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.

Amazon

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:
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 five Hugo Awards in a single year.

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.

Amazon

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 five Hugo Awards in a single year.

New Release: Unmasked: Stories of Risk and Revelation + Excerpt from Pygmalion by Seanan McGuire

Unmasked: Stories of Risk and Revelation

July 7, 2021

Kevin J. Anderson, Executive Editor
Editors: Kelly Adams, Mark Holt, Deborah Kevin, Melissa Dalton Martinez, Constanza Ontaneda, Dale Sprague, Amanda Spriggs, and Matthew Wright

With introduction by Kevin J. Anderson and stories by Seanan McGuire, Andi Christopher, Keltie Zubko, James Romag, Liam Hogan, John M. Olsen, Edward J. Knight, Ed Burkley, Tom Howard, Alicia Cay, J.L. Curtis, Eric James Stone, Travis Heermann, Rebecca M. Senese, Gama Ray Martinez, Rebecca E. Treasure, Russell Davis, Brennen Hankins, Michael Scott Bricker, Michael Nethercott, and Eugie Foster.

Genre: superhero, fantasy, anthology

www.wordfirepress.com

Trade paperback $17.99. ISBN 978-1-68057-226-1
Ebook $4.99. ISBN 978-1-68057-227-8
Hardcover $30.99. ISBN 978-1-68057-228-5
332 pages

When the mask comes off, can you handle what's underneath?

When your secret identity is revealed ...

When the monster is unleashed ...

When the superhero's child has no power ...

When Death himself is caught unawares ...

Pull back the mask to reveal 21 tales from seasoned and award-winning authors, of magical masks, gas masks, death masks, superheroes, secret identities, disguised robots, alien symbionts, a Napoleonic thief, a swindling demon-even a hidden clown.

Who will take the risk?

Explore the masks we wear, the mysteries they conceal, and the price we pay when they're stripped away.

In Unmasked you will find uplifting superhero stories, dark dystopian stories, humorous tales of mistaken identity, the fast-paced adventures of thieves and spies, chilling tales of haunted death masks and supernatural revenge, and uplifting stories about finding and revealing one’s true identity.

Join a Revolutionary War-era former slave who can control the elements. Should he aid the fledgling republic, or withdraw from the nation that failed to treat him as an equal?

When her family is threatened, a girl’s forbidden magical gift animates a stone golem to protect them. But how will she control the violence if she can’t shut it off?

A Hiroshima survivor is tormented by demon spirits. Will befriending a heavy-hearted G.I. help her to exorcise them?

Death is missing his scythe, and the kid who stole it won’t give it back until after the costume contest. Would the real Reaper’s garb measure up against other role-players?

These character-driven stories explore the masks we wear, the mysteries they conceal, and the price we pay when they’re stripped away.

Join us in our unmasquerade as we revel in—revelation!

Amazon

Excerpt

PYGMALION by SEANAN McGUIRE 

When I was a kid, people used to ask me all the time. “What’s it like having one of the most amazing superheroes in the universe as your mother?” “What was it like when you were little, did you get Wonderland diamonds in your Christmas stocking, did you get roast wyvern for Thanksgiving?” “Are you sorry not to have powers of your own?” They never asked the question I wanted them to ask, which is, “Do you ever resent your mother for setting an unattainable example for the young women of the world, guaranteeing you would never be enough in the eyes of anyone who knew you, or for that matter, in your own?” Let’s be clear: Mom never treated me like I didn’t matter just because I couldn’t lift a car over my head, or fly, or turn myself to stone. She treated me like I was the most important thing in the world, the most important thing she had ever done or ever would do, and she did her best to shield me from the reality of her world. I had to put the real story together for myself. Had to figure out that her friends who came around for stale cake and mediocre coffee sneered at me because of all the things she didn’t. Had to figure out that they came to my birthday parties under duress, badly wrapped presents that never exceeded my mother’s strict twenty dollar limit in their hands. Had to figure out that the man with the blond hair and the heroic jawline, the man whose eyes looked so much like my own, the man who would never look at me for more than a few seconds without clenching his hands into fists, the man who never once addressed me without being forced … Had to figure out that he was Zenith, just without the cape and boots and heroic pose, and more, he was almost certainly my father. You’d think realizing the world’s greatest superhero is your father would come with dramatic music, or at least the feeling of finally falling into line with your destiny, but all I felt was tired. I was nine years old, I knew no one would believe me if I told them. He was the world’s greatest superhero. He could do infinitely better than a middle-aged diner waitress whose house had peeling wallpaper and water spots on the ceilings, and if he did have a kid, they’d be a lot better than me. They’d have powers, they’d be amazing. All this happened about a year before Mom’s secret identity got blown, which wasn’t my fault, no matter what the tabloids try to say. She did that all by herself. But after I was sure that Mom’s friend Paul was actually Zenith in civilian drag, I’d started to look a little more closely at the rest of Mom’s friends. Some of them worked at the diner, or were regular patrons there, but others, the ones who came to my birthday party with pursed lips and the same general air as me when I was forced to do my homework on a bright spring day … The others lined up, one to one, with the known members of the Association of Heroes. The bright-garbed men and women who soared the skies, righting wrongs, dispensing justice, and generally behaving in a heroic manner. It was the first secret I’d ever had, and it was a big one, big enough to 2 SEANAN MAGUIRE break the world, or at least that’s what it felt like tucked away inside my nine-year-old heart, where I could keep it safe. For one year, I was an impenetrable fortress, more secure than any bank—more secure than Fort Knox, even. Some people have tried to spin it since then, said I was the one who tipped off the papers as to Mom’s daytime occupation, said I was jealous of her. Jealous of what? I was nine. She hadn’t told me yet that she had powers, or that if I hadn’t developed them by the time I started puberty, I wasn’t going to. See again, nine. I thought I knew how the world worked, and how it was always going to work. Me and Mom, and occasional visits from her friends who thought of me as a particularly demanding and high-maintenance pet. They didn’t quite pat me on the head and tell me to sit and stay, but they came close sometimes. I guess by that point, they’d all been living gods for long enough that they didn’t understand how human kids worked anymore. And then came that awful, terrible, life-changing, world ending day when I was pulled out of Mrs. Harris’s advanced math class and moved to the office, where I’d been surrounded by strange, silent men in black suits who carried large guns and looked at the world around them as if it was inherently their enemy, not to be trusted under any circumstances. And no one had even tried to explain what was going on. That’s the part that still gets to me today. I was ten on the day the news broke—by a matter of three whole weeks, I was ten. A child. An innocent, civilian child. The fact that my mother was a soldier in an unending war between the forces of good and evil didn’t matter to me. Whether or not I got invited to Missy Sinclair’s slumber party, now that mattered to me. You may remember that slumber party. It was all over the news. Missy and I were the only survivors. Anyway...

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?

Amazon

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. And 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 five Hugo Awards in a single year.

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.

Amazon

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 five Hugo Awards in a single year.

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, fūri 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:
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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 five Hugo Awards in a single year.

Book Review: Night and Silence (October Daye #12) by Seanan McGuire

Night and Silence (October Daye)

by Seanan McGuire
September 4, 2018
Publisher: DAW
ASIN: B0782VCM7K ISBN: 978-0756414764
Things are not okay.

In the aftermath of Amandine's latest betrayal, October "Toby" Daye's fragile self-made family is on the verge of coming apart at the seams. Jazz can't sleep, Sylvester doesn't want to see her, and worst of all, Tybalt has withdrawn from her entirely, retreating into the Court of Cats as he tries to recover from his abduction. Toby is floundering, unable to help the people she loves most heal. She needs a distraction. She needs a quest.

What she doesn't need is the abduction of her estranged human daughter, Gillian. What she doesn't need is to be accused of kidnapping her own child by her ex-boyfriend and his new wife, who seems to be harboring secrets of her own. There's no question of whether she'll take the case. The only question is whether she's emotionally prepared to survive it.

Signs of Faerie's involvement are everywhere, and it's going to take all Toby's nerve and all her allies to get her through this web of old secrets, older hatreds, and new deceits. If she can't find Gillian before time runs out, her own child will pay the price. One question remains:

Who in Faerie remembered Gillian existed? And what do they stand to gain? No matter how this ends, Toby's life will never be the same.

amazon

Toby should be thinking about getting married to Tybalt with him and Jazz back home and her quest to bring her older pureblood sister back to her mother, but instead, her life is tearing apart. Tybalt avoids her due to PSTD from being trapped in cat form. Jazz can’t sleep, and Toby’s ex and his human wife have appeared at her doorstep, demanding to know if she’d kidnapped her daughter, Gillian. Which she hasn’t. Agreeing to find her. Toby begins the search at the campus of Gillian’s college, where she was last seen. The clues stink of Faerie involvement and there are secrets too, one even connected to her in a way she never saw coming.

Once again, Seanan McGuire gives another great adventure for October Daye and for the readers.

I give Night and Silence (October Daye) 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 five Hugo Awards in a single year.

Book Review: The Girl in the Green Silk Gown (Ghost Roads) by Seanan McGuire

The Girl in the Green Silk Gown (Ghost Roads)
by Seanan McGuire
July 17, 2018
Publisher: DAW
ASIN: B0768Z8K7T ISBN: 9780756413804 Audio CD: 9781541465169
The second book in the Ghost Roads series returns to the highways of America, where hitchhiking ghost Rose Marshall continues her battle with her killer--the immortal Bobby Cross.

Once and twice and thrice around,
Put your heart into the ground.
Four and five and six tears shed,
Give your love unto the dead.
Seven shadows on the wall,
Eight have come to watch your fall:
One’s for the gargoyle, one’s for the grave,
And the last is for the one you’ll never save.

For Rose Marshall, death has long since become the only life she really knows. She’s been sweet sixteen for more than sixty years, hitchhiking her way along the highways and byways of America, sometimes seen as an avenging angel, sometimes seen as a killer in her own right, but always Rose, the Phantom Prom Date, the Girl in the Green Silk Gown.

The man who killed her is still out there, thanks to a crossroads bargain that won’t let him die, and he’s looking for the one who got away. When Bobby Cross comes back into the picture, there’s going to be hell to pay—possibly literally.

Rose has worked for decades to make a place for herself in the twilight. Can she defend it, when Bobby Cross comes to take her down? Can she find a way to navigate the worlds of the living and the dead, and make it home before her hitchhiker’s luck runs out?

There’s only one way to know for sure.

Nine will let you count the cost:
All you had and all you lost.
Ten is more than time can tell,
Cut the cord and ring the bell.
Count eleven, twelve, and then,
Thirteen takes you home again.
One’s for the shadow, one’s for the tree,
And the last is for the blessing of Persephone.

It was 1952 sixteen-year-old Rose Marshall set out alone for the prom and was killed by actor Bobby Cross who had made a bargain at the crossroads to stay eternally young. Rose became an urban legend, known to most as the Girl in the Green Silk Gown or the Phantom Prom Date. Sixty years later, she's still sweet 16 and hitchhiking her way across America, helping travelers get to their destination unharmed or holding their hand to guide them into the twilight. Her boyfriend Gary is now dead and became a car so he could spend his afterlife with Rose. But Bobby had used a routewitch to kill, ruining the protection from the Persephone tattoo Rose wore to keep Bobby from harming her. The queen of the routewitches sends Rose to a farm where she must survive Halloween night in mortal form again, for her protection to return. Unfortunately, Bobby has thought of everything and when Halloween is over, she's still alive. If there's one thing Rose is more afraid of than Bobby Cross, it's living. Now she must find a way to return to her dead hitchhiker self before Bobby finds her and kills her again. 

We return to the world of Sparrow Hill Road that touched on a lot of the rules and mythologies of Rose Marshall's world. In the second book (a novel this time), The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, we get to see more about how all of this fit together. I have really enjoyed how she took the hitchhiking girl in the party dress tales and layered the mythology to her and even using her the mythologies of the underworld of the dead. This time around, the novel is about wanting to go home and wanting to be with the family you've made, despite the fact that these things might not be conventional, or recognizable to anyone but yourself. 

Seanan McGuire has allowed the reader to take a road trip with Rose, not to go camping in the mountains or to relax at the beach or visit places with kitschy, oddball things or where famous people might reside, but instead, the road leads you to visit where ghosts, gods, witches and spooky legends inhabit. The Girl in the Green Silk Gown is another great read by Seanan McGuire that hooks you right at the first page.

I give The Girl in the Green Silk Gown (Ghost Roads) 5 “ghostly” 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 five Hugo Awards in a single year.

Trade Paperback Release: Sparrow Hill Road (Ghost Roads #1) by Seanan McGuire + giveaway

Sparrow Hill Road (Ghost Roads #1) by Seanan McGuire is coming out in trade paperback with a new awesome cover.

Also check out The Girl in the Green Silk Gown (Ghost Roads #2)  coming out July 17, 2018

Enter the giveaway for a print copy of Sparrow Hill Road from Penguin.

Sparrow Hill Road (Ghost Roads #1)

by Seanan McGuire

June 5, 2018

DAW Trade Paperback

336 pages

Rose Marshall died in 1952 in Buckley Township, Michigan, run off the road by a man named Bobby Cross—a man who had sold his soul to live forever, and intended to use her death to pay the price of his immortality. Trouble was, he didn’t ask Rose what she thought of the idea.

It’s been more than sixty years since that night, and she’s still sixteen, and she’s still running.

They have names for her all over the country: the Girl in the Diner. The Phantom Prom Date. The Girl in the Green Silk Gown. Mostly she just goes by “Rose,” a hitchhiking ghost girl with her thumb out and her eyes fixed on the horizon, trying to outrace a man who never sleeps, never stops, and never gives up on the idea of claiming what’s his. She’s the angel of the overpass, she’s the darling of the truck stops, and she’s going to figure out a way to win her freedom. After all, it’s not like it can kill her.

You can’t kill what’s already dead.

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5 Sheep review of Sparrow Hill Road (Ghost Roads #1)

The Girl in the Green Silk Gown (Ghost Roads #2)

by Seanan McGuire

July 17, 2018
352 pages

Publisher: DAW

The second book in the Ghost Roads series returns to the highways of America, where hitchhiking ghost Rose Marshall continues her battle with her killer--the immortal Bobby Cross.

Once and twice and thrice around,
Put your heart into the ground.
Four and five and six tears shed,
Give your love unto the dead.
Seven shadows on the wall,
Eight have come to watch your fall:
One’s for the gargoyle, one’s for the grave,
And the last is for the one you’ll never save.

For Rose Marshall, death has long since become the only life she really knows. She’s been sweet sixteen for more than sixty years, hitchhiking her way along the highways and byways of America, sometimes seen as an avenging angel, sometimes seen as a killer in her own right, but always Rose, the Phantom Prom Date, the Girl in the Green Silk Gown.

The man who killed her is still out there, thanks to a crossroads bargain that won’t let him die, and he’s looking for the one who got away. When Bobby Cross comes back into the picture, there’s going to be hell to pay—possibly literally.

Rose has worked for decades to make a place for herself in the twilight. Can she defend it, when Bobby Cross comes to take her down? Can she find a way to navigate the worlds of the living and the dead, and make it home before her hitchhiker’s luck runs out?

There’s only one way to know for sure.

Nine will let you count the cost:
All you had and all you lost.
Ten is more than time can tell,
Cut the cord and ring the bell.
Count eleven, twelve, and then,
Thirteen takes you home again.
One’s for the shadow, one’s for the tree,
And the last is for the blessing of Persephone.

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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 five Hugo Awards in a single year.

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Book Review: Sparrow Hill Road (Ghost Roads #1) by Seanan McGuire

Sparrow Hill Road (Ghost Roads #1)by Seanan McGuire
May 6th, 2014
Paperback, 312 pages
Published by DAW
Rose Marshall died in 1952 in Buckley Township, Michigan, run off the road by a man named Bobby Cross—a man who had sold his soul to live forever, and intended to use her death to pay the price of his immortality. Trouble was, he didn’t ask Rose what she thought of the idea.

It’s been more than sixty years since that night, and she’s still sixteen, and she’s still running.

They have names for her all over the country: the Girl in the Diner. The Phantom Prom Date. The Girl in the Green Silk Gown. Mostly she just goes by “Rose,” a hitchhiking ghost girl with her thumb out and her eyes fixed on the horizon, trying to outrace a man who never sleeps, never stops, and never gives up on the idea of claiming what’s his. She’s the angel of the overpass, she’s the darling of the truck stops, and she’s going to figure out a way to win her freedom. After all, it’s not like it can kill her.

You can’t kill what’s already dead.

amazon

Rose Marshall drove herself to the prom, thinking her boyfriend had dumped her because he never picked her up. Bobby Cross, who sold his sold to live forever and remain young, hit her, killing her as a sacrifice for his immortality. Sixty years later, she is still sixteen years old and roaming the ghost roads, stopping at diners close to the Twilight, and trying to prevent others from dying like her, or if they do, to assist them in escaping Bobby Cross, as he searches for these poor spirits of accidents to eat their souls. Like all urban legends, she is called by many names: The Girl in the Diner, Phantom Prom Date, and The Girl in the Green Silk Gown. And she’s ready to win her freedom from Bobby Cross.

Seanan McGuire once again has a book that kept me reading, interested in Rose and what happens to her. As an author of regional ghost books, I loved reading how the hitchhiking ghost legend was taken and twisted around to something new. If you enjoy campfire ghost stories, this book is one for you!

I give Sparrow Hill Road (Ghost Roads) 5 sheep.

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 five Hugo Awards in a single year.

Book Review: Shadowed Souls (Anthology) Edited by: Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes

Shadowed Souls 

Edited by: Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes
Authors: Jim Butcher, Kevin J. Anderson, Seanan McGuire, Rob Thurman, Tanya Huff, Kat Richardson, Jim C. Hines, Anton Strout, Lucy A. Snyder, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Erik Scott de BieNovember 1, 2016
Publisher: Roc
In this dark and gritty collection—featuring short stories from Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, Kevin J. Anderson, and Rob Thurman—nothing is as simple as black and white, light and dark, good and evil..

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what makes it so easy to cross the line.

In #1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher’s Cold Case, Molly Carpenter—Harry Dresden’s apprentice-turned-Winter Lady—must collect a tribute from a remote Fae colony and discovers that even if you’re a good girl, sometimes you have to be bad...

New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire’s Sleepover finds half-succubus Elsie Harrington kidnapped by a group of desperate teenage boys. Not for anything “weird.” They just need her to rescue a little girl from the boogeyman. No biggie.

In New York Times bestselling Kevin J. Anderson’s Eye of Newt, Zombie P.I. Dan Shamble’s latest client is a panicky lizard missing an eye who thinks someone wants him dead. But the truth is that someone only wants him for a very special dinner...

And New York Times bestselling author Rob Thurman’s infernally heroic Caliban Leandros takes a trip down memory lane as he deals wih some overdue—and nightmarish—vengeance involving some quite nasty Impossible Monsters.

ALSO INCLUDES STORIES BY

Tanya Huff * Kat Richardson * Jim C. Hines * Anton Strout * Lucy A. Snyder * Kristine Kathryn Rusch * Erik Scott de Bie *Author Kim Butcher as editor and editor Kerrie L. Hughes gives the reader 11 stories, all I assume in worlds the authors had written novels for.

Jim Butcher’s has Molly Carpenter in “Cold Case,” once apprentice of Harry Dresden and now, the Winter Lady, a queen of Faerie. Mab has her going to a contingent of Faerie in Unalaska, Alaska, to get tribute. She runs into wizard and Warden of the White Council Carlos Ramirez in a dive in the town. He was sent to investigate odd activity in the town. And when Molly finds her fae, they tell her of their stolen children that she goes to save, along with Carlos. Right into danger of Lovecraftian proportions.

In “Sleepover” by Seanan McGuire, a not completely human heroine, Elsie Harrington, (her other half being succubus) is abducted by a Bigfoot hunter for a bunch of teen boys because a Bogeyman took a young sister of one of them. So she heads underground to retrieve the child.

Vicki, the vampire P.I. in Tanya Huff’s “If Wishes Were” has her working to find a jinn and stop it, get it back in the lamp it had been let loose from.

In “Solus” by Anton Stout, two agents from the Department of Extraordinary investigate a castle on top of a skyscraper in New York City that may be haunted by a ghost.

Kat Richardson’s Peacock in “Peacock in Hell” is hired to bring back Lennie Redmayne from Hell.

In Kevin J. Anderson’s “Eye of Newt,” undead P.I. Dan Shamble is hired by a one-eyed newt to find out why a rock monster and a golem robbed him of his eye.

Jessie Shimmer and her ferret familiar search for a girl named Alice and what may have hatched from an egg inside a statue of Santa Muerte in “What Dwells Within” by Lucy A Snyder.

In “Hunter, Healer” by Jim C. Hines, Julia Chapel tends to otherworldly beings who come to her apartment hurt or ill, no questions asked, no wars allowed on her turf. She is assisted by a hearth fairy named Hob who cusses lie a sailor (actually refreshing, giving him a bit of odd character). Most of all, she is a double soul-her dead twin’s soul inhabits her body with her soul. Someone from her past, her father, Terrance, comes to visit her, asking for her help- with another double soul like her. But she doesn’t trust him, and not due to their past. Then she meets the deadly Shard for the first time.

Vivienne Cain, aka Lady Vengeance, a former demon-possessed supervillain and now a super hero drinks to keep her fear powers in control in “Baggage” by Erik Scott De Bie. She joins a fight gym and one night stops a guy hitting on the young woman behind the front desk.

In Sales Force by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kaylee, loses her fiancée due to a car accident. He had promised they be forever, but death took that away. So, she goes back to her job, one she never told him what she did. But it would help her, as killing something day in and out can numb those feelings, so she’d never get hurt again. Except the job she is assigned first day back isn’t quite what she has always done. They want her to see if a love potion guaranteeing someone giving up on love 0r lost too much in life could have their belief repaired.

In the last dark tale, “Impossible Monsters” by Rob Thurman, Caliban came from the first murderers to walk the earth. Except there’s more beneath his human-looking skin. As he planned to let Coach know it.

Nothing is black or white, but again, that makes the hero/heroine a complex character and each story a great autumn read.

I give Shadowed Souls 5 sheep.

Pamela Kinney