Hidden amongst mortals, the Fae carve out lives in the human world and small pockets of alternate space they’ve carved out called Knowes. When one of them decides to play “Faerie Bride” and take a human to their bed, a Changeling; half-human half-fae is born. Given the choice between their human side (and death) or their fae side (and never seeing their human parent again), most choose Fae. October “Toby” Daye was one of these. Barely tolerated by the fae for her halfblood status, she went the opposite way of most changelings; instead of attempting to blend into the background, she shoved herself into everyone’s faces. Acting as a knight to her liege in the Fae realm and a private investigator in the human, Toby managed to carve out a life that included a fiance and a child, until the day an assignment resulted in her being turned into a koi and dumped in the pond in San Francisco’s Japanese Tea Garden. That was fourteen years ago. Now, with the magic worn off and her family abandoning her, Toby has retreated purely to the human world and turned her back on her fae heritage. She now spends her nights working as a cashier in Safeway, ignoring her liege’s messages and any attempts by her friends to try and reconnect.
There weren’t any fairy tales in the streets around me. If there was ever a Cinderella, her glass slippers shattered under her weight and she limped home bleeding from the ball.
Until the day a phone call and a dying Fae’s curse drags her right back in. Now on a race against time, can Toby slip back into her role as Knight Errant to the Court of the Shadowed Hills, solve the murder, and somehow deal with the Cait Sidhe whose sole purpose in life seems to be insulting her at every turn?
Cats never listen. They’re dependable that way; when Rome burned, the emperor’s cats still expected to be fed on time.
In preparation for the nineteenth book, Silver and Lead, coming out in September, I’m re-reading all the Toby Daye books. Which will make the third time I’ve read Rosemary and Rue. The first time, for some odd reason I just could not get into it; it must have been the mood I was in at the time. Because I read it a second time and I was hooked. Toby is what I want in a lead. She’s snarky, flawed, so, so so tired of life and everyone’s nonsense, and perfectly content to have “piss as many people off as possible” constantly on the top of her things to do list.
My manners have always been the first thing to go when I get upset, and some people say that they stopped coming back a long time ago.
Plus, she drives a Volkswagon through the hills of San Francisco and has two cats named Cagney and Lacey; how much better can she get? Tybalt, resident Cait Sidhe and snarky man in leather pants is a perfect foil; the unrealized (on one side) and unacknowledged (on the other) UST comes off the page from the first time they appear on it together. Plus the long-suffering Quentin, the poor teenager that is dragged into being Toby’s assistant. And most of all, one of the greatest characters of all; the Luidheag: considered Faerie’s Big Bad, the monster parents warn their children about at night, the bogeyman under the bed..and someone who frequently presents themselves as a braless teenager with acne scars and pigtails tied off with electrical tape. When she presents as older I could see Michelle Gomez playing her in a TV adaptation.
The murder fills up the plot nicely, though it’s mostly just the device to shake Toby’s life up and get her back into being what she’s best at: the Hero Faerie doesn’t know it needs.