Rose-Owls and Pumpkin Girls

Yes, it's another super-sized review roundup, because seriously, if I don't get some of the links out of this file, I'm never going to find the floor. Fifteen links, all confirmed as currently valid, no waiting.

( What are people saying? Click here to find out. )

Blah blah links, blah blah drowning, blah blah I wanna go watch iCarly with the cats. So here is your super-rapid-fire review roundup, mostly Feed, some others.

On the Brink of Insanity has posted a Feed review, and says, "The science level explanations for the virus is amazingly well done. Grant made the possibility of a viral outbreak that actually creates zombies seem very real. I also really enjoyed the details given about the character's living conditions and the new technology and how one goes about surviving in a nation filled with zombies and what freedoms people are willing to give up to stay alive."

Dawn of the Lead has also reviewed Feed, and says, "For me, World War Z has always—since I read it, that is—been THE zombie novel. That position is now heavily contested by Mira Grant's Feed, the first part of her Newsflesh trilogy." Dude, win.

Post Whatever has posted a Feed review, and says, "Feed bucked my vision of what a zombie story would be. Sure, there were gory undead running around, along with super-charged security to help keep the living alive, but I didn’t expect to find a political campaign and an engaging conspiracy theory inside this book, regardless of what the cover blurb said."

Remember Sparrow Hill Road? Well, Rise Reviews has reviewed the last issue of The Edge of Propinquity to feature our darling Rose, and says, "'Thunder Road' of Seanan McGuire's Sparrow Hill Road series is far and away the best piece in this issue of TEOP. And for anyone who enjoys darkly all-American fare, this series is very satisfying to read." All of Sparrow Hill is available to read for free, in the archives!

Here's something you haven't seen in a while: a review of A Local Habitation, posted by Lesley W.'s Book Nook. Lesley says, "I loved this. Not quite as much as the first in the series, but it's definitely one of my favorite books of the year. October is an imperfect heroine. She makes mistakes, she's obtuse about some things. I think she wants to do the right thing, though, but she knows that that can come with a heavy price." Rock on!

That's about what I have time for right now. I'm going to go feed the cats.

Will faithfulcynic please pick up the white courtesy telephone*? The random number generator has smiled upon you, and you have won a copy of A Local Habitation. Hooray! Life is good, especially when it's Tuesday, and you're winning things.

I'm going to be continuing to post giveaways and do drawings during the weeks to come, because dude, it's December. We need a little shiny happiness that doesn't involve going within a mile of the mall.

More to come!

(*By "white courtesy telephone," of course, I mean "send me your shipping information via my website contact form." Any other means of contact will result in your book not being mailed to you, possibly ever, because I am occasionally a blonde of very little brain.)

For our second winter giveaway, we're just going to stick with what works: the random drawing. Leave a comment, potentially win a book. Specifically, potentially win A Local Habitation, the second book in the October Daye series. Come in at the beginning, and you'll have time to get fully caught up before book four comes out in March! Or get a copy to give to a friend! The Rosemary and Rue drawing is also still going, and will remain open until a winner is chosen on Sunday afternoon.

Just comment here to be entered in the drawing. A winner will be chosen Tuesday afternoon. Game on!

I feel like giving things away (I know you all love it when I do that). Specifically, I feel like giving away copies of the Toby Daye books. Want to win a book? Then come play my game. What game are we playing today?

Six word biography.

It's simple: leave a comment on this entry with a six word biography of yourself. They can be serious, silly, or anything in-between. Here are some examples for me:

"I've always been a cornfield girl."
"Halloweentown princess seeks candy corn, companionship."
"I did it all for dreaming."

Indicate which of the three books you're interested in. On Saturday, I'll use the random number generator to select three winners, one for each book. You can only win once, but you can ask for all three books, if that's what rings your chimes.

Game on!

With An Artificial Night [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] just around the corner and the links building up like crazy, it's time for a Toby-centric review roundup. To, y'know, take the pressure off a little bit. Also? It's fun.

First up, the Literate Kitty reminds us where it all began with an excellent review of Rosemary and Rue. She says, "Even though Rosemary and Rue reads as if it came from the pen of an experienced writer, it is, in fact, Seanan McGuire's first published novel...and what a fabulously-engrossing novel she has produced for her debut. Avoiding the major pitfall inherent in the work of so many other writers out there today—that of falling back on yet another retelling of a story we've all read before—McGuire has created a fresh and original story, with an array of well-drawn characters, an extremely well-realized world, and full of intricate plotting—and she has accomplished it all in a poetic, lyrical style." Awesome!

You can't stop the beat, and the Literate Kitty keeps rocking with a review of A Local Habitation. She says, "McGuire has succeeded in fashioning yet another brilliantly-inventive, twisty tale. She’s given me characters I genuinely care about and a world I'm fascinated with; I can hardly wait to see how those characters and that world interact and change and grow as time passes. Far from being a stagnant place which lives only on the printed page, McGuire's creation now runs freely through my imagination...and I'm more than happy to let it do so, for as long as she writes such compelling and beautiful stories." Ahem. Swoon.

Rene at Errant Dreams has posted a thoughtful, balanced review of A Local Habitation, and says, "This book has so many well-constructed layers that I got completely sucked in. I was on tenterhooks worrying about characters that I genuinely cared for, while having a blast learning about and trying to figure out a wonderfully complex set of interactions between the fae and the modern world. And while Toby is definitely an urban fantasy heroine, she manages to do it without a lot of the self-indulgent self-pity that I've seen in other urban fantasy series. This book made me care, laugh, and cry, and I can't wait to see what Toby does next." Win!

I Read Good (great blog name) has posted a review of A Local Habitation, and says, "Once again, Seanan McGuire has delivered an awesome read. A Local Habitation is fantastic." Short, sweet, works for me.

And the cherry atop today's sundae of awesome...a shiny new review of An Artificial Night from Kendra at Lurv ala Mode. She says, "An Artificial Night carries on the series tradition of starting off with a bang and pretty much refusing to let the reader rest from there on out. Which is how I like this series to be: fast-paced, gritty and emotionally gripping." Also: "This has been the kind of series that I ache for the next book immediately upon finishing the current release." So much awesome, there are no words.

That's it for right now; more to come, with a Feed-centric roundup scheduled for this weekend, as I try to beat down the links. Twenty-five days to An Artificial Night!

Well, I'm home from San Diego; more (much more) on that to come later, once I finish waking up and catching up on my email. First up, here's some link-spam to clean up what's come into my inbox in the interim. Forgive me that it's not as sorted as normal. I'm still not technically awake.

First up, check out this awesome Publishers Weekly review of The Living Dead 2, that upcoming anthology of zombie awesomeness from Night Shade Press. Does it mention my/Mira's new short story, "Everglades," set during the Rising? Why, yes. Yes, it does.

Second up, here's a shiny new review of A Local Habitation, posted by Tracy, who says "I said it in my review of Rosemary and Rue, the first book in the October Daye series; I tend to not be fond of fae mythos in general because it makes my brain hurt. I also said that I really liked Rosemary and Rue despite it...and despite myself. Well, with A Local Habitation, I may have to stop saying it altogether. I don't know what it is about Seanan McGuire, but she makes me like (if not totally understand) fae mythos. That's pretty darn impressive." Yay!

Our one Feed review for the day comes courtesy of Miss Geeky in the UK. It's well-written and thoughtful, but doesn't really have any good pull quotes for this sort of entry. So go check it out, shall you?

Now for the reviews I'm really getting excited about: two more reviews of An Artificial Night have hit the wide, wide world. Pardon me while I hyperventilate, 'kay?

The first is from Rebecca at Dirty Sexy Books, who says, "For me, An Artificial Night brought this series back up to the five-star rating that I gave to book one, Rosemary and Rue. Seanan McGuire's writing feels so dense and weighty to me, like a flour-less chocolate cake, but what astounds me is that her stories are such easy-to-read page-turners as well." Also, "I assumed this would be a rather simple three part play: Toby finds the kids; Toby fights the bad guy; Toby brings them home; The End. I was wrong. It was an emotional ride of ups and downs, and Toby is such a gritty, stubborn little fighter. I love her resolve. Toby's personal story progressed, and I have to say, I like where it's going." Glee!

Also up today is TJ's review at Dreams and Speculation. TJ says "Another strong installment in the Toby Daye series. The story isn't as gleaming with manic energy as the first or second, but still a fast and compelling read." Rock on!

And that's our administrative stuff for the right now. More later.

The links are once again threatening to completely take over my rolling file*, which is sub-optimal, since I keep other things in that file which I need to be able to locate. So it's time for a mixed review roundup! Yay! Fun for the whole family, or at least, fun for me, since I enjoy review roundups. I'm weird like that. Anyway...

To begin with today, Larissa at Aphelion has posted a review of Feed. She opens with the now-ritual "You got your zombies in my politics!" chant, which makes me giggle, and goes on to say "If you want a simple, standard zombie story where you know who’s going to live and who’s going to die, and why, then this is not the book for you. If you want a political potboiler without humor or surprises, this is not the book for you." So who is it for? "If you want a vividly written science-fiction novel in a painstakingly detailed dystopian world about strong, snarky characters who will make you care desperately about them and keep you from putting the damn book down when your lunch break is over, well, then I can tell you from experience that this is the book for you."

Awesome!

Jawas Read, Too has posted a guest review of Feed, written by Pete, who says "I love zombies, but rarely see them executed well. Feed makes every attempt to buck the tropes of bad horror and says 'What-if' on a scale that will make nerds quiver with joy. What if humanity wasn’t full of idiots that run upstairs and remove their ability to safely egress the house? What if people were armed to protect themselves? What if loved ones were a secondary concern over self preservation? All of these scenarios and more come together to paint a world where humanity has survived the global epidemic of zombie infestation, and it bleeds into every corner of the book." I like making nerds quiver with joy. It's fun!

Tina Matanguihan at The Philippine Online Chronicles has posted a lengthy review of Feed, and says "Feed was actually quite...well, awesome. It's a political thriller written over a horror backdrop, where the presence of the zombies was used to compare how the living can still do more damage than the undead. There were only a handful of zombie encounters in the entire novel, but each of the situations felt so real, that it gave the impression that the zombies were everywhere. Mira Grant allows the readers to think that everything is going fine...and then throws a huge curve ball that changes the game. It's a thrill ride in 600 pages: I was intrigued, elated, shocked, horrified and most of all heartbroken all throughout the story, and...for me, that's what makes a story awesome."

Kain, at Zombies Are Coming, has posted a very long, well-considered review of Feed, and says "Feed is one of the few book, as of late, which I have picked up and gotten truly excited about once I started reading it. Not only is it a story that is immersive and captivating, but it is written by an author that is not afraid to take risks to tell the story." I got two out of two stumps! That's...disgustingly delightful.

Professor Beej does pop culture commentary with an academic slant, and has posted a review of Feed. The academic slant says "If there are two things I love, they’re blogging and zombies. And although I thought that my life would be nearly incomplete without the combination of these two relatively unrelated things, I am pleased to announce that because of reading Mira Grant's Feed, I can die a happy man." Victory! And...um...more seriously: "Feed does something with a topic that many seen worn out and trite that few authors can do. It creates a world that is based solidly in our own and tries to answer a few fundamental questions. Not about zombies or about how we would survive (Romero already taught us that, anyway), but about where we, as a people, act and react in the face of a truly unthinkable catastrophe, and just what part will this newfangled piece of technology we call the Internet play in it?"

Jen over at My Book Addiction has posted a review of A Local Habitation, and says "I loved pretty much everything about this book. It had another freaky mystery for Toby to solve. We get to see even more Fae (I wish I could get Elliot to make a bi-weekly visit to my house)." Also, "We get more of Toby's wonderful sense of humor, especially when she interacts with Quentin, her knight-in-training assistant Boy Wonder." I love that people love Quentin. It really makes my day, because I love him so, and this way I don't feel so bad about the fact that I keep including him in things. Victory is mine!

Kyle Brady has posted a review of A Local Habitation, and says "It's too early to yet tell whether the series will be one of the rare instances in the genre of fantasy where the main character learns, adapts, and matures throughout the various episodes, but it is easy to imagine October Daye becoming more powerful, more prominent, and ultimately more sinister in the coming years." Sinister Toby! That would be awesome! And...uh...sort of terrifying. I'll be over here...

An at A Writer's Block has included her thoughts on both Toby books to date in an awesome thumbnail review batch. Take a look!

The Book Pushers had me back for an interview, because they are wonderful people. I got to answer a question with "Look, a bunny," which always makes me a happy girl. I like bunnies. Bunnies are good.

Look! A zombie bunny with a chainsaw!

Glee.

(*My rolling file contains, among other things, notes on The Brightest Fell, pendant prompts, essay topics, blog post outlines for things I keep meaning to write, notes on the Jan stories, my set list for Westercon, and the outlines of the next "Thoughts On Writing" entry. So I really do need it to continue making something vaguely resembling linear sense, lest my head should explode.)

It's time, once again, to clear out my list o' links before something on my computer actually manages to catch fire. Yay! The links have been building up like nobody's business; I attribute this, in part, to the fact that I put out two books in a little over two months, which makes it a miracle that I still speak English, rather than some exotic new language of my own devising. (That, or I've had a full-on psychotic break and only think I still speak English, in which case, dweezle wooblet mugga ze.)

To start today's roundup, here's a lovely record of the Feed book release event at Borderlands, written by TJ at Book Love Affair. There are pictures of the brain cupcakes and the fabulous Ryman for President buttons that Rae made, and it makes me quite happy. Be sure to read the comments, which are very complimentary of my book events. Yay!

Azz has posted a combo-book review and event review, which is fantastic, detailed, spoiler-free, and includes the best "Should I read Feed?" quizlet I've seen yet. Also, to quote two of my favorite bits...

"If you do emphatically do not like reading about the undead, do not read this book. It is not an unending gore porn festival like many forms of zombie fiction, but there are zombies; they are technically still alive, just horribly infected, and they do bite and feed and need killing. If you wanted a gore porn festival with a game of Zombie Survivor where you watch to see which one or two of the party make it back to an uninfected zone alive, this is not what you are getting; this is the civilization of the post-zombie times, not a survivalist picnic. (Ask Shaun how he feels about the military's recommendations on what to do in case of zombie attack sometime.) I would not give this book to my mother. I might leave this book where my father could find it, but I would not tell my father that he should read it. I would (and already have, quite enthusiastically) tell my best friend that he should read it (as soon as possible)."

...and...

"If you are against vaccination, for your personal safety, do not tell this to the author. The author's hobbies include studying disease for fun, not just for research. If you say something stupid like "It's not like anybody's ever died from smallpox! It's a PERSONAL CHOICE!" ... punching you may be the author's PERSONAL CHOICE. I hope you don't mind."

So very, very true. Moving on, I did an author review with The Intelli-Gent, which was fun, creative, and came up with some rockin' new questions, including some very specific state of publishing questions that I don't get asked all that often. Prior to the interview, Bryce reviewed Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation, just to prepare.

About Rosemary, he says, "Rosemary and Rue stacks up very well against all of the urban fantasy I've read in the last couple of years. The characters, setting and plot all come together to make you feel something, and thus it becometh a page turner. If you're a fan of the genre, you're going to want to add this to your list of things to read this year."

About A Local Habitation, he says, "A Local Habitation is a fine sequel. In many ways, it builds on what was already there, and there are really no major drawbacks to the book. It's nice to see an author that's consistent, as so many seem to have that second book slump, where it just doesn't measure up to their first brilliant idea."

Works for me, and big thanks to TJ, Azz, and Bryce for the interview and reviews. Now if I can just get through the rest of these links before my computer explodes...

The links are building up, and they're starting to threaten a coup, which means it's time for—yes—another review roundup. This one is purely focused on the Toby Daye books, since otherwise, the Toby-specific links are going to come for me in the night. Onward!

Jessica at Book Bound has posted a review of Rosemary and Rue, and says "Toby has made her way into my top three heroines list and I am doubtful that she will be surpassed. I am sickened by the fact that it took me so long to find out about this book and then finally read it and I absolutely cannot wait to follow October Daye on her next adventure." Also: "Completely original and exhilarating, Rosemary and Rue is one book that will forever remain on my bookshelf." Awesome!

Mardel at Rabid Reader has also posted a review of Rosemary and Rue, and says "The narrative on this novel was good, the dialogue was fine, there were clues to let me think about who the culprit might be, lots of action (unfortunately mostly in the form of injuries to October, but it's action) and the promise of happiness for October." (There's also some awesome objection to the amount of injury Toby sustains, which made me giggle a lot. Oh, pulp detective tropes, is there nothing you can't improve?) I'm pleased.

calico_reaction has posted a very long, thoughtful, and well-considered review of Rosemary and Rue. I'm not going to do any pull quotes, because frankly, the things that she's bringing up, especially as regards Toby's relationship to Devin, don't work nearly as well out of context, and the context is good. The things that bother other people aren't always the things that bother me, but I love to see them articulated and thought-out to this degree. It makes it easier for me to evaluate my own work in the light of how other people will see it.

Because it's always good to balance the sincere with the sincerely silly, I give you The Wanlorn's review of A Local Habitation, which involves a lot of caps lock and flailing. I mean, look, here's a quote:

"I'll be honest, internet. I go back and forth between BFF-shipping Toby and the Luidaeg and, you know. Actually shipping them. I mean, come on. Toby calls her to let her know she won't make their weekly visit. And the Luidaeg started calling Toby to harass her in the first place because she was lonely. The Luidaeg threatens to kill her all the time, and might very well go through with it when Toby asks her final question! MENT2B."

COMIC GENIUS. Also kinda spoilerific. But? COMIC GENIUS.

Over at From Nancy Drew to Dante's Inferno (great name!), Ex Libris has posted a lovely review of A Local Habitation, and says "I discovered McGuire last year when I was hunting online for new authors. All my favorite ones had no new books out and I was desperate for new fantasy/paranormal/mystery books. McGuire is brilliant!" I...can live with that, really. Onward!

Hagel Rat over at Unbound has posted a review of A Local Habitation, and starts with a lovely statement of purpose for urban fantasy. Namely:

"Urban Fantasy at it's very best has the gritty noir and cynicism of Chandler's Philip Marlowe, a dry humour bordering on bitter and a well constructed, logical, fully functioning supernatural element. This doesn't mean cute fluffy vamps that are always falling in love with their sworn enemy. It means a system that makes sense and carries consistently through the series."

Best. Thing. Ever. She goes on to say "This isn't paranormal romance, this is a mystery which the protagonist must solve against the odds and in spite of the threat to their own lives which will suggest a simple case is rather more complex. For me it accesses the same delight as the old noir mysteries too, but with this new twist to freshen it all up." Glee.

Finally, a mini-review of A Local Habitation which notes favorably that we fixed the pronunciation of "kitsune." We can be taught!

Now we must rinse.