A Local Habitation

I hate how my frequently unconscious expectations set up how much I will enjoy whatever I pick up. After the first one was such and unexpected success (due to me thinking I'd find it very meh) this one seemed just ok.
My main issue is that I don't like the main character. She seems arrogant but in an insecure way, and completely unaware of it. She's not funny. She is kind though, there's that.
For this book I also didn't like the accent of a significant character that the performer of the audiobook did. (It was read by Mary Robinette Kowal and having followed her on twitter some time ago, I hoped I would like her performance more.)
Otherwise - love the plot, it feels character driven as a detective story should be, there's the whole "what's going on" to figure out not just the "who did it" which is quite satisfying. There's points of action, but it doesn't take over the novel.

Toby didn’t know her liege Sylvester had a niece, but she is sent to check up on her after she stops answering her phone. Jan is not your average fae; she’s a geek and running a technology company bringing the fae community into the 21st Century. However her county, Tamed Lightning, sits between Shadowed Hills and Dreamer's Glass, a political hotspot and Sylvester can’t risk upsetting the neighbouring duchy by visiting himself. When Toby and Quentin arrive, they find that missed calls are the least of their problems.

With A Local Habitation we see a glimmer of the writer behind the Newsflesh series (Seanan McGuire also writes under the pen name of Mira Grant). With the fae being hundreds of years old and reliant on magic, they’re not very tech savvy. Jan creates telephone systems that run between knowes among other useful things and I liked the mix of technology and fantasy. As someone with a career that doesn’t get much fictional coverage outside of Douglas Coupland novels, I kind of loved the idea of a Kitsune software tester. It’s just a shame they killed her off before the story started. I doubt there’s a market other than me who would jump on a spin-off series…

The knowe itself is almost Matrix like, with it adapting all the time. Instead of the info-dump of Rosemary and Rue, the world-building is a lot more organic and I felt I got a better idea of the politics and workings of a knowe, even if it was a slightly unconventional one! April was a fantastic character; a virtual druid, connecting into a server tree and having very little knowledge of social conventions. She is completely naïve in some ways and acts accordingly. There are some great characters and a real sense of humour creeping in.

It’s a lot more structured that the first book and there’s a real whodunit element. You get a chance to work it all out just the right amount of time before Toby does. There are a few red herrings thrown in and it’s a race against time to stop the murders. Quentin becomes a more rounded character, stepping away from his courtly duties and becoming a fledgling assistant to Toby. There’s just enough of Tybalt to whet your appetite (and notice how Toby is still wearing his coat). He certainly won’t let the “here kitty kitty” go!

Holy crap, this book was SO FRUSTRATING.

Okay, so Toby is clearly the worst detective in the entire world. Every single mystery was easily solved a quarter of the way through the book, but she spends the entire book meandering around, refusing to suspect THE MOST OBVIOUS SUSPECT, and ultimately triumphing through the process of elimination after almost everyone she came there to save has been murdered.

Uh...good job?!?!

But the thing that I find most frustrating is that Toby is supposed to be so cynical and world-weary, yet she seems to have ZERO UNDERSTANDING of people. Why do I think that? One very important reason: despite it being BLAZINGLY OBVIOUS since literally the FIRST SCENE in which he ever appeared in the first book, Toby somehow still has not managed to even SUSPECT that Tybalt is completely in love with her.

Dude appears to spend 95% of his time prowling around her, pulling her pigtails, being HIGHLY protective, possessive, and concerned about her safety, and clutching her to himself when she is injured (which she is a LOT). He carries her home when she is drunk and puts her to bed! He pleads desperately for her to not be dead as she passes in and out of consciousness from her injuries! She has heard his LITERAL ACTUAL THOUGHTS about how after being lost for so long she had finally come back ~to him~. And yet! YET! She persists in believing this fiction that he dislikes her--that theirs is a relationship of mutual enmity.

Does he actually need to RUB UP AGAINST HER AND PURR?! You know, in humanoid form SINCE HE HAS ALREADY DONE THIS IN CAT FORM.

(For her part, she spends an inordinate amount of time checking him out in his tight pants, pondering his VIRILITY AND MASCULINITY, and spends the entire second book wearing his jacket and noting continuously how it smells like him. So apparently it is not just other people she's terrible at reading.)

I hate to break it to you, Toby, but TYBALT WANTS TO LOVE YOU GENTLY WITH HIS BODY, OKAY? HE WANTS TO LOVE YOU ALL NIGHT LONG, GIRL.

GET WITH THE PROGRAM.

What with the CONSTANT reinforcement of this entire subplot, I can only guess that the author is building up to a REALIZATION/REVEAL but the problem is his interest and her "subconscious" reciprocal feelings are so HAM-FISTED and BLATANT that you are left to wonder how socially inept or just plain stupid she has to be have never so much as NOTICED this. And the fact that it is in first person means that WE KNOW she has somehow never noticed.

Listen, I'm not even saying she has to jump the guy. I mean, I'd hit it! But whatever. I'm just saying she needs to be LESS ABSURDLY OBLIVIOUS. ACCEPT THAT HE HAS MORE THAN ANTAGONISTIC FEELINGS TOWARDS HER. It stretches credulity far past the breaking point!

Man, whatever. 2.5 stars since this has at least succeeded in FRUSTRATING me enough to make me care.