Tuesday, December 19, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Pocket Apocalypse (inCryptid) by Seanan McGuire


Pocket Apocalypse is the fourth inCryptid book and the second book to follow Alexander "Alex" Price.  I reviewed the first book to follow Alex, Half-Off Ragnarok, yesterday HERE.  As I mentioned in the last review, you could have started the inCryptid series with Half-Off Ragnarok without any problems - but I would not recommend starting the series with this book, as it is basically building upon HOR (McGuire plants enough context in this book to allow a new reader to try to start here, but it seems inadvisable).

However, if you enjoyed Half-Off Ragnarok, you should enjoy Pocket Apocalypse.  Whereas the second inCryptid book (Midnight Blue-Light Special) with Verity delved deeper into the world built by the first book, this book moves the main characters wholly to a new part of the world: Australia.  Oh and it deals with werewolves.  Because things couldn't be dangerous enough for Alex Price.  But the end result is yet again a fun book.


-------------------------------------------------Short Review----------------------------------------------------
Werewolves.   To the mammal members of the Cryptozoologist Price Family, which regularly deals with creatures such as gorgons, basilisks, dragons, bogeymen, cuckoos, et al, there is nothing scarier.  So when Alex Price is asked by his Australian Cryptozoologist girlfriend Shelby Tanner to come back to Australia to help her family with an outbreak of the Lyncanthropy-w virus, he's extremely tempted to say no.  But after Shelby helped Alex survive a killer gorgon hybrid - Alex knows he has no choice but to help.  Also he's kind of in love with Shelby.  And so it's off to Australia, the deadliest continent known to man, to face one of the most deadly diseases known to cryptozoology.

But things may be even worse than it seems.  Not only does Shelby's family immediately take a dislike to Alex, despite a greater knowledge of how to deal with the lyncanthropy virus, but the cryptozoology organization they belong to - the "36 Society" - doesn't seem to cooperate with other sentient cryptids.  And while werewolves are supposed to be wholly irrational aggressive killers, the ones in Australia seem to be employing planning and tactics as they hunt.

And then Alex gets bitten by one of them......and it looks like he might not be coming home ever again....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Again, this book bears all the standard hallmarks of an inCryptid novel at this point:  Humorous quotes from family members and funny scene descriptions to start each chapter, first person narrative from a Price family member, and a quick and often action packed narrative.  This is the first inCryptid book without any other Price Family (or at least adopted family) members being involved, but the story does not suffer from it at all.

Alex remains an excellent character, and after being ambivalent at first about Shelby in the last book, I think she works excellent here as a supporting protagonist.  And to my great joy, this book involves to a greater extent my favorite inCryptid characters:  the Mice.  Obviously they're not active protagonists, but they're more involved here for reasons I shan't spoil, and I can't help but love them.  The other new minor characters - the members of the Thirty Six Society are interesting twists on the Price Family/Covenant as well, whose ethos is sort of in between the two organizations/families.

Really my only complaint about this book is that due to the Werewolf problem taking priority over nearly everything else, we didn't get too much of a look at Australia's unique cryptid wildlife (we get some), which has been reference so amusingly in prior books/stories.  Hopefully we'll be back at some point.

Again, if you liked the previous books, you'll enjoy this one, as it's excellent breezy urban fantasy.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)