New Item Tuesday

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Staff Review: Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

Cookies and milk, chocolate and peanut butter, mac and cheese, some things are just better together.* So when I realized that one of my favorite authors, Seanan McGuire, had the audiobooks for one of her series narrated by one of my other favorite authors, Mary Robinette Kowal, well, I purchased and downloaded a copy immediately.

If you enjoy character-driven Urban Fantasy and dark humor, you too should check out Rosemary and Rue, the first book in the October Daye series. And yes, we do have the audiobook! The story is set in a San Francisco with a hidden underworld populated with a dizzying variety of Fae characters (my favorites were the rose goblins, a cross between a cat and a rosebush). October Daye, or Toby, is a changeling, a person born from one human parent and one fae, who has inherited a small amount of magic and a seemingly endless amount of trouble.

Without spoiling too much, Rosemary and Rue starts with Toby at a very low point in her life. She's barely scraping by with a terrible job and has almost completely isolated from her friends and family (aside from her two cats). Toby considers herself a failure and is punishing herself accordingly, until an old friend reaches out with a job she can't refuse. You see, Toby is a sworn knight to the Duke of Shadowed Hills, which translates in the modern world as something like a magical private eye.

The mystery makes for a fast-paced plot, though the amount of world-building and the complex relationships between all of the characters can be overwhelming at times. Bear in mind that this is the first in a series, so many elements are set up for pay offs in future volumes.

Mary Robinette Kowal's narration is clear, and the many characters were easy to distinguish. Some of the characters sounded a little cartoony, but this helped to lighten a story that was at times very dark. I'm not sure how many times Toby almost died, but I hope that as she learns to deal with her depression she gains a more cautious approach to risk.

When not writing Urban Fantasy, Seanan McGuire wears a variety of hats, including musician, author Mira Grant (the pen name she uses for her zombie fiction), and the person behind one of my favorite tumblrs. Her reblogged gifs are the entire reason I marathoned Leverage last year.

When she isn't narrating audiobooks, Mary Robinette Kowal writes the Glamourist Histories series (a series which I've mentioned loving before), works as a professional puppeteer, and offers writing advice and guidance. Speaking of which, I'm happy to announce that Mary will be coming to Carnegie-Stout Public Library in Dubuque, Iowa this October! I'll be sharing more details as the event approaches, but if you want to make sure you're up to date on all the events offered to adults at Carnegie-Stout, be sure to sign up for our new monthly newsletter.

~Sarah, Adult Services

*Why yes, it is almost my lunch break. However did you guess?

Staff Review: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told You, a 2014 novel that has garnered a long list of highly favorable reviews, awards, and other accolades, delivers a punch in its very first line: “Lydia is dead.” Lydia is Lydia Lee, the favored middle child of a mixed-race couple. Her father, James, a college professor, is American born of Asian descent, and her mother, Marilyn, a wannabe doctor who wound up a housewife, is white. Both parents dote on teenaged Lydia while also burdening her with the relentless expectation that she will fulfill all their own unmet dreams and needs.  Marilyn intends for Lydia to become a doctor, while James wants her to be popular and pretty.

The book opens with Lydia’s disappearance and subsequent discovery at the bottom of a lake near her Ohio home. Upon this tragic foundation, Celeste Ng builds an intricate structure of aftermath and backstory, deftly weaving characters and events spanning twenty years, from the 1950s to the 1970s, into a tight and increasingly oppressive and dysfunctional framework. The story's perspective shifts among family members in alternating chapters.

The big question, of course, is “What happened!!??” How did their beloved daughter drown? Was it foul play? Suicide? Some horrible accident?  We don’t find out until the end of the book. The author lays a trail of hints, clues, and suspects, one possible culprit being the wild and unsupervised son of a local divorcee, who was among the last to see Lydia alive.

Ng’s writing is fine and evocative, the societal circumstances she describes timely and fresh: the bigotry faced by Asians in America in the latter half of the twentieth century. We are now so accustomed to thinking of academic excellence, the surging Chinese economy, and the distinctly Asian flavor to our more multicultural cities, that it surprised me to realize that even educated, professional, American-born Chinese faced terrible discrimination (exacerbated in part by the Vietnam War) in so recent a past.

Ng excels at crafting sentences and at building (and resolving) an intricate plot. It is in the family dynamics she creates that I found my credulity stretched. Why is Lydia so favored, yet her older brother, Nath, an ardently-aspiring astronomer, elicits only rage or indifference from his parents? How can any parents consistently ignore a child, as the Lees do their youngest, Hannah? How could Marilyn abandon her family for months, not even leaving a note, in an early, aborted attempt to complete her education?  Is it the parents’ favoritism that causes the siblings to turn on each other?

These questions pile up and as they did, I found myself liking the Lees less and less -- every one of them -- and unlikeable characters make for a less compelling story. The more I read the novel, the more I wanted to flee its characters. But, reading through the reviews, it appears my reaction constitutes a minority view. Read the book for yourself and see what you think!

 ~ Ann, Adult Services