quippe | Entries tagged with seanan mcguire

The Blurb On The Back:

So when the crossroads call and your faith is thin
And you’re afraid you might explode,
Go and talk to the girl in the green silk gown
Who walks on Sparrow Hill Road.

Rose Marshall died in 1952 in Buckley Township, Michigan, run off the road by a man named Bobby Cross – a man who had sold his soul to live forever, and intended to use her death to pay the price of his immortality. Trouble was, he didn’t ask Rose what she thought of the idea.

It’s been more than sixty years since that night, and she’s still sixteen, and she’s still running.

They have names for her all over the country: the Girl in the Diner, the Phantom Prom Date, the Girl in the Green Silk Gown. Mostly she just goes by “Rose”, a hitching ghost girl with her thumb out and her eyes fixed on the horizon, trying to outrace a man who never sleeps, never stops, and never gives up on the idea of claiming what’s his. She’s the angel of the overpass, she’s the darling of the truck stops, and she’s going to figure out a way to win her freedom. After all, it’s not like it can kill her.

You can’t kill what’s already dead.

And when the night hails down and you’re afraid
That you’ll never get what you’re owed,
Go and talk to the girl in the green silk gown
Who died on Sparrow Hill Road.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Seanan McGuire’s ghost story blends horror with dark fantasy in a tightly plotted novel that combines folklore with faerie lore and adds a shot of pure Americana to largely successful effect. The episodic feel to the story as Rose recounts various events from her life and death mostly worked for me and although some of the twists are telegraphed too early, there were still plenty of surprises. I particularly enjoyed the romance between Rose and her prom date Gary, which is sweetly shown without being sentimental and Bobby Cross is a great villain – the ultimate sneering 50s bad boy with a very nasty dark side. I wasn’t that taken with Rose herself who reminded me a little too much of Tobey Daye and Georgia Mason from McGuire’s other work and I found Rose’s bean sidhe friend, Emma, a little two dimensional (although the folklore element she represented fitted in nicely in this world). The book leaves enough loose ends to allow for a sequel, which I would definitely check out.

The Blurb On The Back:

Two years ago, October ‘Toby’ Daye believed she could leave the world of Faerie behind. She was wrong. Now she finds herself in the service of Duke Sylvester Torquill, sharing an apartment with her Fetch, and maintaining an odd truce with Tybalt, the local King of Cats. It’s a delicate balance – one that’s shattered when she learns that an old friend is in dire trouble. Lily, Lady of the Tea Gardens, has been struck down by a mysterious, seemingly impossible illness, leaving her fiefdom undefended.

Struggling to find a way to save Lily and her subjects, Toby must confront her own past as an enemy she thought was gone forever raises her head once more: Oleander de Merelands, one of the two people responsible for her fourteen-year exile. But if Oleander’s back, what’s her game? Where is she hiding? And what part does Toby’s mother, Amandine, have to play?

Time is growing short and the stakes are getting higher. For the Queen of the Mists has her own agenda, and there are more players in this game than Toby can guess. With everything on the line, she will have to take the ultimate risk to save herself and the people she loves most – because if she can’t find the missing pieces of the puzzle in time, Toby will be forced to make the one choice she never thought she’d have to face again …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The fourth in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye Series develops on the overriding arc, but while the character relationships are well handled the mystery element remains weak and the villains easy to guess. It’s an okay read and there are things I enjoyed but it isn’t enough to make me desperate to read the rest of the series.

The Blurb On The Back:

Changeling knight in the court of the Duke of Shadowed Hills, October ‘Toby’ Daye has survived numerous challenges that would destroy fae and mortal alike.

Now Toby must take on a nightmarish new assignment. Someone is stealing both fae and mortal children – and all signs point to Blind Michael. When the young son of Toby’s closest friends is snatched from their Northern Californian home and his sister falls into a coma-like state, the situation becomes way too personal. Toby has no choice but to track the villains down, even when there are only three magical roads by which to reach Blind Michael’s realm – home of the legendary Wild Hunt – and no road may be taken more than once. If she cannot escape with all the children before the candle that guides and protects her burns away, Toby herself will fall prey to the Wild Hunt and Blind Michael’s inescapable power.

And it doesn’t bode well for the success of her mission that her own personal Fetch, May Daye – the harbinger of Toby’s own death – has suddenly turned up on her doorstep …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The third in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye Series is an okay story about the cost of standing up to tyranny and personal sacrifice but despite some great visual imagery was let down by a two-dimensional villain and a back-and-forth plot that sapped pace. I liked it a lot more than A LOCAL HABITATION and will read LATE ECLIPSES, but I’m getting to the stage where I’m wondering whether to continue with this series.

The Blurb On The Back:

October ‘Toby’ Daye is a changeling, the daughter of Amandine of the fae and a mortal man. Like her mother, she is gifted in blood magic, able to read what has happened to a person through a mere taste of blood.

Half-human, half-fae, outsiders from birth, most changelings are second-class children of Faerie spending their lives fighting for the respect of their immortal relations. Toby is the only changeling who has earned knighthood, and she re-earns that position every day, undertaking assignments for her liege, Sylvester, the Duke of the Shadowed Hills.

Now Sylvester has asked her to go to the County of Tamed Lightning – otherwise known as Fremont, CA – to make sure that all is well with his niece, Countess January O’Leary, whom he has not been able to contact. It seems like a simple enough assignment – but when dealing with the realm of Faerie nothing is ever as simple as it seems. January runs a company that produces computer fantasy games, and her domain is a buffer between Sylvester’s realm and a rival duchy whose ruler is looking for an opportunity to seize control. And that is the least of January’s problems. For Tamed Lightning has somehow been cut off from the other domains, and now someone has begun to murder January’s key people. If Toby can’t find and stop the killer soon, she may well become the next victim …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The second in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye Series contains some great ideas but this can’t overcome a disappointing central mystery plot that lacks tension. Because the plot didn’t draw me in, the book ultimately didn’t work for me. Despite this, because I really enjoyed ROSEMARY AND RUE, I’ve bought the next two books in the series in the hope that this is a one-off blip.

The Blurb On The Back:

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 surviving the mystery ... before the curse catches up with her.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

An interesting urban fantasy whose central character is very different to the type usually found in this type of fiction and a carefully constructed world with a huge amount of potential, this is an entertaining novel and I will be reading more of this series.