Rosemary and Rue: A Brief Review

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Kristin McFarland

Since I teased you on reviews and told you how worthless they can be on Wednesday, it seems appropriate to then contradict myself and give you a review to read on Friday.

Last weekend, I finished reading Seanan McGuire’s Rosemary and Rue, first book in a series about October Daye, a “changeling” half-fairy/half-human trying to get her life back on track after she loses 14 years to a full-blooded fairy’s curse.

The book’s primary plot includes a basic murder-mystery, complete with an item (possibly a MacGuffin—only time and more reading will tell) to find and then protect. Along the way, October has to deal with old lovers, possible new lovers, and a plethora of other folks from her old, pre-curse life, whom she has been avoiding since her return.

Broken down like that, the plot sounds pretty run-of the-mill, and I suppose it is. Unless I’m mistaken, this novel is McGuire’s first novel, and the plotting shows it. (Says the girl who is currently fighting plot problems on her second unpublished novel.) There are a few too-convenient saves from near-death. There’s a huge deus ex that accompanies the character for a portion of the book. And the big reveal of the murderer isn’t all that shocking, even though I found myself unable to put the book down at that point.

She also teases us with a fair number of future plot-points that the casual reader may never see: a future romance, the unsolved case of October’s enchantment, the resolve of October’s old life.

I’m making this sound pretty negative, aren’t I? That’s funny, because I truly enjoyed this book.

What’s engrossing about it isn’t quite the plot and it isn’t really the voice, which is neutral and detached at best. No, what’s engrossing is the world and October herself. This is a San Francisco where the fae walk beside us, sharing our world and mingling with it. Half-breed kids like October are forced at an early age to choose which world they want to inhabit, and that choice is always unpleasant and occasionally deadly.

October tried to continue living in both worlds. She became involved with a human and had a child with him. But she returned from her enchanted “sleep,” her old family wanted nothing to do with her. As the review that nudged me into reading the book, much of her family plot is heartbreaking and all too real.

Now, estranged from her blood family and separated by blood from her fae kin, October has to forge a new place in the world. She must accept that she cannot stand by, completely detached: life finds us all in the end.

In spite of my complaints, I highly recommend this book. This was a great start to the series, and I suspect it will only get better over the next nine(!!) novels. (FYI, six novels of the series are currently on the shelves, four are forthcoming.)

The verdict? I’ll be reading the next book, and that’s as good as you can get.

Review: Fortune’s Fool

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Kristin McFarland

Fortune’s Fool (Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Book 3) by Mercedes Lackey

Reading this book was rather like eating marshmallow: It’s sweet, fluffy, and kind of fun, but ultimately not that satisfying.

The series is composed of fairy tales for women (read: adult women who like romance and fantasy novels). In this particular tale, Katya, daughter of the Sea King and his personal spy, goes to neighboring kingdoms to ensure peace and positive results for the sea kingdom. Her potential man-candy, Sasha, is the seventh son of the King of Led Balarus, and serves as his kingdom’s lucky-wise-musical-fool.

It’s cute. The main characters reflect each other nicely, fall in love at first sight and have lots of sex before Katya’s spying lands her a cozy spot as the captive magic source of an evil Jinn, a sort of fire-spirit genie that doesn’t offer the handy three wishes deal. Sasha must then face a semi-evil witch spirit and turn down sex with a sex-pot earth-spirit before teaming up with two dragons, a wolf, a goat, and the Little Humpbacked Horse, Sergei, to save his One True Love.

The concept of the series is a little better than this particular novel. Lackey turns fairy tales upside down and inside out, manipulating or even breaking down conventional stories into quaint, fun love stories. The first novel in the series, The Fairy Godmother, is the strongest book by far, dealing with Fairy Godmothers and ‘the Tradition’; I never even finished the second novel, One Good Knight.

The books are published under Harlequin’s Luna brand, marketed for female readers who like fantasy and love stories — and sex. I would have liked to see this series written straight, without the deliberate, market-driven inclusion of steamy sex scenes and references to the main characters “secret places.” The concept is clever, and Lackey delves into stories we know and some that are foreign (Japanese, Russian) to create a rich, colorful, genuinely fun world.

In particular, her idea that this fairy-tale world is governed by the Tradition, the magical force that drives people into their proper roles and tales, is unique and entertaining. (It’s also a highly convenient deus ex machina when necessary.)

Fortune’s Fool provides some fun antics and interesting characters — the wolf-girl is my particular favorite — that combine into easy, light reading… Bottom line, it’s a girl meets boy, meets trouble, meets happily-ever-after romance. What’s not to enjoy?

Nevertheless, I maintain that it could have been better without the fluff. I give it a three out of five: read it on the beach or in the middle of midterms, and don’t expect too much.

P.S. Even if you don’t read any books in this series, pick one up and look at it in the bookstore: the covers are gorgeous.

Review: Dante Valentine

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Kristin McFarland

The Dante Valentine Series by Lilith Saintcrow:
Working for the Devil
Dead Man Rising
The Devil’s Right Hand
Saint City Sinners
To Hell and Back

Dante Valentine has a new boyfriend. He’s got laser-green eyes, dreamy wide shoulders, and more power than anyone she’s ever met.

Oh, yeah. He’s also a demon.

In fact, he’s the Devil’s assassin.

Let me say first of all that I like these books a lot. I do! The bones of the book, the idea, the world, some of the characters, are very good. But the execution of the book is bad enough to make me a little ashamed of how much I enjoy them. When I first started reading Working for the Devil, I glanced surreptitiously at the people sitting near me on the bus to make sure no one was reading over my shoulder. The writing is that bad.

But the basic concept is so good that I wish Lilith Saintcrow would rewrite the whole series to make Dante more likeable, to make the plot more comprehensible, and to edit out all her little authorial tics that make the book read like a first draft.

Let me take that back. For the sake of the story, I’d rewrite it myself if that wouldn’t make me a creepy fanfic loser.

Basic plot: Dante Valentine , a Necromance, is “hired” by the Devil to track down and kill another demon who escaped from Hell. OR SO IT WOULD SEEM. After her demon familiar (Japhrimel) falls in love with her and gives her part of his power, she finds herself smack in the middle of a demon rebellion. She also has to face all her worst nightmares and darkest secrets along the way. And everyone dies. In short, everything bad that could possibly happen to her does.

For example:

As a child, she was raped and branded by her EVIL sado-masochistic school master.
The ghost of the same school master then psychically rapes her years later.
She is raped by the Devil, who implants her with some sort of X-files style worm-demon-baby.
Her exboyfriend is murdered before her eyes.
Her best friend and the friend’s husband are gruesomely murdered.

So why, you ask, do I enjoy these books?

Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment, like the heroines of all these dark urban fantasy novels. Or maybe I’m smitten with the demon who would give up his power and position as the Devil’s Right Hand for love of a mortal. And unlike Dante, I would trust the demon who did that, not the one who dresses herself up as my ex-lesbian-lover, claims that I and/or my ex-lover are her mother, and uses me time and again. There are dozens of times in the series that I just want to slap Dante for being so blind, so stubborn, and so childish. The girl needs a decade of therapy and some serious Prozac.

And as for the writing, Saintcrow spreads the overarching plot unevenly across the books. Books one and two seem fairly episodic, except for the relationship with Japhrimel, while nothing really happens in Book 3, but by Book 4 you realize something BIG is happening here, but you get no answers at all until Book 5. It almost seems that Saintcrow herself had no idea where she was going until that final book. When you finally get to that plot, however, you’ll say, “Ohhhh! I get it!” and then wish she would go back and rewrite the whole series so that it makes more sense.

Have I talked you out of reading it yet?

I think I keep rereading the books out of sheer frustration, hoping that this time they will be better. That this time, Dante will trust Japhrimel, that she won’t blame herself for everything that happens. And the fact that the story itself is compelling enough to make me feel that way, in spite of all the reasons I gave you NOT to read this book, says something about the fundamental quality of the books.

In the end, 4 stars for the whole series. (The quality of the books is pretty uneven.) Read them for Japhrimel and the fun of riding flying skateboards and killing a lot of demons.