Backpacking through Bedlam
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4.6 • 62 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Seanan McGuire's New York Times-bestselling and Hugo Award-nominated urban fantasy InCryptid series continues with the twelfth book following the Price family, cryptozoologists who study and protect the creatures living in secret all around us.
Reunion, noun:
1. The state of being united again.
Reconciliation, noun:
1. An act of reconciling, as when former enemies agree to an amiable truce.
2. The process of making consistent or compatible.
3. See also “impossible.”
Alice Price-Healy gave up her life for fifty years to focus completely on the search for her missing husband. The danger of focus like that is that it leaves little room for thinking about what happens after…and now that she’s finally managed to find Thomas, she has no idea what she’s supposed to do next. The fact that he comes with a surrogate daughter who may or may not have some connection to Alice’s recently adopted grandson is just icing on the complicated cake.
So the three of them are heading for the most complicated place in the universe: they’re going home.
But things on Earth have changed while Alice, Thomas, and Sally have been away. The Covenant of St. George, antagonized by Verity’s declaration of war and Sarah’s temporary relocation of an entire college campus, is trying to retake North America from the cryptids and cryptozoologists who’ve been keeping the peace for the past hundred years. And they’re starting in New York.
Alice and company have barely been back for an hour before the Ocean Lady and the Queen of the Routewitches are sending them to New York to help, and they find themselves embroiled in the politics of dragons, kidnappings, and of course, the most dangerous people of all: family.
Getting “back to normal” may be the hardest task Alice has undertaken yet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In many ways a capstone to all that's come before, McGuire's entertaining 12th InCryptid urban fantasy (after Spelunking Through Hell) draws together numerous characters and threads from earlier installments, offering updates on previous protagonists and giving fan-favorite supporting characters more room to shine. Cryptologist-turned-adventurer Alice Price-Healy has finally reunited with her missing husband, Thomas, after 50 years spent searching for him through myriad alternate worlds, but their long separation means they must work to rebuild their relationship. They barely have time to settle into a new normal after returning home along with their pseudo-daughter, Sally, before they're called to travel to New York, where other members of the extended Price family are engaged in a quiet war with the monster-hunting Covenant of St. George, who are determined to wipe out every cryptid in the city—and the Prices along with them. Toggling between the aftermath of Alice and Thomas's reunion, the conflict against the Covenant, and flashbacks to Alice's earliest adventures, there's a slight kitchen sink feel to this offering, but, as always, McGuire offers plenty of action and mayhem, complex worldbuilding, snappy dialogue, and a strong focus on the strength of family—both biological and found. Fans will not be disappointed.
Customer Reviews
The comfort of old friends
I look forward to every new book in this delightful and entertaining series. It’s like a reunion of old friends with a smattering of chaos, punches and grenades.
Long Road Home…
So satisfying to have reached this
bright edged point of a stars sharp tip disguised as ‘dirt path heading onto the porch’ moment, an ending of sorts
in the spiraling arc
of a single arm
in the whirling galaxy of stories this Family has made such lives on.
Thank you so very much, Seanan McGuire. You bring us into other people’s living moments so clear and cleanly, I wouldn’t wonder if an Aeslin colony once offered an ancestor of yours a transfusion in a dire instance, one mouse sized drop from any willing… and somehow, in HealyPrice fashion, that sillily given love stayed truly in the heartblood of your line.
I’ve been dreaming and dreading the reunion of Alice and Thomas since I met the family, to the point where subliminally I felt the kids books early in the series should hurry up and get out of the way so we could learn
WHAT HAPPENED?!?
quickly followed by
AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED!?!
Fortunately for me and the rest of your readers, you (and your whole Team family)
truly know best how to tell the tail, (I mean tale! Truly no pun intended)
and you made me fall in love with them all. Sometimes reluctantly, grudgingly, but family is Family, and I too feel they are mine to protect… and to smack around when necessary. Sometimes they even seem to listen, making me sniff, shrug and nod, turning my face away from the page to hide semi reluctant approval in a smile.
The multi layered/textured yarn you’ve spun together has warmed, charmed, infuriated, delighted, ripped harsh laughs (some with tears)
to tickled burbling giggling hummms from,
and positively enraptured,
me,
for ever so very many hours of days and nights.
I can’t wait for you to bring all the angles of perspective from so many disparate eyes and hearts
through so much time
into focus for us again.
The universe awaits another glittering spray of stardust that holds seeds of life
brought to personhood,
as you share light from behind your eyes transmuted into
words on pages that hold worlds, Lady.
Worlds beyond imagination (at least my imagination)
until you take us there, and our own essential stardust makings sift together with the life and lives you have revealed or created.
I can’t wait!!
I never can… yet I always do.
And with gratitude every time, I will fan open the cover and pages to reach through the portal you have found (or forcefully created and constantly reopen) to this world
and this Family of choice and blood whom I deeply adore.
Well done, Woman! Your cats are so proud of you, whatever their demeanor.
I’m sending huge gentle iridescent bubbles, crafted with light, love,
and the warm strength of Lady Luck cradling you and yours gently in her hands, I send them drifting to you in True Thanks,
and blessings in turn for all you have shared with us,
heart and soul.
And it’s not ALL about selfishly needing you well and writing for decades more, I swear….
Blessed be, Sister.
~Shae D.
Holy wow!
It just keeps getting better! Can’t wait to see everyone get back together and the fireworks that ensue!! Another magnificent book in a truly fantabulous series!