Rosemary & Rue is an urban fantasy set in SF with an adult woman (with an interesting history) as the lead. It's not one of the half-naked kickass female lead stories, a la Laurell K. Hamilton. I liked it well enough, but not enough to get the next one--urban fantasy just isn't my beautiful cake anymore.

But McGuire won the Campbell Award for best new writer, on the strength of that and Feed, a post-zombie apocalypse political thriller about Web 3.0. (She published that one as Mira Grant, if you want to look for it.) I liked that one better than R&R, myself, and definitely intend to read the sequel.

Urban fantasy that is not like the Urban fantasy that is not your beautiful cake. "Iron Dragon's Daughter" by Michael Swanwick.

No guarantees, but really good and if not your beautiful cake, might still be your cup of tea, or hot beverage of choice. The Wikipedia article [link] calls it "anti-fantasy" though I think of it more a social realist fairy tale. It is a gritty urban fairyland rather than elves in our world. And believable. High school kids compete to be the wicker king and queen because they they a year of unlimited sex, drugs, scholastic and athletic achievment and top social status. So being burned to death at the end of the year is not too big a price to pay for that. I would swear half the kids I went to high school with would have taken that deal.

Typo, I actually own a copy of that. I just... haven't read it. And right now it's buried in the many boxes of books in my garage. Some day I'll get around to it.

I didn't like Rosemary and Rue as much as I did the second one. The character grows on you.

I liked Rosemary and Rue well enough, and I'm really enjoying the mystery in the follow up A Local Habitation. But Feed blew me away.

I just finished the third one, and other than one kind of weird scene, liked it even better than the second. I think the author's really hitting her stride.

I have read Mockingjay (I liked it more than Catching Fire, but far less than The Hunger Games) and downloaded both Blameless and the third Toby Maguire book (though I've yet to read them), so I feel totally part of this thread!

I am here, however, to recommend The Reapers are the Angels, which is a dark, extremely literary zombie novel. Really more of a post-apocalyptic fairy tale (lots of larger-than-life characters) with a clear Faulkner influence. Not a fun, light read at all, but very compelling. I recommend it. (Full disclosure: the author is a friend of mine. But I do think that many people on this board would really like the book.)

I am currently reading this silliness: My King the President. It's a pretty bog-standard political thriller with mediocre writing, but fun to read - like something you'd pick up at an airport. What's great is that is was only $2.99 on my Kindle! Cheap self-published pulp fiction: a new reason to recommend the Kindle platform.

I also have read Mockingjay. I was very disappointed. I thought it was terribly slow compared to the other books. I didn't mind the darkness so much as stripping Katniss of almost all agency. Also, where did this world come from? It didn't seem to match the one created in the first book at all.

Hey, Neil Gaiman says he knows what the next "big fictional prose story" he wants to tell is.

Also: he's going to be on Arthur on October 25th.

I liked that one better than R&R, myself, and definitely intend to read the sequel.

I read the first chapter of the third one before I left. </Taunty McTauntypants>

I didn't like Rosemary and Rue as much as I did the second one. The character grows on you.

I loved Toby in the first book (she reminded me of Veronica Mars), but I'm enjoying watching her grow and change from book to book.

I just finished the third one, and other than one kind of weird scene, liked it even better than the second. I think the author's really hitting her stride.

She thinks it's the best of the three. Oddly enough, I have liked each book less and less in addition to more and more. I got so attached to the Chandleresque noir of the first book that I miss that in the other ones. I did enjoy the mystery aspect in ALH, but this last one was basically straight-up fantasy, with some maddening fairy-tale tropes like cryptic messages and contrived rules, although it was also an action-packed thrill ride, so that was fun. I do admire her ability to change styles so effortlessly, and I keep coming back for the interesting, likable characters and the intricately constructed world.

I'm really looking forward to the rest of the series, though, because, as this book showed, she's put enough into the worldbuilding that new stories can develop out of them rather than be used for the purposes of more worldbuilding.

Which weird scene do you mean?

(It makes me happy to see that people are enjoying Seanan's books!)

I'm about 80 pages into Blameless, and I'm finding it a bit difficult to get into, I don't know. It's kind of a big switch from the book I just finished, The Shadow of the Wind. Anyone else read it? It's really good, and I think Buffistas would dig it.