CBR10 Book 47: "Chaos Choreography" by Seanan McGuire

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Verity and Dominic have left New York, and got married in Vegas while travelling with Verity's stuff cross-country. Verity has given up on her alter ego Valerie Pryor and her career in ballroom dancing and is fully committed to cryptozoology with her new husband and the rest of her family. Then she gets a call from the producer of "Dance or Die", the reality show that she came runner up in a few years ago and she's asked to return for a "former contestants" edition. While she's unsure of what to do, her family encourage her to go and make sure, once and for all, what career is the one she's meant to devote herself to.

Posing as Valerie again, with Dominic hiding out in a motel a ways away, Verity reunites with old friends and gets serious about dance again. Then she discovers that the contestants who have been voted off the show are being killed and their bodies used in some sort of sinister, arcane ritual. Verity is going to need help, more than just Dominic is able to give her. Luckily, her grandma Alice is willing and able to lend a hand, and together they start investigating, only to discover that the danger is greater and more immediate than they feared.

I was very happy to spend time with Verity and Dominic again, and they are super cute as newly weds. We are also properly introduced to Verity's grandma Alice, who due to complicated reasons looks young enough to pose as Verity's cousin. She seemed no nonsense and absolutely hardcore. There's another mystery of people going missing and turning up dead, and yet another group of people trying to summon a snake god - this time people who seem to know what they're doing. Friends and acquaintances of Verity are in danger and she and her family have to stop the cultists before everyone on the show dies.

My biggest problem with this book came towards the end, when things suddenly seem to happen all too quickly. Several people Verity cares about are dead, yet she seems curiously unaffected by it. She also makes some poor decisions in one dramatic moment that I can't imagine won't have pretty serious repercussions in books to come. It seemed out of character for her, and I can't imagine any of her family members are going to be particularly happy about it. I'm assuming McGuire has some sort of plan going forward, but I think it may be time for me to take a break from these books for a while now - I think I've reached my limit for a while.

Judging a book by its cover: While you may be fooled into thinking this cover features a pair of blonde twins sporting guns, this is in fact supposed to be Verity (and I refuse to believe that a reality TV show that wanted viewers would put her in whatever the heck the woman on the cover is wearing here to dance - just nope) and her grandmother Alice, whose rarely if ever shows her true age, due to exploring a lot of strange dimensional portals looking for her missing husband. Her tattoos contain magic spells, which I also thought was pretty cool. So far, this is my least favourite cover in the series after the first one.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 46: "Pocket Apocalypse" by Seanan McGuire

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Alexander Price had an unusual upbringing and has been trained from childhood to deal with all sorts of dangerous situations. Nevertheless, one of the scariest things he ever had to face was a werewolf outbreak. So when his girlfriend Shelby asks him to come to Australia with him to help her and her family stop a werewolf outbreak there, he really really wants to say no - but of course he agrees. If werewolves were to get a proper foothold in Australia, it would be disastrous. Reluctant as he is to face any again, not to mention being nervous about meeting Shelby's family - he's a Price, and knows he has a duty to protect both humans and friendly cryptozoological species.

Shelby's family aren't exactly delighted to meet Alex and they are feeling extra on edge with this additional threat. It quickly becomes apparent that the werewolf infestation may be more severe than they first believed, and as Alex and Shelby, along with Shelby's family and friends investigate, signs seem to suggest that werewolves may be a lot more clever and organised than any cryptozoologist previously suspected. The threat just got a lot more serious.

This is the fourth book in this series, and I'm still not enjoying the books about Alex and Shelby as much as those about Verity and Dominic. Having most of the book set in Australia, with a whole new and different set of beasties was pretty cool. What got old really fast was Shelby's super judgemental and hostile family and the way they would just dismiss and/or distrust Alex constantly, even after he risks his life trying to save them. Although it was clear that Shelby wasn't going to give them up as a lost cause, so I suppose he had to find a way to try to understand them if he wanted to build a future with her.

The werewolves are really rather creepy and added a really tense element to the story. The fact that not only humans, but animals can get infected and become ravening terrifying beasts was a cool touch. The "surprise" twist that the Prices and other cryptozoologists may have underestimated just how much of their humanity the affected victims retained wasn't all that shocking to me, and again made the story more interesting than the "hunt for the basilisk" of the last book.

As always, the Aeslin mice continue to be pretty much the best part of the story. Part of me wants a little colony of my own, but another part would also be driven slowly mad by all their "HAIL!"s and constant devotion.

The next book is about Verity again and it seems that we finally get to spend more time with the mysterious grandma Alice. I can't say I'm too bothered if we get any more books about Alex. He's a bit meh.

Judging a book by its cover: The wolves on the cover look suitably creepy (although I'm not sure why it looks like there is yellow smoke coming out of their glowy eyes). I appreciate that Alex doesn't look romance hero handsome, but just like an ordinary guy. Paranormal fantasy always seems populated with super gorgeous people, a bit like on a CW show and it's nice that this series has some average people in it too.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 35: "Half-Off Ragnarok" by Seanan McGuire

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

This is book 3 in a series. If you want to start at the beginning, check out Discount Armageddon.

From Goodreads: When Alex Price agreed to go to Ohio to oversee a basilisk breeding program and assist in the recovery of his psychic cousin, he didn't expect people to start dropping dead. But bodies are cropping up at the zoo where he works, and his girlfriend - Shelby Tanner, an Australian zoologist with a fondness for big cats - is starting to get suspicious. 

Worse yet, the bodies have all been turned partially to stone... The third book in the InCryptid series takes us to a new location and a new member of the family, as Alex tries to balance life, work, and the strong desire not to become a piece of garden statuary. Old friends and new are on the scene, and danger lurks around every corner. 

Of course, so do the talking mice.

While Verity and Dominic are off on a road trip, moving all of Verity's stuff (and her little colony of mice) from New York, the readers are introduced to her older brother, Alexander Price. While Verity wanted to become a ballroom dancer, Alex has always embraced the family legacy and currently works in the reptile house at a zoo in Ohio. His assistant is a gorgon who keeps the snakes on her head hidden under a beehive wig. Most days, they have to figure out how to sneak a young girl into the enclosure with the giant cobra without anyone noticing, as the girl and the cobra are both wadjets, and engaged to be married. They need time to get to know one another properly.

Alex is staying with his grandparents, trying to help them tend to his cousin Sarah, who's rather far from her old self after massively taxing her abilities helping Verity escape the Covenant in New York. With his various cryptozoological research and his duties to his unusual family, Alex keeps having to come up with excuses to his girlfriend, who keeps getting more and more irritated, and then the first body shows up. Shortly after, Shelby comes over to his grandparents' house for the evening, and after meeting Sarah, it's clear that she knows more about the supernatural than Alex ever suspected.

I really liked the first two books in the InCryptid series, but this one was a slow starter for me. I couldn't care less about Alex and his boring research into tiny feathered frogs or whatever they were. Only after it becomes obvious that Shelby may know a lot about cats, but she's not really shocked by Alex' other extracurricular activities either. It takes her a while to get used to the fact that both his grandmother and cousin are from a species of psychic, telepathic and normally very self-serving and sociopathic creatures, who not only aren't as evil as the rest of their species, but in fact deeply loved by the Prices. She has an easier time getting used to Alex' grandfather, who is a revenant.

Together they investigate the deaths (because the death toll keeps rising) and it becomes clear that whoever is responsible is also trying to kill Alex and possibly Shelby as well. I learned a lot about what various creatures could wholly or partially petrify a person, and how. While neither Alex or Shelby appealed to me as much as Verity and Dominic, it was cool to meet their grandparents and se how Sarah was doing, and once they are able to be honest with one another, it's clear that Alex and Shelby are pretty much perfect for one another.

The next book is also about Alex and Shelby - set in Australia! - but as I'm not as excited about that right now, I'm going to take a bit of a break from the series and read some other things before I continue with the series.

Judging a book by its cover: While there's nothing particularly bad about this cover, my mental images of Alex and Shelby look nothing like the people on this cover. It's otherwise a perfectly ok cover, which gives a better impression of what you might expect from the story than the one for Discount Armageddon. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 30: "Midnight Blue-Light Special" by Seanan McGuire

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 4 stars

This is the second book in the series. There may be some mild spoilers for the first book, Discount Armageddon, in this review.

Set a few months after the events in the previous book, Verity Price is still trying to make it as a ballroom dancer, while also trying to study all manner of supernatural beings, all while keeping humanity in general from finding out about them. After her former boss' niece took over the club where she worked as a waitress, turning it into more of a burlesque than a strip club, Verity also gets to dance more. Then Dominic de Luca, her sort-of boyfriend shows up and pretty much asks her to pack up and leave town as soon as possible. The Covenant of St. George are sending three representatives to the city to ascertain whether they should start a purge, and they will realise that Dominic has been lying to them. If they discover that his previously rigid views on cryptids has been swayed by a member of the renegade Price family (who they would hunt down and eradicate if they knew any were still alive), they will be ruthless.

Despite Dominic's dire warnings, Verity isn't about to jump ship and leave all the various cryptids she knows in the lurch. Instead she does what she can to warn all of them to lay low, and sets up a sort of safe house for several of the ones who can't easily pass for human. She's worried about Dominic and about where his true loyalties lie. Can he - will he - give up on a lifetime of training and the people who raised him to help her? All of this becomes secondary when an agent of the Covenant manages to capture Verity - now the issue becomes whether her years of training is good enough to withstand the torture and questioning from the Covenant and whether she can escape before they break her and make her reveal the truth about her family and her cryptid friends.

The tone of this book is quite a lot darker than in Discount Armageddon, which despite the somewhat tense final act was more of an adventure romp. Verity gives some background on the Covenant of St. George in the first book, as well as info on her family's history with the group. However, as the only member we meet is Dominic, who is relatively quickly swayed by Verity's arguments about cryptids not all being monsters, we don't really get the full picture of what the organisation's members are like and how single minded they can be.

As it turns out, one of the Covenant agents sent to New York is from the branch of the family that defected a few generations ago, and she is out for vengeance for the loss of status her family suffered since then. When she gets her hands on Verity, she's not exactly gentle. Verity, in turn, has her physical and mental strength tested to its fullest, trying to outsmart the Covenant and escape before they can torture her into revealing everything she knows.

While Verity is captured, some of the chapters are narrated by Verity's cousin by adoption, Sarah, who's not human, but a cryptid known colloquially as a cuckoo. They are telepathic, extremely intelligent and usually completely sociopathic. Sarah is only different because she was raised to have a conscience. Normally studying higher mathematics in New York, she is determined to help out when Verity is captured, no matter how scared she is, although her task is made more difficult since she can't telepathically reach Verity. Getting further insight into Sarah was good, and I also liked the added presence of some of Verity's co-workers/allies, especially Istas the waheela (an Inuit shapeshifter who really likes to rend and tear things).

The next two books in the series are about Verity's older brother, Alex. While sometimes a series can work with different narrators (Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld springs to mind), I'm slightly torn about this too, as I wanted more about Verity and Dominic before giving up on them.

Judging a book by its cover: This cover isn't exactly exciting, but it's not as actively off-putting as the one for book 1 either. It's nice to see both Verity and Sarah on the cover, as Sarah plays a really important part in the second half of the book. And at least both of them are dressed normally, instead of showing ridiculous amounts of skin.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 29: "Discount Armageddon" by Seanan McGuire

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 4 stars

From Goodreads, because I'm really far behind on my reviews, and it's a good summary of the book:

Ghoulies. Ghosties. Long-legged beasties. Things that go bump in the night...the Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity - and humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. Sounds pretty simple, right?

It would be, if it weren't for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family's old enemies, the Covenant of St. George. When a Price girl meets a Covenant boy, high stakes, high heels, and a lot of collateral damage are almost guaranteed. To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone's spreading rumours about a dragon sleeping underneath the city...

After it took me a few books to really get into it, I have been a huge fan of Seanan McGuire's October Daye series for many years. I was aware that she had written other paranormal fantasy books as well, but somehow never really felt the need to check them out (partially because of the dreadful outfit that the woman on the cover - who I now know is supposed to be Verity - is wearing). Also, I think I skimmed a blurb for this years ago and must have noticed the ballroom dancing more than the monster hunting. I was missing out. Only after my former Cannonball rival, now good online friend Jen K mentioned having blazed through the first three books in this series in about two days and really enjoying them (she's now read the entire series to date) was my interest peaked enough and checking my LibraryThing, I had in fact bought the first book on sale a while back (this is frequently the case - since I started reading and buying e-books, I own way more books than I can easily keep track of, hence the need for a digital archive). Since I have a baby, I can't really read three books in two days, but I did finish this one in about 24 hours.

I suspect fans of Supernatural would love these books. The first book is absolutely more light-hearted than the October Daye books, and Verity is a slightly more cheerful heroine. While ending up in danger, she's also not quite as near-death-prone as dear Toby. Verity is subletting an apartment from a Sasquatch and working part-time as a waitress in a strip joint run by a bogeyman. When not waitressing or trying to make it professionally as a ballroom dancer, she free runs across the rooftops of New York and tries to keep the cryptid (a nicer term than monster) population safe from humans and vice versa. Three generations ago, her family left the secret organisation known as the Covenant of St. George, a bunch of indiscriminate monster hunters (their motto seems to be: if it isn't human, it should probably be eradicated) because of a difference in ideology. Now they are on the Covenant's most wanted list, so Verity needs to keep her real identity secret. Her family believe that as long as cryptids are not a danger to their local eco system, they should be allowed to live and let live. This doesn't mean that Verity isn't trained in a range of combat styles and can use bladed weapons and firearms extremely well to protect herself and to take out cryptid threats.

While out on patrol one evening, she ends up in in a snare, discovering that the Covenant of St. George has sent a representative, Dominic de Luca, to the city to check whether the city needs a purge or not. The Covenant is bad news for cryptids and for members of the Price family, but after some negotiation, Verity and Dominic agree on an uneasy truce. Single, female cryptids keep disappearing, however, and initially, Verity suspects the Covenant agent of killing them, while Dominic thinks Verity has been warning them, so they've fled town. Once they realise that neither is to blame, but some kind of third party, they agree to work together to find out who's actually to blame.

It's obvious to anyone who's ever read a single romantic narrative that Verity and Dominic, especially because they start out as bitter enemies, at least on paper, are probably going to end up falling for one another. Dominic is initially rather stuffy and has pretty much been raised by a cult whose told him that anything not human is evil, so it takes him a little while to loosen up, but the longer he and Verity work together, the more he comes around to her way of thinking (there is also historical precedent for that - one of Verity's ancestors also ended up with the Covenant agent sent to bring her down).

Now that I've finally started these books, I'm both sad that it took me so long, and glad, because now there are seven books in the series so far (as well as a lot of novellas and short stories, McGuire is always big on fleshing out her world-building with bonus short fiction) and lots for me to read before I have to wait for new releases. It's always fun to find a new paranormal/urban fantasy series to binge-read and these are going to keep me busy for a while to come.

Judging a book by its cover: Oh, this cover. An athletic blonde in a minuscule parody of a schoolgirl's outfit. In pink. Now that I've read the book, I know that it's a very appropriate cover, and portrays Verity pretty perfectly. The awful outfit is what she's forced to wear while waitressing at the strip club and having her sit on a rooftop with a gun, a sword strapped to her back, is also perfectly within the realms of what she does in her spare time. But I am not going to lie, as I mentioned in the review above, I totally judged this book and avoided it for years, despite really liking the October Daye series, simply because I thought the cover was so awful.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.