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Showing posts with label InCryptid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label InCryptid. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Book Review: Backpacking Through Bedlam (InCryptid Book 12) by Seanan McGuire

Backpacking Through Bedlam (InCryptid Book 12)
by Seanan McGuire
March 7, 2023
Publisher: DAW
ASIN: B0B6ZCG4P3 
ISBN: 9780756418571
Genre: urban fanasy
Seanan McGuire's New York Times-bestselling and Hugo Award-nominated urban fantasy InCryptid series continues with the twelfth book following the Price family, cryptozoologists who study and protect the creatures living in secret all around us.

Reunion, noun:
1. The state of being united again.

Reconciliation, noun:
1. An act of reconciling, as when former enemies agree to an amiable truce.
2. The process of making consistent or compatible.
3. See also “impossible.”

Alice Price-Healy gave up her life for fifty years to focus completely on the search for her missing husband. The danger of focus like that is that it leaves little room for thinking about what happens after…and now that she’s finally managed to find Thomas, she has no idea what she’s supposed to do next. The fact that he comes with a surrogate daughter who may or may not have some connection to Alice’s recently adopted grandson is just icing on the complicated cake.

So the three of them are heading for the most complicated place in the universe: they’re going home.

But things on Earth have changed while Alice, Thomas, and Sally have been away. The Covenant of St. George, antagonized by Verity’s declaration of war and Sarah’s temporary relocation of an entire college campus, is trying to retake North America from the cryptids and cryptozoologists who’ve been keeping the peace for the past hundred years. And they’re starting in New York.


Alice and company have barely been back for an hour before the Ocean Lady and the Queen of the Routewitches send them to New York. They find themselves embroiled in the politics of dragons, kidnappings, and of course, the most dangerous people of all: family.

Getting “back to normal” may be Alice's hardest task yet.


Alice Healey-Price spent 50 years searching for her husband in the last book, Spelunking Through Hell, to get her happy ending. Now that she has found him, the daughter he adopted, and the people that he had been protecting, she has conflicting feelings about him and their life together. Plus the fact their own children have grown up and no longer need their parents. When they return to their dimension once their mission is accomplished, they find troubling things like the Covenant of St. George trying to retake America, starting with New York.

If you like cryptids, Price-worshipping mice, complicated family relationships, true love, snappy dialogue, worldbuilding, and action, this story will give you happy ending in another adventure of the Price family. Ms. McGuire keeps packing in stories that grow better and better with each book.

I gave Backpacking Through Bedlam (InCryptid Book 12) 5 sheep.






Reviewed by Pamela K. Kinney 

About the Author:
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Seanan McGuire is a California-based author with a strong penchant for travel and can regularly be found just about any place capable of supporting human life (as well as a few places that probably aren't). Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; Rosemary and Rue, was named one of the Top 20 Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Past Decade; and her novel Feed, written under the name Mira Grant, was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. She also won a Hugo for her podcast, and is the first person to be nominated for fivHugo Awards in a single year.

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Book Review: Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor’s Guide to the Underworld (InCryptid Book 11) by Seanan McGuire

Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor’s Guide to the Underworld (InCryptid Book 11)
by Seanan McGuire
March 1, 2022
Publisher: DAW
ASIN: B096DBVZFD 
ISBN: 9780756411831
Love, noun:
1. An intense feeling of deep affection; may be romantic, filial, or platonic.

Passion, noun:
1. A strong or barely controllable emotion.
2. Enthusiasm, interest, desire.
3. See also “obsession.”

It’s been fifty years since the crossroads caused the disappearance of Thomas Price, and his wife, Alice, has been trying to find him and bring him home ever since, despite the increasing probability that he’s no longer alive for her to find. Now that the crossroads have been destroyed, she’s redoubling her efforts. It’s time to bring him home, dead or alive.

Preferably alive, of course, but she’s tired, and at this point, she’s not that picky. It’s a pan-dimensional crash course in chaos, as Alice tries to find the rabbit hole she’s been missing for all these decades—the one that will take her to the man she loves.

Who are her allies? Who are her enemies? And if she manages to find him, will he even remember her at this point?

It’s a lot for one cryptozoologist to handle.

This is the story of, 
 Thomas Price, formerly of the Covenant of St. George in England, and Alice Healey, whose grandfather had left the Covenant, long ago and settled in the Buckley Township, Michigan.

Alice and Thomas married and lived their one child, with another on the way, along with the Aeslin mice. Thomas made a crossroads deal to save the love of his life. The day came to pay the Crossroads and he vanished. Once Alice gave birth to their second child, she took off across dimensions, searching for him for fifty years.

Once again, Ms, McGuire delves into the InCryptid series, this time with the beginning of the Price family and why Alice Healy-Price was never there and what happened to Thomas, all of this resolved. This series has never failed to keep me entertained. This story delivers all the excitement and also the promise of a happy ever after.

I gave Spelunking in Hell 41/2 sheep.





Reviewed by Pamela K. Kinney

About the Author:
website-FB-twitter
Seanan McGuire is a California-based author with a strong penchant for travel and can regularly be found just about any place capable of supporting human life (as well as a few places that probably aren't). Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; Rosemary and Rue, was named one of the Top 20 Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Past Decade; and her novel Feed, written under the name Mira Grant, was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. She also won a Hugo for her podcast, and is the first person to be nominated for fivHugo Awards in a single year.

Sunday, February 28, 2021

Book Review: Calculated Risks (InCryptid Book 10) by Seanan McGuire

Calculated Risks (InCryptid Book 10)
by Seanan McGuire
February 23, 2021
Publisher: DAW
ASIN: 0756411815 ISBN: 9780756411817
Just when Sarah Zellaby, adopted Price cousin and telepathic ambush predator, thought that things couldn't get worse, she's had to go and prove herself wrong. After being kidnapped and manipulated by her birth family, she has undergone a transformation called an instar, reaching back to her Apocritic origins to metamorphize. While externally the same, she is internally much more powerful, and much more difficult to control.

Even by herself. After years of denial, the fact that she will always be a cuckoo has become impossible to deny.

Now stranded in another dimension with a handful of allies who seem to have no idea who she is--including her cousin Annie and her maybe-boyfriend Artie, both of whom have forgotten their relationship--and a bunch of cuckoos with good reason to want her dead, Sarah must figure out not only how to contend with her situation, but with the new realities of her future. What is she now? Who is she now? Is that person someone she can live with?

And when all is said and done, will she be able to get the people she loves, whether or not they've forgotten her, safely home?


Sara becomes stranded in another dimension, with her cousins Annie and cuckoo Mark, the man she loves, Artie, along with some human students and cuckoo children. The adult cuckoos are stripped of who they are, leaving only the hunger like zombies. Sara may have not only survived an instar she was meant to be stripped of all, but it may also have upped her telepathic abilities. Now, she must figure out this new world, avoid unknown dangers along with the zombie adult cuckoos. A
nd get everyone back to their dimension, and survive whatever dangers there may be here and any zombie adult cuckoos. 

Seanan McGuire has done it again with another great fantasy with a science fiction mix about the cryptologist Price family. Her characters and their world are like comfort food for me, enjoyable reading, and this novel isn’t any different. You don’t have to be a mind reader to see that!

I gave Calculated Risks (InCryptid Book 10) 4 ½ dimensional traveling sheep.






Reviewed by Pamela K. Kinney

About the Author:
website-FB-twitter
Seanan McGuire is a California-based author with a strong penchant for travel and can regularly be found just about any place capable of supporting human life (as well as a few places that probably aren't). Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; Rosemary and Rue, was named one of the Top 20 Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Past Decade; and her novel Feed, written under the name Mira Grant, was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. She also won a Hugo for her podcast, and is the first person to be nominated for fivHugo Awards in a single year.

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Book Review: Imaginary Numbers (InCryptid Book 9) by Seanan McGuire

Imaginary Numbers (InCryptid Book 9)
by Seanan McGuire
February 25, 2020
Publisher: DAW
448 pages

ASIN: B07SWXV548 
ISBN: 9780756413781
The ninth book in the fast-paced InCryptid urban fantasy series returns to the mishaps of the Price family, eccentric cryptozoologists who safeguard the world of magical creatures living in secret among humans.

Sarah Zellaby has always been in an interesting position. Adopted into the Price family at a young age, she's never been able to escape the biological reality of her origins: she's a cuckoo, a telepathic ambush predator closer akin to a parasitic wasp than a human being. Friend, cousin, mathematician; it's never been enough to dispel the fear that one day, nature will win out over nurture, and everything will change.

Maybe that time has finally come.

After spending the last several years recuperating in Ohio with her adoptive parents, Sarah is ready to return to the world--and most importantly, to her cousin Artie, with whom she has been head-over-heels in love since childhood. But there are cuckoos everywhere, and when the question of her own survival is weighed against the survival of her family, Sarah's choices all add up to one inescapable conclusion.

This is war. Cuckoo vs. Price, human vs. cryptid...and not all of them are going to walk away.

Seanan McGuire returns to her InCryptid series with Imaginary Numbers, and the heroine, Johrlac, or as the Prices call her species, Cuckoo, Sarah Zellaby. 

Finally healed after recuperating with her adoptive parents, Angela Baker is a Cuckoo —except she was born defected (not a telepath)—Sarah flies home to her family in Oregon. But at the Portland, Oregon airport, the second Cuckoo she runs into since she started her trip, attacks her, and she soon learns others of her kind are after her.

If you enjoy watching those cryptid paranormal shows and love reading urban fantasies with science fiction and horror interwoven in them, you will enjoy this book. Flavored like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and those sci-fi movies of the 50s and early 60s, added with dashes of cryptology, Imaginary Numbers is an edge of your seat storyline that hooked me to the end.

I gave Imaginary Numbers 5 sheep






Reviewed by Pamela K. Kinney

About the Author:
website-FB-twitter
Seanan McGuire is a California-based author with a strong penchant for travel and can regularly be found just about any place capable of supporting human life (as well as a few places that probably aren't). Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; Rosemary and Rue, was named one of the Top 20 Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Past Decade; and her novel Feed, written under the name Mira Grant, was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. She also won a Hugo for her podcast, and is the first person to be nominated for fivHugo Awards in a single year.

Sunday, March 3, 2019

Book Review: That Ain’t Witchcraft (InCryptid Book 8) by Seanan McGuire

That Ain’t Witchcraft (InCryptid Book 8)
by Seanan McGuire
March 5, 2019
Publisher: DAW
ASIN: B07DMYYK5F 
ISBN: 9780756411794
Crossroads, noun:

1. A place where two roads cross.
2. A place where bargains can be made.
3. See also “places to avoid.”

Antimony Price has never done well without a support system. As the youngest of her generation, she has always been able to depend on her parents, siblings, and cousins to help her out when she’s in a pinch—until now. After fleeing from the Covenant of St. George, she’s found herself in debt to the crossroads and running for her life. No family. No mice. No way out.

Lucky for her, she’s always been resourceful, and she’s been gathering allies as she travels: Sam, fÅ«ri trapeze artist turned boyfriend; Cylia, jink roller derby captain and designated driver; Fern, sylph friend, confidant, and maker of breakfasts; even Mary, ghost babysitter to the Price family. Annie’s actually starting to feel like they might be able to figure things out—which is probably why things start going wrong again.

New Gravesend, Maine is a nice place to raise a family…or make a binding contract with the crossroads. For James Smith, whose best friend disappeared when she tried to do precisely that, it’s also an excellent place to plot revenge. Now the crossroads want him dead and they want Annie to do the dirty deed. She owes them, after all.

And that’s before Leonard Cunningham, aka, “the next leader of the Covenant,” shows up…

It’s going to take everything Annie has and a little bit more to get out of this one. If she succeeds, she gets to go home. If she fails, she becomes one more cautionary tale about the dangers of bargaining with the crossroads.

But no pressure.


Antimony Price, along with her cryptid boyfriend, Sam, and cryptid friends Cylia and Fern, is on the run from the Covenant of St. George. She and her friends meet James, who happens to be a sorcerer looking to find a way to make the crossroads connected to the town, give him back his friend who bargained with it to give him the freedom to leave the area. Worse, the crossroads are ready to claim the debt Annie incurred when they saved her and Sam.

This novel in the continuing in the series about the Price family kept me interested and invested in the characters. My only complaint is the character Sam. He seems too overly needy and jealous, but if that is the choice of Annie, well, will wait to see further adventures of hers and if they stay together. I can’t wait to see if Annie finally makes it home to her family’s compound.

If you enjoy reading urban legends and about cryptids, This snarky, fun-filled, sasquatch-thrilling novel is cyptidmatic!

I gave That Ain’t Witchcraft 4 1/2 sheep





Reviewed by Pamela K. Kinney

About the Author:
website-FB-twitter
Seanan McGuire is a California-based author with a strong penchant for travel and can regularly be found just about any place capable of supporting human life (as well as a few places that probably aren't). Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; Rosemary and Rue, was named one of the Top 20 Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Past Decade; and her novel Feed, written under the name Mira Grant, was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. She also won a Hugo for her podcast, and is the first person to be nominated for fivHugo Awards in a single year.