All of Seanan's books are fun, and I and my staff at The Portal Bookshop regularly get someone new hooked on the series

This is a novel in the October Daye series. (book 1) It has a strong female protagonist. The story is an urban fantasy in the San Francisco area. It is mostly a thriller, with some romance, and faery characters. Reading age range from 14 years old. (Young adult) There is a quote from Shakespeare in the beginning. The book features a list and description of faery creatures from English and Celtic lore.
This is the first book in the series, which sets the environment for the series and introduces a very special "knight", and a powerful witch.
Trigger warnings: abuse, betrayal by mother, and bloodletting.

Received as part of the 2019 Hugo packet for Best Series.

The 1st of the October Daye series and originally read in paperback. Very good urban fantasy.

As someone who really started reading urban fantasy with the Anita Blake series, then later the Merry Gentry series, this was a very nice change. The protagonist doesn't always make the right choice or even good choices. There are consequences to magic, and things will not always be okay. There may be magic so close to the ordinary of the world so many of us live in, but quite often that is not a good thing. It is a dangerous thing, and the adventure that comes from it may be more harmful than triumphant.

This book was provided via NetGalley as part of the 2019 Hugo Voter packet, since the October Daye books were nominated for best series. This is an ongoing urban fae fantasy series that is currently thirteen books long and counting, and while I was entertained by book one, I was also a little underwhelmed. I've read some of Seanan McGuire's more recent writing, and it is all so much more stylish and original than what's on offer here. Now I know this series has many fans, and I assume that the more recent books are a vast improvement over where the series started, but I just don't think I'm invested enough to keep reading.

October Daye (Toby for short) is a changeling, and in this book that means she's of mixed fae and human blood (as opposed to swapped at birth). She's too fae to live a normal human life, but her weak magic makes her a second-class citizen in the fae realm. At the beginning of the book we get some backstory for Toby, who was working as a P.I. in our world when she stumbled into some magic and got turned into a fish for a number of years (whoops). Now she's back, but she's lost her human family, since she can't possibly explain what happened to her, and she's avoiding her fae connections as well. The plot of this book is almost entirely a supernatural murder mystery, with the victim being a fae woman living a very posh upper-class life in San Francisco who magically compels Toby to solve the murder as her final act before death. And of course, the investigation brings her back into contact with all sorts of old acquaintances.

Toby is definitely a recognizable urban fantasy character type that I'm not particularly fond of reading. She's bitter, jaded, and tough, with a lot of pain in her past. She has several different potential love interests who are introduced at various points, and I wasn't really into any of those potential relationships either. But if this type of gritty urban fantasy mystery is your thing, then well... here you go. And as far as I can tell, it's not wildly problematic or super cringey in any way, which I gather puts it ahead of a lot of the competition in that field.

What I liked most about the book, and also the element that I recognized as most distinctively "Seanan McGuire" about it was the worldbuilding. You can tell that there's a lot of world mythology and folklore going into this fae world that's left to be explored in future books. But the writing itself is much more flat and generic than McGuire's more recent fiction, and the story is much more formulaic. I think that in the future, I'll be much better off sticking to her newer and more original books rather than trying to get into her backlist and long-running urban fantasy series.

Outstanding work of fantasy by Seanan McGuire. The main character, Toby, although supernatural, is extremely accessible and understandable. It was hard to put this book down as she ran into dangers investigating a murder. I look forward to reading more of the October Daye series! Thank you very much!

Rosemary and Rue Is the first book in the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire. We meet the main character, Toby, who is half fae, half human and are set up to what we can expect from the series.
October Daye (Toby ) is a private investigator who through a series of unfortunate incidents, gets disconnected from the human life she had been trying to lead.
The main positive I have for this book is that Toby is not the typical hero - she is older and quite dysfunctional and doesn't have super strength or superior fighting skills like a lot of main characters seem to have. She gets injured regularly and has to spend time recuperating.
This leads into what I disliked about this book. There is very little coherence in the storyline and instead of Toby actively progressing the plot, she instead seems to be passively allowing things to happen. She gets beat up, heals a bit, talks to someone and then goes and gets beat up again. Repeat until conclusion.
While this is a relatively short book, it took me a very long time to read as I found myself with little inclination to pick it up. I may continue on with the series as I have been told they improve, however that will depend on what else I have to read.
I received this book and subsequent books in this series from Netgalley as part of the Hugo Awards voter packet for 2019.

I should probably preface this review by saying that urban fantasy isn't really my genre of choice. However, I find that I am able to enjoy reading those urban fantasy novels that I do read. This wasn't really an exception to that. My biggest complaint with this book is all the lead up to the story. It felt like I was nearly halfway through the book before it got to the main plotline. Perhaps that was because it's the first in the series and there's a bit more character development that has to happen? It just felt like it was mostly lumped into the beginning of the book when it maybe should have been spread out a bit through the book.

I did enjoy the main story, and enjoyed the character.

Read this book because it was part of the Hugo awards for best series. Although this is for younger readers, I found it very interesting. Pretty much anything written by Seanan McGuire I will like and this story is no exception. This story like all the other ones that I have read by her was a page turner. I highly recommend the book to young readers.

Thank you so much for making this book available for Hugo voters. I will always vote for Seanan as she’s my favourite author.

I am planning a Seanan book binge in the new year. After I have read this book I will submit my review to NetGalley, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Angus & Robertson, and Booktopia.

Read as part of the Hugo Awards package, thanks very much.
I had previously read this book and my review is on Goodreads.

October, or Toby, spent a few years as a fish in a pond in the park. When the evil spell is lifted, she comes out furious. Not only has she missed years of her life as the faerie in California get on with their squabbles, everyone uses phones for many purposes they didn't previously, and she feels like she is out of step.

The concept is fun, Toby shows us a lot about the fair folk and about normal California. I enjoyed the read, which introduces a variety of characters and talents. I read the book again as part of the Hugo Awards package - this series is nominated as best series. Suitable for mature teens or adults.

This is an unbiased review.

This was an enjoyable read. Modern fairy stories are not my favorite genre, but I can enjoy them when I read them. I did enjoy this book and it was an interesting start to a series. As a mother to a young daughter I had a very hard time dealing with Toby's loss of connection to her daughter, however. I read this as part of the Hugo voting packet for Best Series and am intrigued enough to continue the series.

Enjoyable urban fantasy with a murder mystery spin. I really liked the look into the fairy courts and the different loyalties and allegiances of the supernatural world, and I enjoyed Toby as a narrator. I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

October Daye series given by the author (/publishers/organizers) with the voters packet for Hugo Nomination of Best Series in 2019. Reviews will be coming later, and likely posted first to GoodReads/Amazon/B & N as books are already released.

Rosemary and Rue is a book that utterly transports you. It grips you, astonishes you and makes you both cry and laugh. The world McGuire has created here is nothing short of stunning, although perhaps I should have expected no less. This is, after all, Mira Grant as well. To sum up my entire thoughts of this novel in short: this absolutely captivated me from beginning to end.

Toby is a changeling and so never quite fits into the human or fae world but she tries her best, but her best can have distinctly unforeseen complications. And it's only going to get more complicated. Particularly when you are dragged into the murder investigation of a ... best enemy... with a blood curse, particularly when you've been ignoring all things fae for six months. But choices are limited, time is not on your side and favours have to be traded. For this was no human murder. This stinks of fae and it cannot be ignored.

What can I say? I loved this. In some ways it is light hearted and wry, in others it has the power to make you flinch. This is dark and yet the narrative voice carries you through. The sharp quips and self depreciating humour shine through even the darkest of moments. And there are some really dark moments. And within this there is something really special.

I really connected with the characters, to the point where even 'minor' characters seemed to grow into real beings. There's a wide range of characters here, and the diversity between fae and changeling is noticable, yet never shoved down your throat. And Toby is brutally human in how she makes mistakes in both worlds, I'd follow the series just for her.

It's wry and witty, funny and powerful all in one bundle. If I had to compare to anything, I would say a strange mingling of the Jim Dresden series and Jodi Taylor's works. Either way, it is absolutely fantastic.

I downloaded this as part of my Hugo Voter packet. Fantastic! My top nominee for Best Series. Seanan McGuire is a treasure.

With a heroine who doesn't want to be a hero anymore, Toby is plunged back into the world of the fey that she had tried to leave after being cursed into a fish for over 10 years losing her human family in the process. Toby is bound by a death curse to find out who killed the Countess and during the process she also delves back into her old life. The story is fast paced and rather enjoyable. I'm waiting for the next one.

Just finished my re-read of this last night and it's still great!

Toby is such a BAMF and it's very interesting reading the book now that I know what will happen through book 4. It's a great UF series and I can't wait to finish it.

October Daye used to be a private eye who worked for the fae in San Francisco, because being a changeling made that a natural choice – right until she got forced to spend nineteen years as a fish after an investigation went wrong. Once the curse was broken, she tried to go back to a normal life, only to get dragged back into murders and mysteries. Rosemary and Rue is a murder mystery with curses; A Local Habitation is supposed to be Toby as a political envoy, and then; and An Artificial Night is a missing persons case with shades of Tam Lin.

I think my problem with this series is that I was sold on it as a mystery series with fae, and it's really really not. It's an extended character study with a vague mystery to hang the character stuff on, which is fine when that's what I'm expecting (see also: Sunshine is great, fight me), but when I'm expecting a mystery it makes me really salty. Especially because the foreshadowing is a bit too obvious for me and tends to reveal the plot about a third of the book before Toby realises what the plot is – it's been suggested that this might be because I have a lot of genre savvy for mysteries, and that other people didn't have this problem so absolutely judge that for yourselves! It makes Toby look absolutely oblivious though, which is frustrating for me as a reader.

As a character study though, they're not bad! Toby is a mess who flings herself into all of her problems like they're the last thing she's ever going to do (I think because in most of these they literally are), and her problem solving skills are inventive. I love her friendship group as well, though she doesn't treat them well – which I thought she'd learned by the end of the first book but more fool me – but I enjoy reading about them and how much she is loved, and how she absolutely cannot process it. The voice the story is written in is really great, especially for how Toby explains the weird politics and magic of the fae. I love how her magic works, because the reliance on nursery rhymes to help her shape it really makes me happy. And the scenes that are meant to be horrifying are really well written – there is a scene with the night haunts in A Local Habitation that is delightfully creepy! I just... Hit a point in book four where I couldn't deal with how unrelentingly terrible everything is for Toby and the people around her anymore?

I feel like I should love these a lot more than I do, especially because I think everyone in my online social group adores them. It might just be a combination of trying to read a lot of them in quick succession before the Hugos, which meant that I burnt out on them, and that my expectations of what they were were mismanaged. If I'd come to it as an urban fantasy series where sometimes there are mysteries and sometimes there is going to other planes to fight a creature from nightmares, maybe I would have been okay and I would love it as much as everyone else does! Especially because, as it's been pointed out, I really like Human Disaster heroes, so this might be internalised misogyny showing up to steal my wallet. As it is, I am taking a break from the series until I feel brave enough to try again.

[This review is based off the omnibus provided by the publisher in the Hugo packet.]

I've read this book twice now, since I got derailed halfway through the series and had to reread the first couple to get my bearings in the world again before I could make sense of the events in later books.

Overall, I like this book. The world is a good mix of the familiar beats of British, Irish, and Western European stories of the fae with enough novel elements mixed in to make it engaging. Toby is an engaging character, even when she's being kind of a jerk. Her confusion and frustration at being thrown back into the world of the fae and all of its byzantine politics while still trying to deal with lingering trauma is believable.

On a prose level, the book is kind of clunky in places. There's a whole lot of telling rather than showing in the plot setup and in the worldbuilding in general.

All in all, there's definitely enough interesting and appealing elements to keep me coming back for more as long as Toby and her ever-expanding gang of misfits keep appearing in new adventures.