Thursday, March 15, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7) by Seanan McGuire




Tricks for Free is the seventh of Seanan McGuire's InCryptid novels, all of which I have reviewed on this blog previously.  More specifically, it's the second book in the series to follow Antimony Price, my favorite heroine in the series, and the direct sequel to last year's "Magic for Nothing," my favorite book in the series.  So I was really looking forward to this one, and actually read it completely through on the night it came out and have reread a bunch since then.

For those who have missed the prior InCryptid works, the series is McGuire's other urban fantasy series (after her more popular October Daye series) and is a lighter more comedic series than October Daye.  In the series, Cryptids - beings unexplainable by modern science (think Gorgons, Sylphs, Chupacabras, and anything similar you can think of) - are real, and live in hiding among us.  The series' protagonists, the Price-Healy family, try to help the Cryptid communities of North America live in peace and without interference from the genocidal monster-hunting Covenant of St. George.  Each book follows a different member of the Price family - in this case youngest child Antimony - as they attempt to help the Cryptid community without giving away their existence to the Covenant, or others who would cause harm.

Tricks for Free is a solid addition to the series, but definitely on the lower end of the series, which is a disappointment because its predecessor was my favorite book in the series.  Due to the circumstances of the book (more on that below), it is the first book in the series to not feature the series' best comic relief (the Aeslin Mice) and it shows.  The story is still solid, and I still love Antimony as the protagonist, but it's probably the worst in the series since the beginning.

*Note: The book comes with a free Novella attached, but said Novella was previously released for subscribers to McGuire's patreon, which I am, so I will not be reviewing it in this post, as it wasn't new to me. 
---------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------
 After the events of Magic for Nothing, Antimony Price is now in hiding from everyone - from her enemies, friends, and family.  She's even the first member of her family to be without an Aeslin Mouse to record her activities since the Mice were discovered by her ancestor.  The only person she is in contact with is her dead Aunt Mary, a Crossroads ghost.

In order to make herself impossible for the Covenant to track, Antimony has gotten a job at an amusement park in Florida - Lowryland, a second rate Disneyworld - and is living with a Sylph (her friend Fern from back home who randomly turned up nearby) and a Gorgon under the name "Melody West."  She's just trying to survive in this situation until she can hear something that will allow her to go back to her family.  Oh and she's still trying to control her nascent magical powers, which still result in her threatening to start fires when she's not careful.

But when Antimony winds up too close to an accidental death in the park, she comes to the attention of the true force behind Lowryland - a cabal of magic-users who offer to teach her how to truly control her powers.....or else.  Left with no other choice, Antimony decides to accept said tutelage....but is this Cabal really aiming to help her?  Or just to exploit her?  And who or what is responsible for the increasingly deadly accidents that keep happening in the park?

If Antimony is not careful, neither her nor her friends will survive the second Happiest Place on Earth, never mind keeping themselves hidden from the Covenant.....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The good news about this book is that its characters remain largely wonderful.  Antimony remains my favorite of the Price sibling protagonists - snarky and geek-culture influenced, but very unsure of herself - and she continues to develop here.  She's again the sole Point of View character in this book and it still works extremely well.  Antimony's friends also are more fleshed out here than they are in the short stories and her and Sam (It's not a spoiler he shows up given he's on the cover) are an excellent and fun couple - though very different from the prior couples in the series.

The bad news is that the book lacks Aeslin Mice.  The mice have always been a source of joy in reading the series - they're rarely (although sometimes they are) a central plot element of each story, but the moments they intrude never fail to lighten the mood and provide humor in situations where there might otherwise not be.  It's part of what keeps the series lighter than the October Daye series.  There are no mice here, and Annie's stories in this book and the last have been by definition darker than the prior books, so the loss of them is really felt hard.

In addition, the book is a bit simpler in turns of twists and turns compared to some of the prior books in the series - the eventual foes Annie has to face are rather predictable, and while the book isn't totally predictable in how the final confrontation turns out (I wasn't expecting one major plot element that will have lasting effects), the book kind of suffers a little bit for it.  And except for that aforementioned major plot element, there really was very little in this book that didn't feel like it wasn't a throw away story in the middle of the series' myth-arc, especially after Magic for Nothing dealt heavily with the myth arc.

In short, this book is solid and is still good, but just suffers in comparison to its predecessor.  McGuire's books have set a certain standard which this book just barely fails to live up to.  Ah well, the next book (publishing date unknown at this point) promises to continue Annie's story, and I'll probably preorder that one to finish on release night as well.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)