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At last, urban fantasy done right! Oh, I'm sure there's plenty of good urban fantasy out there, but it's hard to find amongst the books that feel more like mis-shelved romance novels. Seanan McGuire's October Daye series gives us that perfect melding of "real world" and magic, with just a dash of romantic subplot, enhancing the main story rather than derailing it.
Our main character (whose friends call her Toby), is a changeling - the daughter of a faerie mother and a human father. Not quite powerful enough to fit in with her fellow fae folk, but too weird to settle for life wholly among the humans, Toby walks a fine line between the two worlds. She makes her living as a private investigator for faerie nobles. As such, these books are closer to mysteries than romances, and that's what makes them a success in my mind.
Toby is a likable character. An unfortunate run-in with an evil faerie caused her to lose 14 years of her life. As such, she feels a bit alienated from her friends, and bewildered by how much technology has changed from the mid-90s to the late-00s. This gives us a bit of the old magic-vs-technology dichotomy, without forcing every faerie to be a raging technophobe, or for the two forces to cancel each other out.
As a changeling, Toby's magic is comparatively weak, which requires her to be more creative in its use, and to ration her power or face horrendous headaches. As a child of the Daoine Sidhe, she has fascinating blood magic abilities which help her solve crimes, as blood can sometimes hold a memory of the killer, or at least the method of the murder.
Rosemary and Rue is the first in the series. It introduces Toby, establishes this version of reality and its rules, and gives us the mysterious death of a faerie noble who happens to have helped Toby get back on her feet after her fourteen year absence. It's a pretty fast-paced page turner and kept me in the dark about who the killer was until the end.
A Local Habitation isn't due on the shelves until March, but through the magic of Twitter, I won an advanced reader copy. I enjoyed this one even more than the first, as Toby and a young faerie squire named Quentin find themselves investigating a series of mysterious deaths - in a software company run by faeries. Finally! Faeries not just able to use technology, but outright embracing it. I fell in love with the supporting cast of fae geeks, and as such, I was more emotionally invested in the story, hoping that the case would be solved before more magical programmers met their unfortunate end.
I think what really drew me into these books - besides the good balance of magic, mystery and romance - is that McGuire clearly knows her faeries. At times, I was able to identify the species well before it was revealed in the pages, simply based on how the character was written. The author has made just enough changes to blend the lore of several cultures into one big faerie family, and perhaps taken a little artistic license, but over all, she remains pretty true to the source material.
I could go on at length about the great supporting characters, or the interesting magic system, but then I'd be robbing you of the pleasure of experiencing them yourself. Needless to say, I highly recommend these two books to anyone who enjoys a good, brisk-paced urban fantasy.
The usual age-appropriateness opinion: The October Daye series contains some language, quite a bit of violence, and implied sexual activity. Probably acceptable for teens and up, as long as you're not a super-strict parent.
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