Discount Armageddon (2012)
Written by: Seanan McGuire
Series: InCryptid (Book #1)
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 11 hours, 20 minutes (Audiobook)
Publisher: Audible Studios
Why I Chose It: I am staff on a new speculative media convention called MultiverseCon (shameless plug! Come visit us in Atlanta in October!). Seanan McGuire is our Author Guest of Honor, which I’m super-excited about. While I’d read some shorts by Seanan and have been on panels with her at conventions, I’d never actually read any of her novels. I decided I needed to remedy that.
When I went to my Audible account to snag a book, I realized I already had this one in my library. (Don’t get me started on how digital and audio media has made my TBR pile go kablooey!) So here we are!
The Premise:
Verity Price is an internationally ranked ballroom dancer who competed on the hit reality show Dance or Die, coming in second in the nail-biting race to find out who would be America’s most beloved dancer. She’s living and working in Manhattan, on the other side of the country from her beloved family, pursuing her dream of a career in dance.
And talking mice live in her closet, her best friend is a telepathic mathematician, and oh, right. She works in cryptozoological conservation when she’s not on stage or working as a cocktail waitress to pay the bills. Between bullets and high heels, she has a lot of expenses—and some of them are easier to explain than others.
As the latest in a long line of cryptozoologists, scholars, and monster hunters, Verity has a lot to live up to. The cryptids of the world need her to look out for them, and she’s more than up for the job—but when the Covenant of St. George starts sniffing around, who’s going to look out for her?
Mild character spoilers.
Discussion: I’ve always been a fan of urban fantasy, even before it was an official sub-genre. The idea of magic or supernatural creatures being a part of our everyday world is what always drew me to urban fantasy. High fantasy is fine. But if it could be real… Yeah, that was the draw.
The InCryptid world is our world. But with cool creatures, both sentient and not, that don’t exist in real life (or do they??). Things like dragons (exinct; maybe), bogeymen, gorgons, unicorns, and things we’re less familiar with, such as Aeslin Mice (omg, my favorite! More on them later).
Verity Price is part of a family who, generations ago, broke from the Covenant of St. George. Their original mandate was to fight monsters that threatened mankind. But, as so many human organizations do, it morphed into something that didn’t look like its original self. The Covenant began hunting anything that hadn’t been listed as being on the Ark with Noah. (Nevermind the question of the accuracy of any such list which might exist.) This meant any cryptid was fair game for slaughter, even the good ones.
Verity’s family left the Covenant when they realized most sentient cryptids, like humans, were just trying to survive and get by, and the family has been in hiding ever since, even while trying to both study and aid the cryptid population.
While being raised to fight and study cryptids, Verity found another passion: dancing. Specifically, ballroom dancing. Discount Armageddon is set in New York City, where Verity has moved for a year to follow her passion for dance and also help the cryptid folks living there. Her family believes it will give her the chance to decide once and for all which path she wants to take. Verity believes it’ll show her family she can do both.
The things I loved:
The sheer creativity in creating the dozens of species Verity interacts with is impressive. I really loved seeing how they lived and adapted to human city living. A Gorgon in the story, for example, stuffs her snake hair into a wig in order to wait tables at the place Verity works.
Verity’s personality is fun. She’s smart, but young, and all of that comes out in her dealings with other people. But she’s also very compassionate. When she finds a cryptid species she’s not too familiar with, the cryptozoologist in her wants to study them, but the human being in her understands that questions she’d want answered would be a huge invasion of privacy (and creepy). So she errs on the side of compassion and understanding. While it may get her into trouble sometimes, I like it about her.
The Aeslin Mice. These are the best ever, I swear. The mice are part of a large group originally found (and protected) by Verity’s great-great grandmother (I think; maybe one more “great?”) just before the family left the Covenant. They are sentient cryptids who are deeply, fanatically religious. Their gods? The men of the Price family. Women are seen as high priestesses. The mice also act as oral historians, as all of their rites and celebrations are events from the Price family’s history.
Whenever something happens, whether it’s Verity surviving an attack or simply waking up in the morning, the mice rejoice, generally in a very loud, celebratory way. “Hail! The Arboreal Priestess’s Return to Consciousness!” Every person in Verity’s orbit gets their own title designation. In a later book, when Verity’s Uncle Mike comes for a visit and is complaining about her not eating enough, he has a pot roast cooking in the oven. It’s clear that this is an ongoing issue he chides her about regularly when the Aeslin Mice hail him as “God of Goddammit, Eat Something Already.” Haha! I love the mice!
I’m staying away from the plot deliberately to avoid spoilers, but I will say that it works perfectly fine as a standard urban fantasy plot. What makes it interesting is the setting and environment.
Things I didn’t love as much:
Most of my complaints about the book are likely not going to be as bothersome for people who don’t reside in my head. They’re mostly writing issues. Too many frou-frou speech tags, hissing that doesn’t contain sibilant sounds. And blinking as an indicator of surprise. These are all editorial issues for me, and while they’d be fine in moderation, they’re very much a crutch for the author, especially the blinking. In a 5-minute span, there were three different instances of someone blinking at someone else. I find it to be lazy writing, and I’m hoping she tones it down in future books.
In Conclusion: Well, I’m sure you can tell that I enjoyed this book. I’m currently listening to Book 3, which features Verity’s brother Alex and is set in Ohio.
If you don’t mind a lot of blinking (SO MUCH BLINKING), and you enjoy urban fantasy, I definitely recommend this fun series from Seanan McGuire!
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