October (Toby) Daye and to the world she inhabits. Toby is a half-fairy half-human hybrid. In the October Daye world, such hybrids are called changelings. (This is not the usual meaning of the word in European folklore.) Changelings are a despised underclass in fairy society. Indeed, the October Daye stories are largely about oppressed people in a hierarchical society. Toby lives in San Francisco, which is revealed to have a layer of fairy realms ("knowes") invisible to ordinary humans, from whom the fairies hide themselves to avoid conflict.

Toby gets sucked into a murder mystery. Her fight to solve it and survive is bitter and dangerous. Hence the "Blood and knives and all" McGuire mentions in the Foreword. It's an involving, high-stakes fight. It's also very complicated, because McGuire has to introduce Toby, a whole bunch of other characters, and the very complicated world they inhabit. This is something that 2021 McGuire would probably manage more deftly.

The book also contains the novella Strangers in Court, which is a sort of Prolog to the Rosemary and Rue prolog -- it tells us how Toby came to be a knight in Sylvester Torquill's fealty, which is how the prolog of Rosemary and Rue starts.

Strangers in Court is very good -- actually a better story than Rosemary and Rue, albeit shorter. This is for two reasons. First, it is more focused -- it doesn't have the sprawl of Rosemary and Rue. Second, Toby has more agency in Strangers in Court -- she takes initiatives and has clever ideas. In Rosemary and Rue, in contrast, Toby's role in the story is more or less that of a rag doll chew toy who is tossed and chomped on by larger and more powerful dogs. She can only do what she has to do. Aside from being the baddest b***h in San Francisco, Toby doesn't show a lot of individuality in Rosemary and Rue.

Amazon review

Goodreads review
 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

★★★★☆ Alana in show-biz

Saga, Volume 4 Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples (Illustrator) If you're like me, your first question on seeing  Saga, Volume 4  is, "Who is that woman on the cover?" That, my dear friend, is Alana. About halfway through  Volume 3  Alana and Marko had a brief conversation about The Circuit, which is a performance venue of some kind that people can tune into with a virtual reality helmet. Before she became a soldier, Alana harbored ambitions of performing on the Circuit. Now that their lethal pursuit has been temporarily distracted or put out of commission, they're focused on making some kind of living. Marko encouraged her to audition. So now Alana is performing on the Circuit, and what you see on the cover is her bewigged with wings bound and hidden in order to perform. She's the family breadwinner. Marko is a househusband, staying home and taking care of Hazel. The Marko-Alana-Hazel story in this volume is a bit dull. Without giving away any spoilers, it's kin...

★☆☆☆☆ Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition

Power Jeffrey Pfeffer I read this eleven years ago (21-Sep-2011). At the time, I wrote this brief note to myself: Based on the first chapter or two, a singularly repulsive little book. It's basically "Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition". Amazon review Goodreads review  

★★★☆☆ Advice I am not going to follow

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan Michael Pollan  is a person who cares deeply about food. I am not (which is a little strange, since I worked 31 years as a neuroscientist studying feeding behavior). “Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.” ― Socrates I am definitely a person who eats to live. There are a few books in what I call the "history of substances" genre, for instance  The True History of Chocolate ,  A Perfect Red , or  A History of the World in 6 Glasses . I find these fascinating and would be happy to find more. I picked up  The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World  and  The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals  because I thought they were books in this vein, and  The Omnivore's Dilemma  was getting a lot of love from my friends. Well, my hopes were not completely disappointed.  The Omnivore's Dilemma  does indeed contain fascinating information a...

★★★☆☆ Drivel with occasional brilliance

Songs of Innocence and Experience William Blake I have to begin with a disclaimer. Usually I read poetry very slowly, one or two poems a day. This gives me the time to savor it. However, I had surgery two days ago and brought  William Blake 's  Songs of Innocence and Experience  along to read while waiting for the surgeons to slice me open. It is possible that these are not the best conditions for appreciating  Blake . With that caveat, I was more disappointed than pleased by this volume of poetry. It consists mostly of drivel like this: When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it; interrupted by occasional flashes of brilliance like this O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. or this The human d...

★★★★☆ Courage and principle, betrayed by history

Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South Elizabeth R Varon My first knowledge of Confederate general James Longstreet came as a result of reading  Michael Shaara 's splendid historical novel  The Killer Angels , which  Elizabeth Varon , in  Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South  describes thus A finely grained fictional account of the Gettysburg campaign, the book conjured the strained relationship of Longstreet and Lee, casting Longstreet as a prescient pragmatist oriented toward the future, who symbolized modern warfare, and Lee as the prideful romantic, backward-looking and resigned to fate. Why had I never heard of Longstreet? Because the USA doesn't want to remember him. At the end of the Civil War, Longstreet, unlike the huge majority of Confederate officers, accepted defeat. Longstreet was a great friend of Union general Ulysses S Grant, and he was inspired by Grant's generosity in victory to behave in such a way as to d...

★★★☆☆ What is it like to be an octopus?

Children of Ruin Adrian Tchaikovsky There is a famous essay called  What is it like to be a Bat? / Wie ist es, eine Fledermaus zu sein?  by philosopher  Thomas Nagel . (Although I am not a philosopher, I am a neuroscientist, and as a neuroscientist it is almost impossible to avoid knowing a little of the nonsense philosophers think about how minds work.)  Nagel  attempts to make an argument about consciousness. He argues that the consciousness of a bat is an experience a human cannot possibly have or understand, because echolocation is so unhuman. I have a little fantasy about  Adrian Tchaikovsky 's  Children of Time series . I imagine he read  Nagel 's effusion and said to himself, "Utter nonsense! I'm gonna show that I can imagine not only what it's like to be a bat, but even what it's like to be a spider or an octopus!" ( Nagel  in fact raises the question of invertebrate experience in his essay, only to make the point that it is an even h...

★★★☆☆ Good-bye Earl, or Small powers do great things

Nettle & Bone T Kingfisher I believe the first  T. Kingfisher  book I ever read was  A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking , and the second  Minor Mage . (I had, however, read some of her middle grade works published as  Ursula Vernon , and I was aware that  Kingfisher  and  Vernon  are the same person.)  Nettle & Bone  feels to me very like those two novels, but with a little of the joy let out. Both  A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking  (irresistible title!) and  Minor Mage  feature child wizards with very limited powers who are called on to do far more than anyone has a right to expect of them, and who rise to the challenge. The first quarter of  Nettle & Bone  is exceedingly grim. It's the all-too-familiar story of a wife suffering, as the publisher's summary says, "at the hands of a powerful and abusive" husband. She's a princess and he's a prince, but that matters only in that it accen...

★★★★★ Tactical Assault Clown

Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up Dave Barry There is one living human who can write prose that makes me laugh so hard I can't breathe. That person is Tactical Assault Clown  Dave Barry .  Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up  had that effect on me at least twice -- an automatic five-star rating. ("Tactical Assault Clown" is right up there with "Combat Epistemologist" ( The Jennifer Morgue ) on my list of creative military specializations. And if you're one of those people who get their knickers all in a twist when someone uses parens inside of parens, you know what you can do about it.) (Yes, I know I'm not funny.) It's not all ROFL funny. In fact, he tells about his father's alcoholism ( that story has a happy ending ) and his mother's suicide ( that one obviously does not ). Later in the book he tries to convince us that his real li...

★★★★☆ Making heroes of Rednecks and Hillbillies

Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver You already know that  Demon Copperhead  by  Barbara Kingsolver  is a retelling of  David Copperfield  by  Charles Dickens . Indeed, it is so faithful a retelling that, if the publisher had not already spilled the beans, I would feel compelled to mark this review a spoiler because of mentioning  David Copperfield . If you have read  David Copperfield  at all recently, then you will recognize the characters and the major plot points as you read  Demon Copperhead . (I last read  David Copperfield  when I was a kid in the late 1960s, so I was blessedly free from this detailed anticipation as I read  Demon Copperhead . I did, however, check out the Wikipedia plot summary of  David Copperfield  on finishing  Demon Copperhead , so I'm up to speed on both plot outlines.) And this, I say, is absolutely fine! If you're going to steal, by all means, steal from the best! I am co...

★★★☆☆ Lacking the common touch

100 Selected Poems: John Keats John Keats Well, that was disappointing. I am ready to admit that this is an "It's not you -- it's me," case. Since I suspect that some other readers, even readers who love poetry, may likewise find  Keats  disappointing, I will try to explain why he disappointed me. Thus you can judge whether you, too, might suffer the same fate. First thing to say is that the young  John Keats  was not really that great a poet. (By "young", I mean up to and including  Endymion .) That, of course, is a judgment many readers will disagree with, but don't discount it! It was  Keats 's own judgment. In his preface to  Endymion , he says "I apologize for the lousy work, but I just had to get this out of my system." (Obviously I'm paraphrasing.) You may dismiss that as false modesty, but I am more inclined to accept it as the judgment of a man who knew what he was talking about, especially because the quality of his poetry abr...