Seanan McGuire – Discount Armageddon

The first book in the InCryptid series, published March 6, 2012.
Genre: urban fantasy
Cover: nice, I like her attitude.



Cryptid, noun: Any creature whose existence has not yet been proven by science. See also “monster”.
Cryptozoologist, noun: Any person who thinks hunting for cryptids is a food idea. See also: “idiot”.
Ghoulies. Ghosties. Long-legged beasties. Things that go bump in the night... and that’s just the beginning. 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 rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city...
A lifetime of training isn’t enough to prepare Verity for what’s ahead – especially not for Dominic De Luca, the Covenant’s newest operative. When a Price girl meets a Covenant boy, high stakes, high heels and a lot of collateral damage are almost guaranteed.


After reading lots of glowing reviews about this series and other books written by Seanan McGuire, I had to buy the book when it was available on my favourite secondhand website. And although I did enjoy the story and the writing style, I am certainly not blown away by it. It was nice, it was original, but also a bit too much over the top for my tastes. The humor felt a bit forced at times. And I would have liked to know why those mice celebrated so many strange things.
I also think that Verity is way too trusting too soon concerning Dominic De Luca, he does believe her and her family to be traitors, and works for their biggest enemy. It is also not explained how he has found her in her “alias”, or her house.

The plot of the story though, that was a good one. I did like that, and how original the story is, but that is more due to the very unusual cryptids living in New York. And of course, the dragon. I do have a fondness for books with dragons. It is a nice mix of good ones and bad ones and ugly ones. Verity’s family is nice and quirky too, and I am very happy I did not grow up with them.

So, I did like parts of the story, but other parts not so much, and I found myself not in a hurry to finish the book. I will probably read the next book one day, but will wait for a cheap copy. I will try Seanan McGuire’s other series, which is supposedly better. I do have some of those books as well.

7 stars.

© 2013 Reviews by Aurian