Book 8 of the 2024 Read Your Hoard Challenge
This series, which began as good, fluffy fun, has taken a rather serious turn. This volume is narrated by Mary Dunlavey, former crossroads ghost, now full time caretaker/ babysitter for the Price family. The whole Price family has been sort of reunited, since Alice managed to rescue her husband Thomas (see Backpacking Through Bedlam). Honestly, having this many reckless, violent people together in one family compound seems like an extraordinarily bad idea.
However, they have no time for family bonding. The Covenant of St. George, the group that the Prices split from decades ago, have come to North America with two goals: their leader, Leonard Cunningham, wants Antimony Price as his wife (if she can be suitably convinced to abandon her family and her values); and they also want to purge the continent’s cryptid populations, especially the recently rediscovered dragon, William, who is responsible for bringing dragons back from the brink of extinction. They have more operatives and more resources. But the Price family knows how to fight dirty.
Actually, this plan is largely Mary's doing. She devises the plan to make victory too expensive for the Covenant. In doing so, she pushes herself to a dangerous degree. And I have to give Seanan McGuire credit—she doesn't go easy on her fictional family. There are deaths, y'all, and not just peripheral characters. (When I first started the book, I ignored the family tree at the beginning, thinking I knew them all too well to need it. I was soon refreshing my memory as the family reunion got complicated.)
If you've come this far, as I have, with McGuire's family of cryptozoologists, you are fond of them and their antics. I mourn with them for their losses and wonder how things will shake out. Thank goodness that Ms. McGuire can pump out the fiction, as I want to know the upshot. I have to hope there's another book in the offing.
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