Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire (October Daye #1)

4 stars

I know I am so late to jump on the October Daye bandwagon. I have heard that with this series that the first book isn’t the best one and they just keep getting better. This one was good enough that I will definitely read more.

October Daye (Toby) is a changeling. Again, not the typical definition of a changeling in that the fair folk stole the human baby and left a fae child in place of it. In this book, it is a person who is part fae part human. Toby is half human, half Daoine Sidhe. My biggest complaint about this book is that there are soooo many types of fairies in this book and the author only explains what some of them are. Sometimes she just says that they are this or that and moves on. I am sure that the more I read the books that I will learn more. I can see not wanting to bog down the entire first book with the definitions for all her fairy creatures. But it was frustrating that I don’t know what some of the main characters are. I don’t even know what the Daoine Sidhe really are.

When we first meet October she is a P.I. and is involved in a relationship with a human (named Cliff) and they have a child (named Gillian). She is working on a case for her liege lord, Sylvester and runs into a big problem. He turns her into a fish for 14 years! Somehow she makes it out and this is basically where the story line for this book takes up. Since not being a fish anymore, Toby has avoided pretty much all of her former acquaintances. I am not really sure why, except the author does explain to us that October is really good at avoiding relationships with people in general. One of October’s past acquaintances leaves her a message that binds her (under pain of death) to do as requested. So this book follows October through her attempts to fulfill her binding.

We meet so many awesome characters that I look forward to getting to know each of them more. Sylvester seems wonderful and I enjoy his wife as well. Lily, the Luidag, Manuel and Dare. My most favorite character right now is Tybalt! I want to read more about this guy. October says multiple times that he hates her, but I don’t think this is true. The character that I didn’t care much for was Julie. She was mentioned many times in passing before we actually get to meet her and while something tragic happens to her then, I do not respect her feelings towards October after that. She made me angry and I thought Tybalt should teach her a lesson.