I somehow missed that Seanan McGuire had released a new InCryptid novel. I have since remdided that situation and finished Pocket Apocalypse on my lunch hour today.
We're back with cryptozoologist/herpetologist Alex Price as he and his girlfriend Shelby wind up leaving Ohio for a trip back to Queensland Austraila to help her family deal with a lycanthropy outbreak. Because in Australia, even the invasive species want to kill you.
Shelby's family is part of the Thirty-six Society, who also dislike the Covenant of St. George, although they're not particularly fond of the Price family either. Particularly Alex, whom Shelby announces she's engaged to. Not to mention the Thirty-Sixers seem to be more interested in conserving indigenous non-sapient life, thereby ignoring the sapient cryptids in their own (metaphorical) backyard.
This being Australia, we also get funnel spiders, drop bears, and bunyip to go along with the problems of a lycanthropy issue. (In this world, Lycanthropy is a virus that affects mammals and spreads via fluid transfer. It evidently evolved out of the therianthrope community. Non-mammalian spec ies are immune, making the wadjet doctor invaluable for treatment.) Australia, being an island, has a fairly big issue with invasive species.
Anyway, the whole plot revolves around new werewolves surviving the first change (which tends to kill smaller mammals) and keeping their human rationality to attempt to take over. We also get to watch Shelby's family dynamic and Alex dealing with being the outsider, flipping around the dynamic of the last book.
As a side note, two books back, I complained a bit about the "Strong woman being put in 'woman in jeopardy'" territory. In this one, we get to see the not quite as strong male lead get tied up and taken hostage at a few points. Kind of a nice turn on the trope.
I enjoy InCryptid. According to the autho, book 5 will return to Verity. Which is good, although I hope Alex does return sooner or later. Also, I'd love to see a book centered on the youngest sibling, antimony, since she's quite the secondhand character.
No comments:
Post a Comment