Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

From McGuire's website:  "The world of Faerie never disappeared: it merely went into hiding, continuing to exist parallel to our own. Secrecy is the key to Faerie's survival—but no secret can be kept forever, and when the fae and mortal worlds collide, changelings are born. Half-human, half-fae, outsiders from birth, these second-class children of Faerie spend their lives fighting for the respect of their immortal relations. Or, in the case of October "Toby" Daye, rejecting it completely. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the fae world, retreating into a "normal" life. Unfortunately for her, Faerie has other ideas.


The murder of Countess Evening Winterrose, one of the secret regents of the San Francisco Bay Area, pulls Toby back into the fae world. Unable to resist Evening's dying curse, which binds her to investigate, Toby is forced to resume her old position as knight errant to the Duke of Shadowed Hills and begin renewing old alliances that may prove her only hope of solving the mystery... before the curse catches up with her."

You can't read a blog that covers urban fantasy nowadays without reading glowing reviews of both Ilona Andrews and Seanan McGuire.  Having tried and not cared for Andrews's work, I nervously committed myself to read the first book of the October Daye series from Seanan McGuire.

To begin with, it had a few things working for it that the Kate Daniels books did not.  First, I love faeries.  Second, I hate romance.  Now, you are probably thinking that is a giant lie told by the most gigantic liar you've ever met considering my review list, but it's also partially true nowadays.  I find that while a good romance ranks up there as one of the best things I can read or watch on film, a bad romance can make a very good piece of entertainment seem horrible to me.  McGuire pretty much leaves romance off the table with this book.  There are clearly mentions of romantic interests and hints that future characters will be important romantically, but there isn't any of this "we sniped at each other but underneath all of that was a clear sense of our impassioned need to have rough sex right at that moment" nonsense that some urban fantasies and paranormal romances seem to love.

Once you get beyond my superficial reasons for liking this book, there's also a lot of other things to enjoy.  We come to Daye six months after an event that clearly was life changing for her.  It gives her a reason to be negative and full of hate for the faery world, while also making her sympathetic immediately even with her attitude.  Daye does not come across as all powerful, with simple illusions causing her headaches and pain.  She seems, humorously enough, human.  Her near death wish behavior in her quest to find the killing of her frenemy is reasonable too since her non-participation leads to death anyways.  In other words, Daye comes across not as a angsty, sarcastic, and oversexed heroine, but as a person thrown into a situation and being forced to get their way free of that situation in any way possible.

Saying that, I didn't care for how often Daye was on the brink of death.  After a while, that all bled together.  (BAD PUN UNINTENTIONAL!) Nor did I care for the characters of Julie or Tybalt.  They were uninteresting and one note.  I was sad that we never got the meet Evening Winterrose as she seemed to be particularly interesting, but the Luidaeg was fascinating and I hope she's in every one of these stories.  I also disliked the ease in which Daye fell into old routines with the fey even though she knew the consequences of working with them. 

I'm definitely going to overlook the things I didn't care for about the book and continue with this series.  I have high hopes that it'll be a favorite over time!

Verdict:  7.  I liked it more than I like most urban fantasies nowadays.

Thoughts:  After disliking the Kate Daniels series from Ilona Andrews, I'm relieved to like this particular blogosphere favorite.  I don't like being a hater all the time.

DNF: And Falling, Fly by Skyler White

From the author's website:  "Olivia is a vampire bored with modernity. Tattooist, boyfriend, black-metal singer: everyone you don’t love tastes the same. Since the fall from Eden, she has hungered for love, but fed only on desire. Dominic O’Shaughnessy is a neuroscientist plagued by impossible visions.


When his research and her despair collide in Ireland’s L’Otel Mathillide – a subterranean hell of beauty, demons and dreams – rationalist and angel unite in a clash of desire and damnation that threatens to destroy them both."

 I got this book from the library solely because I loved the title and the tiny bit of the first chapter I read.  Sadly, I returned this book to the library loving only that part of the book.  While the author clearly has a way with words, I often felt the plot wasn't moving along at all and that we were seeing the same complaints from Olivia over and over again only phrased differently (though still beautifully).  Or, I'd stop and half to check back a few chapters to make sure the scene I was reading wasn't one I had read before because the same things seemed to be happening.  After a while, I just got bored of the characters and their incessant desire to be angsty and overwrought.  I'm saddened I couldn't even power through the book but none of my normal tricks to overcome a DNF worked.  (Three tricks I use:  (a) leave the book where it's easily accessible for toothbrush or snacking reading, (b) opening the book to random sections and seeing if any of them capture my attention, and (c) if there are multiple character plotlines, follow only the one I think is most interesting.)

Verdict:  DNF.  I'm sad to say it is so.

Thoughts:  I really wanted to like this one.  I loved the title.  I loved the summary.  I even found the first chapter engrossing.  Sigh.

The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter

From the author's website:  "It's always been just Kate and her mom--and now her mother is dying. Her last wish? To move back to her childhood home. So Kate's going to start at a new school with no friends, no other family and the fear her mother won't live past the fall.

Then she meets Henry. Dark. Tortured. And mesmerizing. He claims to be Hades, god of the Underworld--and if she accepts his bargain, he'll keep her mother alive while Kate tries to pass seven tests.

Kate is sure he's crazy--until she sees him bring a girl back from the dead. Now saving her mother seems crazily possible. If she succeeds, she'll become Henry's future bride, and a goddess.

If she fails..."

WARNING:  Spoilers contained within.

Interesting fact for you:  I'm a skimmer.  On my first go through, I read books really quickly and skim a lot.  This means that for this blog, I do a fair bit of rereading to make sure that I give books a fair review here rather than just thoughts on the parts of the book I managed to catch on my first read through.  Some books improve for this.  Others suffer.  A lot.  This is one of those books.  When I had first finished The Goddess Test, I was fairly sure I was going to give it a six or so.  Light fare, enjoyable, with very loose interpretations of mythology.  I had really skimmed it quite quickly, however, and I felt I must give it a better read.

Wow, I should never have done that.  What had been an enjoyable read because an eye-rolling exercise in anger.  The problem is related to the second interesting fact about myself -- I'm a huge mythology fan.  When I was younger, I'd read any book on mythology I could get.  That included a set of Encyclopedia Britannica that I'd pull out and cross-reference, happily reading about little know demigods and muses and prophets.  I enjoyed Greek mythology the best, but would dabble with Roman, Norse, Mayan, and Japanese mythology.  Frankly, The Goddess steps all over mythology like it is dirt, which made me want to weep.

Kate is a rather silly heroine.  She seems to have no friends or feelings about anything other than her mother.  Since she is close to her mother and her mother is dying, this seems somewhat explained, but it is still obnoxious and allows all of her time and energy to be wasted on Henry, a morose, sad sack of a hero, who angsts around his home with all his might.  When Henry basically attempts to bargain with Kate so that her mother can live for a while longer, Kate agrees and is forced to live as a horrible prisoner in a gorgeous home with a gorgeous guy who wants her to be his wife (she's sixteen, I think!) and she's forced to attend picnics and wear pretty clothing (which she sulks and sulks about).  Oh, and she's forced to study mythology.  She is also taking tests, but we, like Kate, are never aware when Kate is being tested, which is annoying and vague.

Luckily, Kate has several friends in the house, including one from her week or two in Eden -- Ava.  And Ava is where I go nuts with this book.  At one point, Ava sleeps with two different men in a very short period in the book.  This in a roundabout way leads to one of the men killing the other man.  At this point, these paragraphs happens:

"You didn't hack him into little pieces, but you're the reason it happened."  I stopped in front of the bed, running my fingers through my hair.  "Ella wants you gone.  Frankly, if all you're going to do is waste your time sleeping with every guy in the manor and acting like the world revolves around you, then so do I.  You're useless here.  The only things you've done are bicker with Ella and get Xander killed."

The moment I said it, I regretted it, but I couldn't take it back. It was the truth, or at least an exaggeration of it. But when I looked at Ava, I saw a scared girl who was my friend, not the heinous, selfish whore I'd painted her as. My stomach twisted, and guilt flooded through me so fast that I felt like I was choking.

Of course you feel guilt, Kate.  You just slut-shamed.  And it made me ashamed of you.  Ava's sin is to sleep with two guys ("EVERY GUY IN THE MANOR") within the same month.  One of them then forces the hand of the other to cause his own death.  How the hell is this Ava's fault?  It's not. 

Regardless, at the end of the book, we learn that Kate's tests are all related to the seven sins.  (Those Greek Gods are really big on the cardinal sins of the Catholic Church!)  But the tests are almost deemed unimportant, not being administered by anything besides fate (not the Fates, but just random pure luck), apparently, and rather nonsensical for the most part.  Also, why not call the book The Goddess Tests?

Did I like anything at all about this book, you're asking?  I liked that (spoiler) the gods totally portray a huge farce to test Kate.  That seems like something the Greek gods would do and they wouldn't be apologetic about it at all.  I liked that I didn't realize a lot of the mysteries of the book until the end.  I read a few reviews which stated that they were all over realizing everything like who the murdered in the book was, but I had no clue.  And I liked James.  <3 

I'm unsure if I'll read the next book in this series.  I did enjoy the book the first time I read it, but now I know it's not my favorite. 

Verdict:  4.  I really had a fight with myself over a four or a five, but ultimately went with a four  because while I did enjoy it on my first time through my second read through made me so damned angry.  I warn you to never read this carefully.

Thoughts:  Calliope?  Diana?  Really?  Why not just name all of your characters different mythological names which have nothing to do with their role?  It's a good thing that Kate is really dumb, or she might wonder if Calliope is the muse of poetry, which she is not.  This is so incredibly odd to me.  At least Diana could be considered a common enough name that this might occur, but Calliope is not exactly your every day name.  It's like having a book about Norse mythological characters and naming one of the characters Freyja and then not having the real Freyja in the book!

Also, why do the gods have nothing better to do that hang out at Henry's all the time?  One would think that administrating love, the sea, and travel would cause some busy times, but apparently not.  Also, why doesn't Apollo heal in this book at all?  It's always Hades or Zeus doing the healing.

Blood Engines by T. A. Pratt

From Amazon:

"Meet Marla Mason–smart, saucy, slightly wicked witch of the East Coast.…

Sorcerer Marla Mason, small-time guardian of the city of Felport, has a big problem. A rival is preparing a powerful spell that could end Marla’s life–and, even worse, wreck her city. Marla’s only chance of survival is to boost her powers with the Cornerstone, a magical artifact hidden somewhere in San Francisco. But when she arrives there, Marla finds that the quest isn’t going to be quite as cut-and-dried as she expected…and that some of the people she needs to talk to are dead. It seems that San Francisco’s top sorcerers are having troubles of their own–a mysterious assailant has the city’s magical community in a panic, and the local talent is being (gruesomely) picked off one by one.

With her partner-in-crime, Rondeau, Marla is soon racing against time through San Francisco’s alien streets, dodging poisonous frogs, murderous hummingbirds, cannibals, and a nasty vibe from the local witchery, who suspect that Marla herself may be behind the recent murders. And if Marla doesn’t figure out who is killing the city’s finest in time, she’ll be in danger of becoming a magical statistic herself.…"

Excerpt at Author's website.

Let's just get this out of the way, Marla is one bitchy but boss heroine.   The whole book is filled with a ton of witches and wizards who are scary, strange, and unique.  I've certainly never come across a witch who gathers her magic by using a train going in an endless loop.  (Loved that.)  More than most books called urban fantasy, this felt both urban and strange and weird, but in a good way.  Even magical archetypes that appear in other series come across a little better in this book (the witch who can see multiple timelines, the prophet/oracle, and the evil Chinese mage).  Now, to damn with faint praise, saying all this about how I loved aspects of this book, I simply liked this book.

Let's get the bad out of the way so I can clear my review's palette with the good stuff.  It was certainly memorable, but while certain scenes and characters are simply stand-out, other scenes or characters left me uninterested and unmotivated to continue reading the series.  I felt like the characters I was most interested in wouldn't even be in the second book, which left me with a "why bother" feeling.  Also, Marla is almost needlessly bitchy.  She is the kind of bitchy that left me unable to sympathize and I say this as a person who is needlessly bitchy all the damned time.  She seems to be bitchy almost to the point of stupidity.  While this can be interesting, it also makes her seem dumb at times which is hard to find engaging.

Felport, the city which matters the most to Marla, is not in this book at all.  We're left with San Francisco, which makes me reluctant to move back to Felport in the second book.  It seems an odd choice to start the series away from this city.

Now that this is out of the way, let's talk about what I like.  The snake god, the possible witch (extra hugs and kisses to this minor character), the bevy of San Fran leading wizards, the completely strange but interesting magic of the villain, Bradley.  If the second book had followed Bradley instead of Marla, I'd have been there in a heartbeat.  There is a lot of world-building and characterization to love. 

The reason I'm tempted to pick up more books from Tim Pratt is that I'm sure he must be a very imaginative man with a great ability to paint both beautiful and hideous worlds and people with words.  If his other books have stronger stories, I think they have the potential to be some of my favorites.


Verdict: 6.  I read it about a month ago and I still remember all the plot details and I still feel good about a lot of it, but not enough to make me want to rush to get the second book in the series.  Both of those things say something and they balance out to a six.  It's like the opposite of 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts'.  Here the sum of its parts is much higher than the whole of story of this book.

Thoughts:  I guessed early into the novel that this was written by a male as opposed to the large string of urban fantasy written by females.  The feel was just different.  In one way, I kind of liked that (less silly romance) but in another way (still lots of silly sex) it was kind of annoying.  Doesn't anyone do urban fantasy stuff without excessive romance or sex?

Also, Tim Pratt has both his own website and a website devoted to stories of Marla which includes an excerpt from Blood Engines..  Apparently the fifth book is reader funded.  Was he unable to publish it or did he decide to self-publish it?