A Local Habitation by S. McGuire

I was slightly concerned about reading A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire. Only because I didn’t read the first book Rosemary and Rue. However, I decided to give this a try.

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.

Regardless of the fact that I hadn’t read the first one, I was still able to understand A Local Habitation. There was some back story, but it was explained enough that nothing went over my head.   There were all sorts of magical creatures, but at it’s basis this story is a murder mystery. Little by little the evidence presented itself pointing in the direction of the killer.  It was done really well too. Sometimes in a book like this, I’m able to point out the person who did it right away, but in this one I didn’t expect the person that was the killer to actually be guilty.  Not only because it seemed less likely, but also because this particular person always had an alibi. It didn’t come out of nowhere, but it was certainly unexpected.

In some books the characters stand out more than the plot, A Local Habitation was the reversal of that.  While I liked the story in this one, the characters were neither here nor there. They weren’t super likable, and I didn’t hate them either. I guess my problem might have been that I couldn’t exactly empathize with how any of the main characters were feeling. Toby was a good investigator, however, her mommy issues were brought up way too many times for my liking. Everything she did as an investigator, she compared to her mother’s work. It was okay the first couple of times, but after a while it started to get annoying.

Overall, I really liked the plot in A Local Habitation, but I felt like the characters were lacking. For me any good story revolves around characters that I, as a reader, love to root for, and for me this story was just lacking that.

Read Order:
Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night (Sept. 7, 2010)

Also reviewed by:
The Book Pushers
So Many Books, So Little Time
Book Love Affair
Darkly Reading
The Book Smugglers

1 Comment

Comments are closed.