Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Discount Armageddon-Seanan McGuire

Discount Armageddon


Seanan McGuire

Daw, Mar 6 2012, $7.99

ISBN 9780756407131



The Price extended family has been cryptid hunters for generations. However, they eventually rejected the Covenant of St. George that condoned species cleansing. Like the rest of her clan, Verity Price is a cryptozoologist who works to insure safe environments for cryptids and humans. However, though she is passionately dedicated, her first love is ballroom dancing though she wonders where that strand of her DNA comes from.



Thus Verity moves from the West Coast to New York to dance for a year. When she prevents a carnivorous ghoul (clearly an oxymoron) from dining on a human, Verity, who works as a waitress for a Dark bogeyman at Dave’s Fish and Strips club, concludes this is why she never has a Saturday night date. As cryptids are being hunted in the city, Dominick DeLuca catches Verity in a rooftop snare. The two enemies agree to team up when lizard people are found in the sewers and rumors abound that a sleeping dragon underneath Manhattan gneiss bedrock is awakening.



As October takes a Daye off, Seanan McGuire begins a new urban fantasy starring a Romeo and Juliet couple. The storyline is fun to follow due to the amusing asides from the priceless heroine. With a nod to the classic cantina scene in Star Wars, it is the McGuire Manhattan mythos with the various cryptid species, many introduced at Dave’s club (like the therianthrope bouncer – cute as long as you don’t tango, and the dragon princess - known for making money faster than Wall St. and without a male), that makes for a great read.



Harriet Klausner

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