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Book Review of A Local Habitation (October Daye, Bk 2)

A Local Habitation (October Daye, Bk 2)
reviewed on + 77 more book reviews


Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 5

Review: This book picks up a few months after the end of "Rosemary and Rue". Tobe has been enjoying getting to know all her old friends again. Then she's sent on a job - her Liege hasn't heard from his niece for several weeks, when previously they'd talked weekly. To complicate things, his niece is the Duchess of a neighboring Duchy, bordered on the other side by a very hostile Duchy. Tobe goes to investigate and quickly finds things are worse than she could have imagined - to begin with there are already 2 dead bodies by the time she gets there. While she tries to figure out what's going on the body count keeps climbing.

I still love the characters in the book, both the characters who appeared in book 1 and the ones that we meet for the first time here. I also love the world that McGuire has set up. It's very imaginative.

That said, the mystery side of the book was atrociously bad. I had the "who" figured out before I finished the first half of the book. The "why" took a bit longer, although I figured out part of it. The other part had to do with the fact that once again, we get a bad guy who is completely insane. Tobe drove me absolutely nuts with her "investigation". She did it haphazardly and completely missed some basic questions, and obvious lines of thought, that could have brought the whole thing to a close much sooner - and possibly with more people left alive. Two books in the series now and I still can't figure out why Tobe is considered such a great investigator. She only seems to solve mysteries when she's either led by the hand to the answer, or the only person left alive is the bad guy.

Despite the really bad mystery, I still love the characters and the world and can't wait to read the next book. I'm just hoping that the mystery part of the book improves!