Toby Daye-a half-human, half-fae changeling-has been an outsider from birth. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the fae world, retreating to a “normal” life. Unfortunately for her, the Faerie world had other ideas…
Now her liege, the Duke of the Shadowed Hills, has asked Toby to go to the Country of Tamed Lightening to make sure all is well with his niece, Countess January O’Leary. It seems like a simple enough assignment-until Toby discovers that someone has begun murdering people close to January, and that if the killer isn’t stopped, January may be the next victim.
I checked out the first book in the series, Rue and Rosemary, from the library before reading this one because I hate reading series out of order. I think that reading the first one is beneficial in establishing the worldbuilding and some of her history but I do not think that you would miss too much except for knowing that in the beginning of that book when she was working for Duke Sylvester, she was turned into a koi fish for 15 years. So she missed alot of the technology that is out and she had a fiance and a kid who no will not speak to her. This is an urban fantasy. There is no romance yet, but there is the possibility of it later (kind of reminds my of the Mercy Thompson series becaue of that).
Toby is half human and in Ms McGuire’s world halflings of any combination are not usually treated very well. Toby has decided that she is going to do her own thing and not apologize for being herself. I liked her character. She was strong personality and was very self confident but also knew her limitations. In this books she has been asked by Duke Sylvester to check out his niece in the next Fae territory down in CA. He cannot go because the chick in charge of the territory below that would see it as him trying to invade her and would fight. She gets there and finds a dead body. Now this is interesting in itself that in this world, the Fae when they die do not decompose. There are things called Nighthaunts that consume the body and leave a humanlike replacement that will stand up to autopsy and DNA tests because the Fae are not out of the closet yet. But this body was not being taken and they do not know why, or how the person died. Because of Toby’s lineage she is the closest thing they have to a CSI (even though she is not really trained in that) because she can “read” blood.
There is an interesting cast of characters and they keep dying one by one and she cannot figure out who is killing them.
Very interesting storyline, I was glad I got to read this and look forward to the next book. There were a couple of parts that I thought dragged a little, but that could have been life interfering and distracting me while I was reading too.
So I give it a 4 out of 5.
The Series:
This book is available from DAW. You can buy it here
I just started this, after being very impressed with the first of the series. I found it very imaginative and something different from much of the UF out there. A good choice for people who may want someththing other than vampires, shapeshifters, demons, or zombies.
The worldbuilding and species in Book 1 are so complex though that I’m surprised you think it’s not necessary to read it before Book 2 – unless there’s a lot of repetition / explanation of what happened in Book 1