Review: A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire ★★★★★ ~ THE DEMON LIBRARIAN

A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Book two in the October Daye series
Publication Date: March 2010
ISBN: 978-0756405960
Page Count: 400
My Rating: ★★★★★

Summary

Now comes the second in the series-from a dynamic new fantasy talent! 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.

Review:

This is the second book in the Toby Daye series, you need to start with book one: Rosemary and Rue.

It was great to be back with Toby Daye and her cast of brilliant secondary characters. This time the plot was very much a whodunnit storyline that kept me guessing right until the end. I always like trying to guess the bad guy in a murder mystery plot, and I had it narrowed down to two possibles, but I didn't know for sure until it was revealed. Which is always good. I hate it when it's really obvious. I definitely preferred the plot over book one, and loved getting to know Toby more.

The opening scene features a very tipsy October, and a chance encounter with Tybalt, King of Cats, whose character I am fascinated with at this point. I don't know if it's just me trying to see something that isn't there, but I'm half way convinced he likes her a lot more than he lets on.

The setting for this one was mostly in one location, the county of Tamed Lightening, where Toby is sent by Sylvester to find out why people are dying. Luckily she got to take Quentin with her (who I just adore), but I did miss some of the other characters that were left behind.

“Repetition is sometimes the best way to deal with the Luidaeg: just keep saying the same thing over and over until she gets fed up and gives you what you want. All preschoolers have an instinctive grasp of this concept, but most don't practice it on immortal water demons. That's probably why there are so few disembowelments in your average preschool.”

Seanan McGuire is very good at leaving her readers little trails of breadcrumbs to follow. Perhaps in the form of a character exhibiting strange body language or behaviours, or making the odd ambiguous comment. There's a lot of this occurring towards the end of this book and I want to know what's going on right now! I guess I'll just have to read the next book immediately to find out, won't I? Oh well, if you insist...

"Next!"