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Jan. 12th, 2010 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI feel like I start book reviews quite a lot with "one of the things I love most is" . . . but I can't help it! There are lots of things I love! And one of the things I love most, along with all the other things I love, is a good genre-cross. Give me a good mystery WITH HOBBITS or a comedy of manners IN SPACE and I am happy as a very pleased clam.
Seanan McGuire's Rosemary and Rue is an excellent example of this - a genuine noir urban fantasy novel. It even takes place in California! (Everyone knows that all the best noir takes place in either LA or San Francisco. It is just one of those things.) October 'Toby' Daye is a hard-boiled San Francisco private eye who happens to be a half-Fae changeling, which comes with a few benefits and a lot more inconveniences. Something that I won't spoil, because it took me by total surprise and I think the surprise is worth it, happens at the end of the first chapter that causes her to try and isolate herself completely from the supernatural world. When she's called in to investigate the murder of an old friend, she has to get in touch with all her old contacts to try to find the answer before TIME RUNS OUT.
One of the key elements of noir is the sense of a world that is fundamentally wrong and unjust, with the lower-class characters, protagonist included, struggling to get by with the deck stacked against them. In this book, it's the class issues between full fairy creatures and changelings that provide the necessary backdrop for a noir story to play out, which I thought was an incredibly cool way to meld the two genres. There are other nice plays on the noir genre too - instead of femme fatales, there are dude fatales (I was wrong on which one was going to turn out evil, but I hold out hope that my suspicions about the other one will come true in a later book!), there's a high-speed car chase over the Golden Gate Bridge, there are Tough Kids In Over Their Heads and High-Class Families Hiding Complicated Family Secrets, and, in short, in my fantasy casting, someone would be played by Lauren Bacall.
The supernatural worldbuilding itself did not excite me particularly - it's your standard almost-entirely-European mix of fairy creatures (Sidhe, undines, selkies, etc.) with a few choices that I found a bit perplexing and potentially problematic (the German-mythology-based undine is Japanese, for no given reason, while the one fairy creature that comes from non-European mythology, a kitsune, seems to be white). I also had a really hard time taking "oak and ash!" seriously as a swear word. This aside, though, I enjoyed the book a ton, and I am totally looking forward to the next one, which comes out I think in March?
I also know there are a bunch of you on my flist who are urban fantasy fans, so if you are looking for a fun mystery-fantasy read that is high on the awesome noir tropes and low on the completely gratuitous sex (coughLaurellKHamiltoncough), maybe give this a go! (Feel free to defend other urban fantasy to me in the comments, too.)
Seanan McGuire's Rosemary and Rue is an excellent example of this - a genuine noir urban fantasy novel. It even takes place in California! (Everyone knows that all the best noir takes place in either LA or San Francisco. It is just one of those things.) October 'Toby' Daye is a hard-boiled San Francisco private eye who happens to be a half-Fae changeling, which comes with a few benefits and a lot more inconveniences. Something that I won't spoil, because it took me by total surprise and I think the surprise is worth it, happens at the end of the first chapter that causes her to try and isolate herself completely from the supernatural world. When she's called in to investigate the murder of an old friend, she has to get in touch with all her old contacts to try to find the answer before TIME RUNS OUT.
One of the key elements of noir is the sense of a world that is fundamentally wrong and unjust, with the lower-class characters, protagonist included, struggling to get by with the deck stacked against them. In this book, it's the class issues between full fairy creatures and changelings that provide the necessary backdrop for a noir story to play out, which I thought was an incredibly cool way to meld the two genres. There are other nice plays on the noir genre too - instead of femme fatales, there are dude fatales (I was wrong on which one was going to turn out evil, but I hold out hope that my suspicions about the other one will come true in a later book!), there's a high-speed car chase over the Golden Gate Bridge, there are Tough Kids In Over Their Heads and High-Class Families Hiding Complicated Family Secrets, and, in short, in my fantasy casting, someone would be played by Lauren Bacall.
The supernatural worldbuilding itself did not excite me particularly - it's your standard almost-entirely-European mix of fairy creatures (Sidhe, undines, selkies, etc.) with a few choices that I found a bit perplexing and potentially problematic (the German-mythology-based undine is Japanese, for no given reason, while the one fairy creature that comes from non-European mythology, a kitsune, seems to be white). I also had a really hard time taking "oak and ash!" seriously as a swear word. This aside, though, I enjoyed the book a ton, and I am totally looking forward to the next one, which comes out I think in March?
I also know there are a bunch of you on my flist who are urban fantasy fans, so if you are looking for a fun mystery-fantasy read that is high on the awesome noir tropes and low on the completely gratuitous sex (coughLaurellKHamiltoncough), maybe give this a go! (Feel free to defend other urban fantasy to me in the comments, too.)
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Date: 2010-01-12 04:49 pm (UTC)Yeah, A Local Habitation (the next book) comes out in March.
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Date: 2010-01-12 04:57 pm (UTC)(I have to admit, I was a little nervous about reading it, knowing that several people I know are good friends of the author's. WHAT IF I DIDN'T LIKE IT? Fortunately that did not turn out to be at all a problem!)
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Date: 2010-01-12 04:59 pm (UTC)I think--again, I don't know for sure--that yes, you'll get a bit more.
Maybe not immediately though.
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Date: 2010-01-12 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:49 pm (UTC)(Then I lent the copy I had to my mom, and I think she is now like five books into the series.)
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Date: 2010-01-12 06:57 pm (UTC)I loved this book a lot (fun voice! Gender inversion on just about every noir trope in the book! Characters I liked! [SPOILER] why did you have to die :( :( ) but yeah, I did notice the predominance of European-originating fae. And the randomness of the others. I was also kind of thrown by the lack of any Native American folklore figures anywhere -- which in the same point, IIRC, the author says is because she hasn't found a way to work them in respectfully and doesn't want to do it badly, which on the one hand is way better than charging blithely in to mess it up, but on the other hand still results in a resounding lack of Indian presence in San Francisco -- and by the way the European Underhill people are just kind of... there. For indefinitely long. Having gotten there, uh, we don't say how.
But I still did love the book. And devoured it very fast, instead of getting distracted by my other books-in-progress as I often do.
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Date: 2010-01-12 07:09 pm (UTC)Yeah, these were pretty much my feelings too! Both in terms of the things I liked very much, and the things I am kind of iffy on. (Yeah, I was sad about [SPOILER] too. :( :( Also, if you are wondering which character it is I was kind of hoping would turn out to be evil, it is whatsisface the selkie dude, whom I have zero sympathy for and kind of want to go away fast. (While obviously Tybalt the Blatant Reference King of Cats shouted 'series love interest!' from his first appearance, which I am cool with but find massively entertaining.)
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Date: 2010-01-12 07:27 pm (UTC)TYBALT IS HILARIOUS. I am unsure if I want him to be the series love interest or just the series buddy-cop partner, but EITHER WAY MAKES ME HAPPY. The only thing I didn't like about him is that his supposed hate for Toby falls down a little too much into tell-but-don't-show for me, even though I know it's supposed to be Toby as an unreliable narrator. Seriously, Toby, you have cats! From scene one, he clearly does not so much hate you as find you a fun and cranky toy! Respect may also be a factor, as gradually demonstrated, but really now. PS. HILARIOUS.
Also, adorable: wossname the troll taxi driver. *ruffles his hair, if he has any*
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Date: 2010-01-12 07:46 pm (UTC)ALSO HAHAHAHA YES. My suspicion is that all of us who are cat people are pretty much guaranteed to find Tybalt awesomely hilarious. And my feelings about Toby's constant assertions of mutual hatred can pretty much be summed up as, "HEY TOBY, ever hear the phrase 'methinks the lady doth protest too much'?" - and how do I not have a Neko-sensei icon for this post now.
Awww, yeah, he was totally adorable! Also adorable: the spiky little rose goblin.
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Date: 2010-01-12 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 08:17 pm (UTC)What book is it that you're reading now?
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Date: 2010-01-12 08:58 pm (UTC)I really like her stuff and this was a well done fantasy novel.
She knows how to write teens and the other series she has is modern day wizards but very much not HP called The Warrior Heir, The Wizard Heir and The Dragon Heir. Danii turned me onto her writing and I really like her a lot.
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Date: 2010-01-12 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 10:16 pm (UTC)I highly recommend those books, they're good fantasy, kick ass characters of all stripes and the magic makes sense.
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Date: 2010-01-12 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-13 12:43 am (UTC)