Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Changeling in San Francisco is dragged back into faerie business when she’s forced to solve a murder.



I responded tepidly to this book. It had that quality where there’s this whole plot with a mystery and clues and danger, but I was left with the overwhelming impression at any given moment that nothing was happening. Kind of impressive, when you think about it. A whole lot of tell, with a sort of and now we tour all the faerie species vibee



I dunno, I’ll give the series another book, because I have the strong suspicion that I’m the cold fish in this equation at the moment.



Except the heroine's name is still October Day. I don't feel tepid about that. That is not okay.



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The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


On the surface, a pleasant puzzle-piecey little murder mystery, with Peter bounding here and there, declaiming and detectiving his way to an answer. But under that . . . yikes. What an uncomfortable book, with people turning and twisting and snagging on each other like brambles on silk. Everyone stuck inside a little box called marriage or poverty or shell shock or police rules. This book is all tight spaces – the badly lit veteran’s club, the body crammed up tight in the phone box, the stifling social scene. There’s something bitter and angry down deep here, something peculiarly postwar and female and stuck in a way I can’t put my finger more precisely on.



And then the little cut of the title, because of course we wouldn’t want anything unpleasant to happen, no no, particularly not to the soldiers who made it home alive, the lucky ones who are clearly and absolutely fine now.



Eek.





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