An excellent follow up to the last volume!
I love Seanan McGuire’s body of work. (Note: I review a bunch of her books so I am copying part of some of my other reviews here to save time.). She has quickly become my favorite living writer and I feel very lucky that she is so prolific. I was first introduced to her work when her book Parasite, written as Mira Grant, was nominated for a Hugo Award. I loved it and quickly devoured the Newsflesh series before I realized that Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire were the same person.
I started reading her works under her own name, starting with Sparrow Hill Road, which is amazing, but I picked it because I was intimidated by her long running October Daye series. When Incryptid was nominated for the Best Series Hugo in 2018, I dove into that and I loved it! It is probably my second favorite series by McGuire (Velveteen Vs. holds a special place in my heart).
This is the first Incryptid book since the series switched publishers from DAW to Tor, and I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be granted and advanced reader copy, I was overjoyed when Tor and NetGalley awarded me an eARC of the latest Incryptid book, in exchange for an honest review.
The book starts with what seemed like a recap for new readers, but it was incredibly well done and did not ostracized me, a long time reader of this series.
The book picks up with Mary’s story, not too long after the conclusion of the last volume. We get to visit with several other family members before the story kicks in into high gear.
One of the most wonderful things for me in this book was to get more with some characters that have not had a lot of narrative time until now. We get to spend more time with Elsie and with Arthur. After Artie was shattered and put back together again, we have not spent a lot of time with him, and I am so glad that we did, even if the more we learned about him the sad I get about his fate.
The actual plot of this book is a lot of fun, and it advance sis the overall fight-with-the-Covenant storyline in a satisfying way.
I can’t wait to see what happens next!