Bookish Thoughts

This was a fun adventure, though I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to spend as much time in the underworld. Rose spends the majority of the book in a living human body, trying to figure out how to get back to her ghostly state. It's a trick pulled by Bobby Cross that serves to mess up Rose's life without bringing them that much closer to a confrontation. I'm hoping that in the next book they finally face off against each other.

Seanan McGuire initially wrote a bunch of short stories about a ghost. Then she stitched them together into a book. Then she turned it into a series. I originally read this book several years ago, but I finally picked up the sequel (and saw that a third is forthcoming), so I had to go back and re-read this one. Since I first read this story, I've read the main Incryptid series, of which it's an offshoot. That meant that I picked up on a lot more this time through. The world where this takes place is incredibly rich, and I missed a lot of the references when I first encountered them. That contributed to me liking this story even more the second time around. I was also better able to appreciate the structure, since I knew where everything was headed. I didn't expect my re-read of this book to be quite so rewarding, but I'm glad it was. I'm definitely hooked on this series and Rose Marshall now, and I can't wait to see where her story goes. (especially after the ev...

Once upon a time I had a book blog. I updated it consistently for years and years. But then my husband died and I didn't touch it for over four months. I kept reading though, and developed such a backlog that it just got more and more overwhelming.   But this blog remains valuable to me. Writing about books helps lodge them in my memory. And I enjoy being able to go back and see what I thought about a book I read years earlier. Especially if I'm trying to recommend something or considering another book by that author.   Anyway. It's time to work through the backlog. The key to eating an elephant is to just go one bite at a time, after all, right? So, one review at a time and I'll eventually catch up to where I am now. It'll be interesting to see what I remember about these books I read weeks and months ago and should serve as a decent kick in the pants to stay up to date with this thing in the future.   Anyway, That Ain't Witchcraft is the seventh book in a ser...

I'm starting to love Antimony almost as much as I love Verity. The two of them have more in common than they would ever admit, but Antimony isn't quite as experienced as Verity. She's competent, sure, but she's still learning how to gather and rely on her allies. It's fun to watch her put her team together, and become a force to be reckoned with. Of course she still has a lot of growing up to do. She's quick to blame herself and thinks she needs to take sole responsibility for her mistakes. Which has left her pretty isolated. As she starts to build a found family around herself, I'm looking forward to her reconnecting with her family of origin. She just needs to figure out that she doesn't have to take on the world all by herself. I also appreciate Antimony's books for their settings. Magic for Nothing  had me eager to visit the carnival and Tricks for Free  is making me want to visit Disneyland. My kids are still too young to appreciate it, but ...

In the sixth Incryptid book, Seanan McGuire finally shines the spotlight on the youngest of the Price children, Antimony. I was half-worried going into this book. I love Verity, and the two sisters are huge rivals with very little in common. But McGuire did an excellent job of making Antimony interesting and sympathetic. And the relationship she has with Verity is fascinating now that there are two sides to it. The bulk of this book also takes place at a carnival, which made me really want to go to one. We took Gavin to a few last summer, and it was a lot of fun taking him on the rides and seeing the sights. We knew we wouldn't be able to take him to any this summer, but reading this book made me really sad to be missing that. I hope we're able to go to a few next summer. The next two books are also from Antimony's point of view, and I'm more excited than ever to get to them. I can't wait to read more of her story and see how she deals with all the fallout from ...

I missed Verity. The last two books, narrated by her brother Alex, were fine. But having Verity back in the spotlight was so much fun. She's everything I loved about Buffy but more mature, and her books are an absolute delight to read. This one sees her returning to the world of reality TV to give her dance career once last chance before retiring it forever. But when it turns out that someone (or something) is murdering the eliminated contestants as part of an arcane ritual - and doing a surprisingly good job of covering their tracks - Verity gets sucked right back in to her other life. I think my favorite part of this book was the introduction of Verity's grandmother, Alice, who arrives as backup after the first bodies are found. She's incredibly rash and incredibly experienced and it makes for a really fun combination. There are also hints at all sorts of other adventures that make me want to dive in to the plethora of short stories McGuire has written in this world. ...

In the fourth InCryptid book, Alex and Shelby head to Austrailia to deal with a werewolf outbreak. In this world, werewolves are victims of a rabies-like virus. There's no cure, no treatment, and the only way to prevent a full-on outbreak is to kill anyone who's been infected before they have a chance to bite anyone else. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that you can't tell whether someone's been infected until they turn into a wolf. And further complicated by the fact that the virus isn't restricted to humans. Any mammal can contract and spread lycanthropy. The story here was exciting and well-paced. The mystery was intriguing, and expertly constructed. And the stakes felt believably high. It was just hampered by the fact that I don't really like Alex all that much. He's kind of boring and wishy-washy, and not nearly as much fun as his sister. Lucky for me, the next book turns the spotlight back on Verity. And then it's on to the final Pri...

Well I'm pretty much committed to Seanan McGuire's Incryptid  series at this point. The next two books are already sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. And after that there are only two more that currently exist. (Though I expect there will be at least one more by the time I catch up. McGuire is remarkably good at keeping to her one-book-a-year schedule. Even more impressive that she's maintaining it for at least three series while also writing other stuff. Seriously, she's been publishing books for less than a decade and she's got somewhere in the neighborhood for 50 books and novellas. And then there are the short stories.) To get back to the point, this series is great fun, and I'm enjoying it. Even if I didn't enjoy this book quite as much as the last two. But that really just comes down to the fact that I fell head over heels in love with Verity and I merely like her brother, who narrates this and the next book. (But then it's back to Verity, a...

The second Incryptid book delivers another exciting adventure. Verity is still torn between her desire to be a professional dancer and her duty to protect the Cryptid population from over-eager monster hunters. But when Dominic tells her that the Covenant's threatened purge of Manhattan is imminent, it's not much of a choice at all. Like Verity's parents, I thought it was obvious from early on that dance was never going to be her future. So while I liked the push and pull of her two lives in the first book, I appreciated that she quickly came to the same conclusion here. When the chips are down, she's going to help her friends, because that's the kind of person she is. Which doesn't mean that she can't or won't grieve that dance career, or that she didn't need her year in NYC to come to that decision. But it was nice to see her life come into focus for her. It was also fun to see a bunch of the cast from the previous book. Though now those friend...

I've dabbled in a lot of Seanan McGuire's work over the years. She's incredibly prolific, and I read and enjoy her blog. I mostly like the books of hers that I've read, though I tend to get a bit nitpicky about them. But I think I've finally found something of hers that I'm going to fall in love with. Discount Armageddon  is the first book in her Incryptid series, which follows a family of cryptozoologists straddling the thin line between protecting humans from cryptids and cryptids from humans. They exist in a grey area in a world that insists these matters are black and white. The first book follows middle daughter, Verity Price, who is spending a year in Manhattan to study the locals and figure out what she actually wants to do with her life. Verity filled a Buffy -shaped hole in my heart that I hadn't even known was there. I didn't realize how much I missed that wit and snark, that endless training that leads to exhilarating fight scenes, that re...