Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

Anyone frantically looking for a place to let their attention rest while the talking heads on TV pretend they know what's going on with this election?

Me, too.

I voted, and I hope you did, too.  I just CAN NOT STAND the part of Election Night where everyone tries to predict an outcome with only 3% of precincts reporting.  So in the vein of providing you something else to think about, I give you Toby Daye.

Or, rather, Seanan McGuire gives you Toby Daye.

(If that author names sounds familiar it's because I reviewed the first of her InCryptid novels here.)

Toby Daye is a changeling, which in Toby's world means one parent is fae while the other is human.  She's a fairly weak changeling for her kind, and at the beginning of the Rosemary and Rue things aren't going well for her. In the human world, Toby is a private investigator, but in Faerie she's a knight-errant.  Her liege sends her on a mission that uses her P.I. skills, and unfortunately, Toby gets turned into a koi.  Yes, you read that right.  Toby becomes a big goldfish.

She spends 14 years this way before, inexplicably, she changes back.  By then the human world has moved on without her, and she's furious with Faerie for all she's lost.  The loss of a fae friend and ally pushes Toby back into the fae world so she can identify her friend's murderer.

I actually started Rosemary and Rue twice.  Toby is at a loss when the book opens.  I don't blame her; if I spent 14 years of my life in a pond I'd probably be a bit aimless, too.  But this makes for a dreary opening for a story set in a really interesting world.  There are bridge trolls and selkies and Cait Sidhe.  So? Interesting.  There's also well justified bitterness (well, ruefulness, more likely) in Toby, and she's basically ignoring everything but her cats.  So? Dreary.  That made is easy to set Toby aside for me.  Finally, though, based on my love of Discount Armageddon I went back to Rosemary and Rue, and I'm glad I did.

Toby is tough and loyal and smart, and she takes you on a crazy journey into the magic of Faerie trying to solve the murder of Countess Evening Winterrose.  Rosemary and Rue is a mystery, and a fantasy, and the opening of redemption story all rolled into one.  If you like your mysteries served amidst a world of Daoine Sidhe, this is the story for you.

By the end of the book, Toby's bitterness isn't limited to her feelings about her time as a koi, so this isn't an easy book.  It is, however, an good introduction to an amazing series.  (You know I couldn't just offer up one book to you, yeah?) There are currently six books in the Toby Daye series, and I devoured all six of them since the beginning of the school year.  Toby grows a lot across the series, and right now, after six, she's in a pretty good place.  If you want to find her there, you'd best pick up Rosemary and Rue.