That Ain’t Witchcraft, That’s The Way You Do It: A Review

(If the review title is puzzling, read on.) Folks, I’m not always the brightest of bulbs. I miss things. It took me three books with Antimony Price before it clicked where the inspiration for the titles was coming from. Dire Straits, anyone? I sort of thought about it after Tricks For Free, but when I saw the title That Ain’t Witchcraft, I decided I must be wrong. Then I randomly heard “Money For Nothing,” and the puzzle pieces fell into place. Yeah. I’m slow.

All of that to say that, yes, you’re in for another InCryptid review from me. Yay!

That Ain’t Witchcraft (2019)
Written by: Seanan McGuire
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 445 (Kindle)
Series: Book 8 of InCryptid
Publisher: DAW

Disclaimer: I received an eARC of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley for review purposes, in exchange for an honest review. This has no bearing on my opinion of the book.

Why I Chose It: It’s no secret that I have a deep love for Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series. There’s no way that I was planning to skip this book.

The premise:

Crossroads, noun:

1. A place where two roads cross.
2. A place where bargains can be made.
3. See also “places to avoid.”

Antimony Price has never done well without a support system. As the youngest of her generation, she has always been able to depend on her parents, siblings, and cousins to help her out when she’s in a pinch—until now. After fleeing from the Covenant of St. George, she’s found herself in debt to the crossroads and running for her life. No family. No mice. No way out.

Lucky for her, she’s always been resourceful, and she’s been gathering allies as she travels: Sam, fūri trapeze artist turned boyfriend; Cylia, jink roller derby captain and designated driver; Fern, sylph friend, confidant, and maker of breakfasts; even Mary, ghost babysitter to the Price family. Annie’s actually starting to feel like they might be able to figure things out—which is probably why things start going wrong again.

New Gravesend, Maine is a nice place to raise a family…or make a binding contract with the crossroads. For James Smith, whose best friend disappeared when she tried to do precisely that, it’s also an excellent place to plot revenge. Now the crossroads want him dead and they want Annie to do the dirty deed. She owes them, after all.

And that’s before Leonard Cunningham, aka, “the next leader of the Covenant,” shows up…

It’s going to take everything Annie has and a little bit more to get out of this one. If she succeeds, she gets to go home. If she fails, she becomes one more cautionary tale about the dangers of bargaining with the crossroads.

But no pressure.

One extremely minor character spoiler, otherwise spoiler-free

So, first, I have to say that Antimony Price has really grown on me. With Magic For Nothing, her first turn as narrator, I didn’t dislike her, but after the ease of Verity and Alexander, who narrated the first five books, Annie was a sharp turn in another direction. (I think she’d like that I said that about her.) Anyway, I grew quite fond of her over the last three books. She’s not an easy character to love. She prickly and sarcastic in a pointed way that was entertaining, but she still has the same good heart and the best intentions that seem to be Price family traits.

As for the novel itself, I started reading with a sense of dread that something terrible was going to happen. Possibly because “something terrible” happened with many of the following volumes, and Annie’s previous book Tricks For Free was filled to the brim with utter chaos and violence. I was especially concerned when Leonard, the Covenant of St. George agent intent on bringing Annie and the Prices “back to the fold,” showed up, even though I knew he was coming (from the premise). Add in the slightly creepy, small-town setting, and the dread just kept on coming.

Small towns genuinely disturb me. Maybe because I grew up in one, and it was unfortunate enough to start falling apart for the same reasons as a lot of small towns: industry leaves the area, taking jobs, and Walmart moves in, essentially shutting down the local businesses. So even though New Gravesend seemed charming enough, something about it made me deeply, deeply unsettled.

The main plot of the novel had me fascinated. The crossroads come up, again and again, throughout this series. The crossroads are bad; stay away from them. Right? Except, when it came down to it, Annie had to choose between death or a crossroads deal in the previous book. Now that they’ve come to collect from Annie, it becomes vividly clear why it was so important to stay away. Turns out that “the crossroads” is shorthand for an eldritch entity of Lovecraftian proportions. Color me hooked.

As always with this series, the side characters are just as lovingly portrayed as those in the spotlight. I’m so glad that we got to spend more time with Fern and Cylia…I hope that we see more of them in the future, especially Cylia. Not that I didn’t like Fern, but something about Cylia reminded me of myself. She takes care of her loved ones in the best way that she can. There’s a part near the end about how she was making dinner for the lot of them before they head out for the big confrontation. Something was said about this being what Cylia could do. Sure, she can affect their luck (being a jink), but that can only go so far, especially given the balancing act that the jinks must perform when they decide to interfere. Try to enforce too much good luck, and they’ll pay a big, painful price. So while it might be something useful in a big, bad, boss fight, Cylia’s abilities are limited. But she can damned well make sure that her friends aren’t going out to face something evil as anything less than their best, well-fed and energized selves. I loved that.

Bonus!

As with many of McGuie’s recent releases, there was a bonus novella at the end. I’m not going to ruin it for you, other than to say that it was nice to see this particular set of characters again.

In Conclusion:

That Ain’t Witchcraft brings Annie’s story to a close, for now. I’m really wondering where things will go from here. I’m fascinated by the series again in an entirely new way, now that we’re so deep into things. I may have mentioned this before: do not mistake this series as something fluffy. I’ll let McGuire speak to this, herself:

Also…I’m really proud of these books. They’re my candy-coated heart of darkness: they seem light and fluffy (talking mice! combat cheerleading!), until you start looking past the surface, and realize that they’re a slow-motion Gothic tragedy, falling apart piece by piece.

— Seanan McGuire (@seananmcguire) March 31, 2018

So if you won’t listen to me, listen to the author. She’s telling you exactly what she’s doing with this series. I am still 100% on board with InCryptid, and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.