Wednesday, August 1, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Girl in the Green Silk Gown by Seanan McGuire




  The Girl in the Green Silk Gown is the second "book" in Seanan McGuire's "Ghost Roads" urban fantasy series, following the hitchhiking ghost Rose Marshall.  I say "second book" and I need to qualify that statement - the Ghost Roads series takes place in the same universe as her inCryptid stories (and shares some characters at times) and the first book, Sparrow Hill Road, is really more of a collection of previously published short stories.  As such, that first book wasn't one cohesive story, but about twelve stories with common characters and themes and a common long-term plot arc.  The Girl in the Green Silk Gown is the first book therefore in this series to be one novel-length story from beginning to end.

  And well...the result is okay.  I liked The Girl in the Green Silk Gown overall, but it borders on the edge of Decent/Good and never gets higher than that, unlike some of the short stories which made up its predecessor (which I thought were really good).  I think a large part of that is that the book separates Rose from the world that makes her truly interesting - the "world" of the Twilight, where various ghosts of different types reside. The result is a solid story sure, but one that just doesn't have the special things that we see in her related inCryptid and totally separate October Daye series.

Note: You do not need to read Sparrow Hill Road necessarily to read this book - like her inCryptid books, McGuire tries to recap what you need to know in the first few chapters - but it is highly recommended you do so. 

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------
Rose Marshall is in a good place - well, for a dead woman.  She has magical protection that prevents her original killer and ultimate nemesis Bobby Cross from laying a hand on her.  She has back the love of her mortal life, Gary, who turned himself into her car so that she could be with him forever, and her friend Emma the bean sidhe still manages the "Last Dance" diner she hangs out in the twilight.  Being dead has never been so good.

Of course it couldn't last.

For Bobby Cross has not been content to allow Rose her escape, and manages to manipulate foolish mortals into doing the unthinkable - bringing Rose back to life and eliminating her magical protection, rending her fully vulnerable.  Even worse, not being alive for sixty years has left Rose not used to even some of the more basic necessities that being alive entail.

Rose will have to reach out to uncertain allies, and get help from an old enemy, if she wants to not wind up dashed on Bobby Cross' windshield and to get back to the Ghost-Roads.  For if she dies this time, she's almost certainly not coming back as a ghost, and will never see her friends and love ever again....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This book once again takes us back to the story of Rose Marshall, the urban legend of a ghost who hitchhikes throughout the twilight and the real world, helping trying to save the lives of people on the road where possible, and helping those who can't be saved to their peaceful afterlife when it's not.  She's a fun character - a bit sarcastic (although not as witty as any of the inCryptid heroines she shares a universe with) and definitely quick thinking as she's frequently called into situations that threaten lethal (or what can be lethal to a ghost) harm if she's not quick.

And this world of the living and dead features some pretty interesting side characters as well - besides Rose, there's Emma, the bean sidhe (think "banshee") who manages Rose's hang-out spot and is her best friend, and most interestingly there are Apple and the rest of the Routewitches.  We've learned some about Routewitches in Sparrow Hill Road and in some of the inCryptid stories, but we get our deepest look at them and their queen here, and they're an interesting type of magic-user that i haven't seen the like of in many other series.

Still, there are two issues with The Girl in the Green Silk Gown that knock it down quite a bit from its potential.  The first is, as I mentioned before the jump, that the most interesting part of the Rose Marshall stories has usually been her interactions with and our being introduced to all of the different aspects of the Twilight, the various types of ghosts and the beings that interact with them.  Rose doesn't act as a psychopomp at all in this book, and the entities she interacts with are basically the same types we've seen before - the aforementioned routewitches mostly.  The one exception is a Dullahan which is a new feature, but she essentially acts just as a guide and really doesn't do anything.

The second is that the book repeatedly features a twist that gets old fairly quickly - twice early on, and once in the climax that just made me absolutely groan.  I'm still not sure the last version of that twist works - and if it does, it works barely - and it was a very disappointing way to end this adventure.

I'll be there for the next book in this series, if there is one - I enjoy McGuire enough to give her the benefit of the doubt and parts of Sparrow Hill Road were great enough to keep me interested - but this book has definitely lowered my enthusiasm.  I hope that if there is another in the series, it'll focus on a plot that isn't directly related to the long-term arc of Bobby Cross so directly though, as it's maybe the least interesting part of this universe.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)