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

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Backpacking Through Bedlam
Series: Incryptid, #12
Author: Seanan McGuire
Publisher: DAW
Publication date: March 7, 2023
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Urban fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

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 are sending them to New York to help, and 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 the hardest task Alice has undertaken yet.

The InCryptid series is a big, sprawling, interconnected story about the varied and sundry members of the Price/Healy clan — humans (mostly) who specialize in cryptozoology, the study and preservation of non-human people who live among us here on Earth. The arch-enemies of the Price gang (and all non-human species) is the Covenant, a powerful organization dedicated to hunting down and eliminating all cryptids — ostensibly to protect humans, but really, at this point, it’s more from deeply ingrained hatred and a desire to rid the world of everything non-human.

The InCryptid series unfolds in waves, sort of, with different books in the series focusing on different family members — including siblings Verity, Alex, and Antimony, their wild adventures, and also their love lives. By book 12 in the series, we’ve shifted focus a few more times, and Backpacking Through Bedlam is the second book in a row starring Alice, the family’s grandmother (who appears to be about 20, not her actual 80-something years).

Backpacking Through Bedlam picks up the story where it left off in book #11, Spelunking Through Hell. Alice has spent the past 50 years searching alternate dimensions to find her beloved husband Thomas, who was stolen away from her after a disastrous deal with the crossroads. In book #11, the pair was finally reunited, and here in #12, the story continues with their journey home.

It’s not all smooth, and they have a humanitarian sort of mission to accomplish first, but they do eventually make it back to their secluded home in Michigan… only to be summoned moments after arrival to come help their granddaughter Verity in New York.

Alice and Thomas and their surrogate daughter Sally are immediately shoved into danger, as Verity and her family are busy trying to protect a nest of dragons from very persistent and deadly field agents sent by the Covenant. There’s no time for a family reunion — Alice is forced to pretty much instantly start fighting her way through the tunnels of New York to save the day.

All this to say, it’s another fun adventure in the InCryptid world, with the Price family protecting those in need and taking the fight to the bad guys.

It’s entertaining and also moving to see Alice and Thomas reunited with their grandchildren. The family as a whole has mixed feelings about their long-lost grandparents, since Alice essentially abandoned her own children 50 years early, leaving them to be raised by trusted friends, in order to pursue what everyone believed to be a hopeless quest to find her husband.

Now they’re back, but it’ll be a while before they can truly be part of the family again, and maybe even longer before Alice and Thomas can let one another out of arm’s reach without feeling the awful fear of another impossible separation. I love the family and relationship dynamics in these books even more than the action sequences — although those are great too.

Backpacking Through Bedlam has a bit of a slow start, but once the travelers land back in our own dimension, the story and pace pick up quite a bit.

In the previous book, it was a little jarring to focus on Alice, since we’d barely spent time with her up to that point. Now she feels more like a main character, and I enjoyed seeing her and Thomas reestablishing their lives together.

I have the same complaint about Backpacking Through Bedlam as I did with Splelunking Through Hell — there’s a lot of assumed knowledge about the characters’ backstories and the family history. Here’s what I mentioned in my review of #11, and it still holds true:

Side note on InCryptids: This is a huge expanded world, and it’s supported by many, many short stories available through the author’s website and via Patreon. That’s nice… but also frustrating. Apparently, if I’d been keeping up with all the Price short stories, I would be very invested in Alice and Thomas and would know pretty much everything about their courtship, romance, and early years together. But I haven’t! And that feels problematic for me. Yes, I can make an effort to go get caught up (and I probably will, once I figure out the order the stories should be read in) — but I do think the books alone should tell a complete story, and in this case, I felt like I was always missing key pieces of information.

There are SO many short stories that the author has written about Alice’s parents and grandparents. In Backpacking Through Bedlam, Alice refers quite often to her parents’ marriage, her own youth, and earlier generations too — but those aren’t details we have any way of knowing just from the main series. It’s frustrating, and I don’t particularly have the patience to go read every story on Patreon. Here’s hoping Seanan McGuire will some day collect all of these tales and put them into an all-in-one edition — that would be something I’d happily pick up.

Overall, though, Backpacking Through Bedlam continues the InCryptid series with the author’s signature quirky writing, funny dialogue, and plenty of hidden weaponry. I do love these characters, and will keep reading books about the Price family for as long as the author keeps writing them.

**Save

Save

11Jan2023

Book Review: Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children, #8) by Seanan McGuire

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Lost in the Moment and Found
Series: Wayward Children, #8
Author: Seanan McGuire
Publisher: Tor
Publication date: January 10, 2023
Length: 160 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher

A young girl discovers an infinite variety of worlds in this standalone tale in the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire, Lost in the Moment and Found.

Welcome to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go.

If you ever lost a sock, you’ll find it here.
If you ever wondered about favorite toy from childhood… it’s probably sitting on a shelf in the back.
And the headphones that you swore that this time you’d keep safe? You guessed it….

Antoinette has lost her father. Metaphorically. He’s not in the shop, and she’ll never see him again. But when Antsy finds herself lost (literally, this time), she finds that however many doors open for her, leaving the Shop for good might not be as simple as it sounds.

And stepping through those doors exacts a price.

Lost in the Moment and Found tells us that childhood and innocence, once lost, can never be found.

You might wonder whether, by the 8th book in a series, an author might run out of fresh stories to tell.

If the author is Seanan McGuire, then the answer is — not a chance! In Lost in the Moment and Found, she puts a fresh spin on the ongoing Wayward Children series, once again moving the focus to a completely new character in a completely new circumstance.

While all the Wayward Children books feature children who’ve had lousy childhoods in one way or another, the circumstances here are particularly awful — enough so that the author includes a note prior to the opening of the story:

While all the Wayward Children books have dealt with heavy themes and childhood traumas, this one addresses an all-too-familiar monster: the one that lives in your own home. Themes of grooming and adult gaslighting are present in the early text. As a survivor of something very similar, I would not want to be surprised by these elements where I didn’t expect them.

I just want to offer you this reassurance: Antsy runs. Before anything can actually happen, Antsy runs.

I have to say, I very much appreciated the warning. While the sense of dread builds in the early part of the book, at least I could proceed without fearing the absolute worst. And as the author promises, the main character, Antsy, does in fact run. When her fear and sense of isolation and lack of support gets to the point that she can no longer stand it, she finds a way out and escapes.

… as she got older, she would come to think that the ability to cry was the third thing she’d lost in a single day.

Antsy, at age six, a year after a terrible loss, gains a stepfather whom she never wanted, but she hopes her mother’s happiness will allow her to feel happy too. It doesn’t work that way. Her sense of wrongness and unease whenever she’s around her stepfather only continues to grow. He’s insidious, undermining Antsy in small ways through lies and contradictions, so that Antsy knows that if she goes to her mother with her big worries, she won’t be believed. It’s utterly heartbreaking.

When Antsy finally does reach her breaking point and runs away, she ends up at a strange little thrift shop that she never noticed before, with the words “Be Sure” written over the door frame. Once inside, the door she entered through disappears, and Antsy finds herself in a new home with an odd elderly woman and a talking magpie as companions.

As she stays in this store, she discovers new doors leading to new worlds, where she meets all sorts of strange and fascinating people and brings back more goods for the infinite shelves of the store she lives in. And for a long time, she forgets that there’s anything else out there and doesn’t think to question certain very odd occurrences…

Eventually, Antsy realizes that there’s a steep price to be paid for all the miraculous new worlds she visits — and that she may run out of options sooner than expected. The ending is moving and fitting, very sad, but with a small sliver of hope too.

Yes, I’m being vague!

As in all the Wayward Children books, the writing is simply gorgeous. These stories are never just straight-forward action — there’s a sense of mythic scope embedded in the descriptions of sad, lost children, and loss permeates so much of the storytelling.

The toll of childhood trauma becomes literal here: Antsy’s loss of safety and innocence leads to her new reality in the strange world of endless doors and lost things:

She should have had a childhood, ice cream and matinees and sunshine and cookies, not working in a dusty shop while she grew up faster than she should have been able to, rocketing toward adulthood, spending hours she’d never be able to recover! She should have had time. It was hers, and she had never agreed to give it away.

Antsy’s story is particularly tragic — obviously, no small child should ever have to doubt whether the one person they count on will actually believe them when they speak up. We can cheer Antsy on as she saves herself, but still, we can’t avoid mourning her shattered childhood and sense of faith in family and love.

*The Wayward Children books include beautiful drawings by the very talented Rovina Cai. See more at https://www.rovinacai.com/portfolio/wayward-children-series/*

As a whole, the Wayward Children series is beautiful, sad, emotional, and full of heartache and redemption. There’s hope and joy to offset the sorrow, but an undercurrent of sadness never quite leaves the stories or their characters.

I love the series, and I’m so happy that Lost in the Moment and Found lives up to my (very high) expectations. Please do start from the beginning if you haven’t read any of these yet! Each book is novella -length, but don’t rush through them — the lovely writing should be savored.

10Jan2023

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2023

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2023.

There are plenty to choose from — but here are ten I’m really excited for:

Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie (1/24)
Lessons at the School by the Sea by Jenny Colgan (3/7)
Backpacking Through Bedlam (Incryptids, #12) by Seanan McGuire (3/7)
A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher (3/28)
The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth (4/4)
Said No One Ever by Stephanie Eding (4/4)
Not the Ones Dead (Kate Shugak, #23) by Dana Stabenow (4/13)
In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune (4/25)
Happy Place by Emily Henry (4/25)
Late Bloomers by Deepa Varadarajan (5/2)

What new releases are you most looking forward to over the next six months? Share your links, and I’ll come check out your top 10!

13Dec2022

Top Ten Tuesday: Top ten books on my TBR list for winter 2022/2023

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is about our winter reading plans.

So many books to choose from! This time around, my list includes a mix of upcoming new releases and books already on my shelves. My top 10 priorities to read this winter will be:

New releases:

1) Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie: I’ve loved every book I’ve read by this author so far, even though they’re always super disturbing. (release date 1/24/2023)

2) The Magician’s Daughter by H. G. Parry: I don’t know much about this one, but it looks good! (2/21/2023)

3) Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children, #8) by Seanan McGuire: If it’s January, it must be time for another Wayward Children book! (1/12/2023)

4) The Stolen Heir by Holly Black: I’m beyond thrilled that there’s a new book in the world of Folk of the Air on the way! (1/5/2023)

5) Backpacking Through Bedlam (Incryptids, #12) by Seanan McGuire: Another series by Seanan McGuire that I love! Of course I’ll read the new book as soon as possible. (3/7/2023)

6) A Sinister Revenge (Veronica Speedwell, #8): This series continues to be so much fun. (3/7/2023)

And books I already own:

7) Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir: Although I didn’t completely love Gideon the Ninth, I’m interested enough to want to keep going.

8) A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers: On the other hand, I did love the first book in this series, so #2 is a must!

9) The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal: I bought this right when it came out, and I love everything I’ve read by this author… and I’ve ended up saving this book to read when I can savor it (which hasn’t happened yet).

10) Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor: I really enjoyed the audiobook of the first two in this series, so if my library has this one available via audio, I’ll probably go that route… but otherwise, the paperback will do just fine.

What books will be keeping you warm this winter? Share your links, and I’ll come check out your top 10!

5Sep2022

Book Review: Be the Serpent (October Daye, #16) by Seanan McGuire

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Be the Serpent
Series: October Daye, #16
Author: Seanan McGuire
Publisher: DAW
Publication date: August 30, 2022
Print length: 384 pages
Genre: Urban fantasy
Source: Purchased
Rating:

October Daye is finally something she never expected to be: married. All the trials and turmoils and terrors of a hero’s life have done very little to prepare her for the expectation that she will actually share her life with someone else, the good parts and the bad ones alike, not just allow them to dabble around the edges in the things she wants to share. But with an official break from hero duties from the Queen in the Mists, and her family wholly on board with this new version of “normal,” she’s doing her best to adjust.

It isn’t always easy, but she’s a hero, right? She’s done harder.
Until an old friend and ally turns out to have been an enemy in disguise for this entire time, and October’s brief respite turns into a battle for her life, her community, and everything she has ever believed to be true.

The debts of the Broken Ride are coming due, and whether she incurred them or not, she’s going to be the one who has to pay.

Includes an all-new bonus novella!

Some long-term ongoing fantasy series overstay their welcome. And then there’s October Daye, a series that 100% proves that there’s no such thing as too much or too long, so long as the writing and the plot make it worthwhile.

And in the name of Oberon himself, I’m here to declare that the 16th October Daye book blew me away, caught me in its spell, and will haunt me for the coming year (until #17 comes along).

In Be the Serpent, we pick up two months after the events of the previous book, When Sorrows Come. That book brought the long-awaited wedding of Toby and Tybalt — and being a book about October Daye, hero of the realm and a total bad-ass knight, it also brought plenty of bloodshed, mayhem, attempted overthrow of a kingdom, and an assortment of awful bad guys.

But hey, it ended with happiness! Toby and Tybalt are married — and in book #16, Be the Serpent, they’re living together in wedded bliss. I’m a little peeved that we didn’t actually get to see them enjoying their Disneyland honeymoon (I’d pay good money to see Tybalt on the Dumbo ride), but they had fun, and that’s what counts.

Happiness doesn’t last long, however. As the story opens, a hearing in the Kingdom of the Mists is just concluding when the children of Toby’s closest childhood friend begin to scream as if in dire pain. Rushing to their family home, Toby discovers a scene of blood and heartbreak. It’s almost too much to bear, and how can Toby share such terrible news with her dearest friend?

As the plot unfolds, true terror is revealed. And I really can’t say much more about the plot than that, because it’s a doozy and it took my breath away. What I will say is that events occur that upend Faerie as we know it, and that tie together storylines that go all the way back to the first book in the series.

The ending is a total gutpunch as well, and I can’t think of another book in the series that ended without our heroes being (at least temporarily) in a fairly good or at least safe place. The ending here is upsetting and nightmare-inducing, and I think I’m going to spend the next year really mad at Seanan McGuire for leaving me in such an upset state!

The book includes a bonus novella, Such Dangerous Seas, which is also deeply dark and sorrowful. (As opposed to the novella at the end of When Sorrows Come, which was basically a fun romp through Toby and Tybalt’s wedding reception — which now feels like a brief shining moment of joy before the horrors of Faerie came crashing back down). Such Dangerous Seas features the sea witch, the Luidaeg, one of my favorite characters — but it’s a terribly sad story about her earlier years and the awful things that happened to her.

Be the Serpent is shocking, heart-breaking, and scary as hell. It’s also yet another brilliant showcase for our hero Toby and her chosen family, who band together no matter what. Whatever happens to these characters, they love one another unreservedly, and their family ties, commitment, and loyalty are big pieces of what makes this series so special.

Having to wait a year for the next book is going to be terrible for my well-being! And I guess that’s a pretty clear indication of just how great Be the Serpent is. If you’re an October Daye fan, you’re probably already reading it!

And I’ll say, yet again, that if you haven’t read the October Daye series yet, you’re missing out on something special. Start from the beginning (Rosemary and Rue) — you won’t be able to stop!

5Jul2022

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Books Releasing In the Second Half of 2022

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Most Anticipated Books Releasing In the Second Half of 2022.

Where do I even start? I want to read ALL the books… but here are ten I’m really excited about.. while also trying not to repeat books I’ve highlighted in other TBR posts already!

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (7/19)
The Bodyguard by Katherine Center (7/19)
Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (8/30)
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn (9/6)
Be the Serpent (October Daye, #16) by Seanan McGuire (9/6)
Fairy Tale by Stephen King (9/6)
Drunk on Love by Jasmine Guillory (9/20)
The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal (10/11)
Scattered Showers by Rainbow Rowell (11/8)
Well Traveled by Jen DeLuca (12/6)

What new releases are you most looking forward to? Please share your links!

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12May2022

Book Review: Seasonal Fears by Seanan McGuire

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Seasonal Fears
Series: Alchemical Journeys, #2
Author: Seanan McGuire
Publisher: Tordotcom
Publication date: May 3, 2022
Length: 496 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Melanie has a destiny, though it isn’t the one everyone assumes it to be. She’s delicate; she’s fragile; she’s dying. Now, truly, is the winter of her soul.
Harry doesn’t want to believe in destiny, because that means accepting the loss of the one person who gives his life meaning, who brings summer to his world.
So, when a new road is laid out in front of them—a road that will lead through untold dangers toward a possible lifetime together—walking down it seems to be the only option.
But others are following behind, with violence in their hearts.
It looks like Destiny has a plan for them, after all….

Seasonal Fears returns to the complicated world of alchemy made real first explored in the author’s 2019 novel Middlegame. In Middlegame, the story centered on Roger and Dodger, two people with an inexplicable connection who come to embody the living personifications of Math and Language.

In Seasonal Fears, alchemists are once again at work, and the impact on the main characters is huge. Melanie has been frail since birth, with a severely damaged heart, a lifetime of illness and medical treatments, and slim chances of living past her teens. But her best friend since kindergarten (and later, her boyfriend) Harry will never give up on Melanie. He loves her; she loves him. Her death may be inevitable, but he’ll never leave her for as long as she remains alive.

Meanwhile, we learn early on that the seasons themselves have living personifications — humans who come to embody Winter and Summer through a complicated and usually bloody coronation process. Alchemists have been aware of Winter and Summer kings and queens for centuries, but it’s only in modern times that they’ve tried to steer the process by creating the perfect vessels for the seasons in their labs.

As Melanie and Harry prepare to attend their high school Valentine’s Day dance, they both undergo a shocking process and learn that their destinies lie beyond tragic high school romance tropes. Accompanied by their Attendants, they start a journey toward the coronation of the seasons, each a candidate for becoming a season Incarnate.

Sound complicated? It is.

Seanan McGuire is an absolute favorite author, and I love her writing style, her characters, and her snark. But here in Seasonal Fears, these factors often become overshadowed by the incredibly confusing plot elements. The seasons, the embodiment of alchemical doctrines, the impact on the natural world, the coronation process… it’s a lot, and I often simply could not wrap my brain around the overarching concepts.

That said, the plot does zip along, with moments of horrific violence as well as quieter moments of emotional connection and elements of wonder and magic. Still, this is a big, dense book, and I’m not sure that the whole ends up being greater than its parts. Also, the end felt strangely anti-climactic.

Apparently, if the series continues, there’s an intention for there to be five books in total. Right now, having finished Seasonal Fears, the idea of continuing seems exhausting. Ask me again, though, when the next books comes out! Since I do tend to read everything this author writes, there’s a good chance I’ll have recovered enough by then to keep making the effort with these alchemical stories.

2Mar2022

Shelf Control #309: The Starlit Wood edited by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe

Posted in Shelf Control by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.

Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!

Title: The Starlit Wood (New Fairy Tales)
Author: Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe (editors)
Published: 2016
Length: 400 pages

What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):

An all-new anthology of cross-genre fairy tale retellings, featuring an all-star lineup of award-winning and critically acclaimed writers.
Once upon a time. It’s how so many of our most beloved stories start.
Fairy tales have dominated our cultural imagination for centuries. From the Brothers Grimm to the Countess d’Aulnoy, from Charles Perrault to Hans Christian Anderson, storytellers have crafted all sorts of tales that have always found a place in our hearts.
Now a new generation of storytellers have taken up the mantle that the masters created and shaped their stories into something startling and electrifying.
Packed with award-winning authors, this anthology explores an array of fairy tales in startling and innovative ways, in genres and settings both traditional and unusual, including science fiction, western, and post-apocalyptic as well as traditional fantasy and contemporary horror.
From the woods to the stars, The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales takes readers on a journey at once unexpected and familiar, as a diverse group of writers explore some of our most beloved tales in new ways across genres and styles.

How and when I got it:

I bought a copy back in 2016.

Why I want to read it:

I originally bought this book after seeing a mention of it online, which listed the contributing authors.

According to Amazon, authors with stories in The Starlit Wood include: Charlie Jane Anders, Aliette de Bodard, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, Max Gladstone, Theodora Goss, Daryl Gregory, Kat Howard, Stephen Graham Jones, Margo Lanagan, Marjorie Liu, Seanan McGuire, Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, Sofia Samatar, Karin Tidbeck, Catherynne M. Valente, and Genevieve Valentine

With a line-up like that, how could I resiste? I was especially drawn to this book because of Seanan McGuire, but there are so many other writers here whose work I love too.

As an added incentive, the editors later released another story collection, Robots vs. Fairies, which I actually read — and loved! My review of that book is here.

What do you think? Would you read this book?

Please share your thoughts!

Literary Potpourri

__________________________________

Want to participate in Shelf Control? Here’s how:

Write a blog post about a book that you own that you haven’t read yet.
Add your link in the comments or link back from your own post, so I can add you to the participant list.
Check out other posts, and…

Have fun!

1Mar2022

Top 5 Tuesday: Top 5 books with doorways

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

I’m sticking with Top 5 Tuesday again this week! I’m participating in the meme originally created by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm, now hosted by Meeghan Reads.

This month’s topics are like a bookish scavenger hunt — what fun! You can see all the topics for March here.

This week, it’s all about doorways, and I’m happy to share a few faves:

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune: Sweet and uplifting!
A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle: I read this one ages ago, and I think this is as far as I got in the Wrinkle in Times series. Someday, I’ll go back and read the rest!
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow: I loved this book so much! The plot is fascinating, and I loved the main character.
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire: The first book in the Wayward Children series introduces us to a world where doors lead children to new lives. Such a favorite.
The Door in the Hedge by Robin McKinley: A fairy tale collection that includes new stories as well as retellings. All are lovely.

What “door” books do you love?

As always, if you have a TTT or T5T post this week, please share your link!

21Feb2022

Book Review: Spelunking Through Hell (InCryptid, #11) by Seanan McGuire

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Spelunking Through Hell
Series: Incryptid, #11
Author: Seanan McGuire
Publisher: DAW
Publication date: March 1, 2022
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Urban fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Now in trade paperback, the eleventh 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.
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.

It’s almost spring, and that means it’s time for another installment in the ongoing adventures of the Price-Healy family… yes, another InCryptid book is here! (Annoying some fans by switching to trade paperback size rather than sticking with mass market… so now my paperback editions won’t match??? But that’s beside the point when it comes to a review, so onward we go.)

The InCryptid series follows the adventures of the sprawling Price and Healy clan, a large extended family dedicated to studying and preserving the lives of cryptids — non-human beings who (usually) live peacefully among the humans, but who are hunted by the merciless and powerful Covenant simply for existing. Yes, there are also cryptids who do unpleasant things like eating humans, and in those cases, the Prices are a force to be feared… hence their very murdery reputation.

Up to now in the series, the books have focused on members of the current young adult family members — siblings Verity, Alexander, and Antimony (Annie), as well as their cousin Sarah. There are plenty of references to other relatives, and their parents and other cousins and family-by-extension pop in and play different roles as well. One of the more mythological members of the family, whom we’ve seen in action really just once so far, is grandmother Alice.

Now look at the book cover image again. That’s Alice! Does she look like a grandma to you?

Alice was a young woman in the 1950s, which is when she lost her beloved husband Thomas to a bad bargain with the crossroads. Granted, he made the bargain to save Alice’s life, so he deserves a little slack for having made it. From the time of Thomas’s disappearance, Alice has been obsessed with finding him — so much so that she’s spent over fifty years as an interdimensional traveler, tracking down every clue and random hint that could possibly lead her to her husband.

Of course, to do so, she’s had to leave her family behind, so her two children resent the hell out of her and her grandchildren know her more from the family legends than from actual relationships… but she can’t give up. Along the way, she has used whatever means necessary to preserve her youth and health so that she could keep going, which is why she looks and feels more or less like a 19-year-old.

All that is backstory. Here, in Spelunking Through Hell, Alice is the main character, and we join her on her desperate journey to find Thomas. It’s been 50 years, and her hope is starting to wear thin. At this point, she’d even accept proof of his death — she’s just about ready to stop. But then a new clue from an unexpected source gives her one more angle to try, and so she sets out one last time to travel to a dying dimension that’s supposedly inaccessible… but Alice is nothing but persistent.

And so what if she doesn’t have an exit strategy? So long as she finds Thomas — even if he is about 80 years old by now — they can figure out what comes next together.

Spelunking Through Hell is yet another fun romp with the Price clan, although we really don’t see many members of the family other than Alice. This makes the tale fresh, but also feels somewhat less engaging, since Alice has never been a main character before and there isn’t a ton to build on in terms of what we know about her or what it’s like to see the world through her eyes.

Like the rest of the Prices, Alice is always fully armed, ready for a fight, and full of quips. She’s funny, fierce, and reckless, and also has no problem pushing herself past injury and excruciating pain, so long as it’s in service of her obsession with finding Thomas.

The plot occasionally feels a little draggy — it does take quite a while to get to the target world — and while I enjoyed the book, I have to say that my lack of familiarity with Alice as an individual made this book slightly less wonderful as a reading experience as compared to earlier books in the series.

Side note on InCryptids: This is a huge expanded world, and it’s supported by many, many short stories available through the author’s website and via Patreon. That’s nice… but also frustrating. Apparently, if I’d been keeping up with all the Price short stories, I would be very invested in Alice and Thomas and would know pretty much everything about their courtship, romance, and early years together. But I haven’t! And that feels problematic for me. Yes, I can make an effort to go get caught up (and I probably will, once I figure out the order the stories should be read in) — but I do think the books alone should tell a complete story, and in this case, I felt like I was always missing key pieces of information.

That said, I did enjoy the book overall, and Seanan McGuire’s writing keeps it fun even while the blood is flowing:

And I, an asshole, had done enough woolgathering for one… day? Evening? Afternoon? There were no windows, and massive blood loss always throws off my sense of time.

I’d rather be married to a man fifty years older than I am than see him go through what I’ve willingly done to myself for his sake, what he never would have asked or expected me to do. It’s always easier to set yourself on fire than to allow someone else to burn for you.

I wanted to avoid being caught at any cost, since one solid snap of those claws could have me down a limb, or possibly down an entire torso. I like my torso. It’s where I keep my lungs.

The Haspers not currently engaged began to run in my direction, forming a nicely unified pack. I like a unified pack. I like the way is splashes when you lob a grenade into the middle of it, and I like it even better when none of its component parts knows what a grenade is, so they react like you’ve just thrown a rock or something. To be nonspecific.

Spelunking Through Hell includes the bonus novella And Sweep Up the Wood, which tells the story of a key turning point in the early years of Alice and Thomas’s relationship. It’s very good and very emotional (plus, you know, plenty of guns and explosives — after all, Alice in involved), and it’s a great way to wrap up this installment of the series.

The InCryptid series itself is going strong, and overall, I love it! I do wish this one had drawn me in a bit more, but I can’t really complain. The Price-Healy clan is amazing (and there are religious mice, who make every scene they’re in 1000% better), and I can’t wait for more of the story. The big question is — who will #12 be about?

As I’ve said in pretty much every review of this series, definitely start at the beginning with with Discount Armageddon. This series is full of great characters and terrific world-building. It’s easy to get hooked!

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