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Fantasy. Fiction. Thriller. HTML:The fourth book in New York Times-bestselling Seanan McGuire's witty urban fantasy InCryptid series about a family of cryptozoologists who act as a buffer between humans and the magical creatures living in secret around us. "The only thing more fun than an October Daye book is an InCryptid book." —Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Sookie Stackhouse series Endangered, adjective: Threatended with extinction or immidiate harm. Australia, noun: A good place to become endangered. Alexander Price has survived gorgons, basilisks, and his own family—no small feat, considering that his family includes two telepaths, a reanimated corpse, and a colony of talking, pantheistic mice. Still, he’s starting to feel like he’s got the hang of things…at least until his girlfriend, Shelby Tanner, shows up, asking pointed questions about werewolves and the state of his passport. From there, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to Australia, a continent filled with new challenges, new dangers, and yes, rival cryptozoologists who don’t like their “visiting expert” very much. Australia is a cryptozoologist’s dream, filled with unique species and unique challenges. Unfortunately, it’s also filled with Shelby’s family, who aren’t delighted by the length of her stay in America. And then there are the werewolves to consider: infected killing machines who would like nothing more than to claim the continent as their own. The continent which currently includes Alex. Survival is hard enough when you’re on familiar ground. Alex Price is very far from home, but there’s one thing he knows for sure: he’s not going down without a fight.… (more)
User reviews
Still straight-up good storytelling, good characters, and now an exciting new setting. Also still full of fantastic cryptids, old and new. I particularly liked Basil.
In this one, Alex Price (the brother of the main character of the first two books) is taken back to Australia by his girlfriend to help manage werewolves making their way to the continent. And in InCryptid-land, lycanthropy is even worse than you'd normally think, because any mammal can be turned into a werewolf, so the potential pool of wolves is much larger. Also, being an island ecosystem, having a whole new set of predators around could be really devastating. (This in a continent that has like a million feral camels because someone thought camels were a good idea.) But of course, things get to be more complicated, and y'know. Werewolf shenanigans of a creative and clever variety.
Even though it's a different set of characters from the first Alex book, I think I enjoyed this one a bit more than the previous one. The setting was well thought through, with a good cast of characters among the Australian crypto-zoologist crew, and the writing is, as usual, a lot of fun - good character beats and humor, a different enough voice from Verity (or Toby), top notch use of talking mice. Lots of creative non-humans, both sentient and not, really. Those relationships are always interesting to see here. And the plot had some good twists, which I will not divulge. It's also more horror-y than a lot of McGuire's stories are; I'm not really a huge fan of that generally, but it wasn't enough to put me off.
A couple of points, though: there's always so much more people talking about how proficient they are at escaping or hurting each other in this series, a lot of posturing, and... I guess maybe it's not unrealistic, given the character set, but there always comes a point in these where I've had enough of it, and it's never when the book has run out, it seems. And some of the stuff around the werewolf plot and Alex's attitude towards it seemed... again, maybe not unrealistic for the character, but I did want to shake him a couple of times, and was happy when essentially one of the other characters finally did.
So yeah, I mean... these are still fun reads, and I'm not stopping with them. I already have #5 on my nightstand. We'll see how long it takes to get to that one. I wouldn't read this one first (definitely at least read Half-Off Ragnarok before this), but if you're enjoying the series, this'll be good for you, too.
Alex and Shelby might not always seem like the most obvious couple, but watching
On to other things. It's great to see Sarah getting better. She isn't herself yet, but she is closer than she was during the last book. I continue to love the Aeslin mice. They are a big hit in every book and as I learn more about them, I like them even more.
There have been two books for Verity and Dominic, two books for Alex and Shelby, will Antimony be next? Can't wait to find out and learn more about her.
* This book was provided free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Alex knows it’s time to get worried when his girlfriend Shelby start asking questions about werewolves. Ends up Shelby’s home country of Australia is having some trouble with werewolves and Shelby’s family needs Alex’s expertise. Against his better judgement Alex journeys to Australia in hopes of preventing a widespread outbreak of werewolfism. Hopefully he can survive the werewolves and, even tougher, survive meeting Shelby’s family.
This book again follows Alex, Verity's brother. This time the story takes us to Australia where we meet tons of new and intriguing creatures. Additionally we get to meet Shelby's family, they are just as crazy as the Price family.
There is a ton of action in here as well as some wonderful cryptozoology. I truly enjoyed this book, it was just a great pleasure to read. This book deals more with werewolfism as a virus, so at times it has a bit of this viral outbreak panic feel to it. We do still get to meet some fascinating creatures as well though.
Most of the story is a sort of mystery where Alex and Shelby (and her family) are trying to track down patient zero and figure out who has and has not been infected.
I love both Alex and Shelby as characters; they have a lot of depth to them and are fun to read about. The Aeslin mice play a huge role in this story as well; they are hilarious and intriguing little beasts.
The story wraps up nicely and I just really enjoyed the whole book. In fact I have really loved this series as a whole.
Overall this is a wonderfully fun and creative addition to the InCryptid series. This whole series is recommended to urban fantasy fans; it's more light-hearted than McGuire's October Daye series but just as wonderful. I can’t wait to see what Chaos Choreography holds for us. I also highly recommend McGuire’s October Daye series; it is less action-packed than this one but still wonderfully creative urban fantasy.
The book was rip-roaringly wonderful except when the sun went out and there was a total eclipse. Can't get over it. Am CRUSHED.
5/5 stars for making me cry real tears. Many times.
Shelby's family is why I didn't like this book even more; they're over-the-top asses to Alex and it teetered on caricature.
The plot was good; while I wasn't shocked by the turn of events, I didn't see them coming, either. I love how the author and Alex brought in the wadjets, using this angle to work in the injustice of ‘otherness’, though the Yowie's (who I loved) circumstances turned what was a subtle but effective highlight on that injustice into something more like a sledgehammer.
The Aeslin mice are here but I did not appreciate the turn of events the author took with them. Maybe she'd argue it was necessary to the story line, but she'd never convince me. Luckily it was a relatively short scene.
With every book of McGuire's I've read, I have both enjoyed them and found them problematic. That I mostly keep coming back (I've skipped a few) for more Price family antics suggests she gets it right more often than she doesn't.