Previous book here. Rest of review below the spoiler cut. 4.5 stars.
I just wanted to share this quote:
"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."I have worked my butt off to make the intricacy and artistry of these books seem as effortless as possible, because I'm juggling multiple timelines and layers of reality, all the time, all while creating a foundation that allows for quippy jokes and fast footwork."
On to the review...
Spoiler space
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In the third and final (for now, anyway) book in the Antimony trilogy, Annie, Sam, Fern and Cylia are on the run still. Cylia runs her luck powers to find them a nice out-of-the-way place to rest for a few months--New Gravesend (that's not ominous or anything), Maine. As per luck powers, it turns out that the absent landlord's cousin James is hanging around because he wants to go borrow the books in the library.
James has some problems. He's a sorcerer with ice powers, his mom died young and his dad is a dick, he's not allowed to leave town and his best friend Sally disappeared in a crossroads deal she set up to try to get James out of his in-town prison, as far as we know. James has an idea to get revenge on the crossroads, but more interesting to me is that he's done a shit ton of research on this topic and has figured out that around five hundred years ago* is when crossroads deals started to go bad. They went from fair and reasonable to OH DEAR GOD EVERYONE DIES to "uh....I guess I have to dial it back on the everyone dies but I still want everything to fuck over the asker." NOW THAT IS AN INTERESTING FACT RIGHT THERE.
* coincidentally, "around 500 years ago" is also a big thing in the October Daye universe, but they're different universes.
Too bad the crossroads decides to call in Annie's debt to them. They want her to befriend James, find out everything he knows, and then kill him. Even worse, when Aunt Mary tries to give as much warning as she can, she gets pulled off the case, punished and replaced with Bethany from Sparrow Hill Road. Bethany is much less pleasant to deal with. Added bonus: Leo from the Covenant has finally tracked Annie down. But when you've got two big problems...well, Annie figures out some super inventive ways to deal with them. I'll have to go below the spoiler cut to discuss the big plot developments, but I'll say now that I was pretty happy with the revelations we got in this book, which is why I'm going to give this one 4.5 stars for near epicness.
The personal developments in this one are great. Sam has his moments of fear that Annie will ditch him for either James or Leo, but nuh-uh. Hell, Annie literally decides to adopt James as a new brother upon short acquaintance. Fern and Cylia's loyalty and friendship are great as well. And the way the crossroads situation was handled was pretty dang awesome. Again, the rest of my feelings behind this go below the spoiler cut.
There's also another novella at the back, The Measure Of A Monster, which gives the narration back to Alex because poor boy's otherwise a bit short compared to his sisters. We get some good news in this book that's elaborated on here, and Alex, Shelby and Sarah team up to find a bunch of abducted gorgon kids. I won't say more than that, but that is fun. I think it's about time for Alex and Shelby to get some big overall plots though-- Verity had the start of the war against the Covenant and Antimony's had both the Covenant and the crossroads. Alex has had it rather standalone episode so far. Happily, this series isn't ending after this book--according to the author, the next one up at bat is Sarah, who we haven't had narrate since Midnight Blue-Light Special. That should be interesting since I presume Alex will be involved and that Artie sounds like he wants to come for a visit. We also find out that Verity hasn't said shit to Sarah since the incident--bad Verity, time to make amends there.
Anyway, i enjoyed this very much, and there will be more spoiler cut while I talk about the revelations of this.
Quote Corner (all quotes Annie unless said otherwise):
- "A cat can have kittens in an oven, but that doesn't make them muffins." -Sam quoting his grandmother.
- Annie's fictional references are a delight. "I don't know how you deal with unsolvable problems here in New England, being a stranger to your town and all, but where I come from, if someone presents you with a situation you can't win, you don't say 'well, guess Starfleet wants me to fail this exam.' You say 'what would James Tiberius Kirk do,' and then you shoot the asshole who broke into your house in the head and go about your business."
- We find out in this book that most cryptozoologists meet their SO's "on the job" (I've commented on that before) and we find out that Kevin and Evelyn met when he was following reports of an impending Covenant strike to her house, that Thomas was told to recruit or kill Alice, and if you've read the short stories on the author's website, you know how it happened for Jonathan and Fran.
- "Every species I've met with human-level intelligence--or potentially going beyond human-level-intelligence has been capable of going, 'sure, the world is ending, but what about my soup?' I honestly believe that without that capacity for self-distraction, we'd all break without the weight of the world we have to live on."
- "I don't think she's dead, because I know my grandfather is alive, and they took him the same way. I also know that if they had a sense of self-preservation, they would have given him back to my grandmother like, five seconds after they realized they had a human hunting dog determined to gnaw their legs off... The cost of keeping my grandfather should have long since become too great, and they should have returned him. They didn't, which means they can't."
- "She was my babysitter, and my parents wanted me to have a few years where I thought Santa wasn't real."
"You mean where you thought Santa was real," said James.
"I meant what I said," I replied.
Cylia shuddered. "Gift-giving asshole," she said. - "I assure you are, I am the opposite of a loose woman. I'm a tightly-wound, sort of prickly woman. Hermione Granger is is my Patronus."
- From Alex's novella: "First, she'd ridden an injured lindworm like a bucking bronco, grinning like Athena herself, and then when we realized how it had been injured, she had switched smoothly to sympathizing with it. I'd proposed almost involuntarily."
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I love that the whole crossroads issue turned out to be that some alien being thing took over from the anima mundi who was supposed to be running the crossroads and that Annie figured out how to save her so she could do the job again. That's awesome. I love the idea of a less Supernatural-ish crossroads for all. "It was like a piece had been missing from my understanding of the magical world, and now everything was starting to make sense."
That said, I am super disappointed to find out from the anima mundi that the parasite cast the people it took very far away and could not return them and it sounds like they are unfindable as things are now and even the anima mundi can't do anything about it. I was hoping that this book would (a) be the Crossroads Showdown book and (b) Grandma Alice and Annie would figure out how to get Grandpa Thomas back. But nope. It sounds like he is very well lost by this book's standards. Poor Thomas and Sally. I'd like to meet him too. I suspect that much like the October Daye series, that might be an endgame/series ender sort of thing.
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