Previous book here.
"Spelunking Through Hell was literally the book I used to pitch this series in the first place, and everything since then has been one long con to convince you all to care about this vaguely disturbed, definitely damaged woman and her wild, possibly futile search for the man she lost fifty years before." -Seanan McGuire, in the acknowledgements.
This is THE book in this series. While the October Daye series has a ton of mysteries, the InCryptid series has had one main huge one: WHERE'S THOMAS PRICE? We know he made a deal with the crossroads after several years of happy marriage with Alice, we know he was taken by the crossroads, and we know that Alice has been literally hellbent on finding him ever since, extending her life/somehow continuing to be young even though she's been hunting for him through other dimensions/worlds/whatever for over fifty years. We know most of the family thinks this is pointless, and the last few books featuring Antimony have finally answered some questions regarding the crosssroads.
Well, here's Alice's book, FINALLY, on how she's going to find her husband and know what happened to him, once and for all. I think I'm gonna take the rest of the review below the spoiler cut...but I'll say it's 4.5 stars. This is an excellent review to read as well.
I note that there are some Alice/Thomas prequel short stories on the author's website, but I've been reading most of their entire backstory via what she's done on Patreon. You may want to do the same and sign up, because daaaaaaaaaang, the backstory!
Spoiler space
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So Alice has been traveling to other worlds, bounty hunting for money, and getting assistance on staying young and getting un-injured for over fifty years. We find out she was pregnant with Jane when Thomas was taken, and she barely waited for her body to recover after giving birth before going on her quest, abandoning her kids. We're told that Jane pretty much hates her and well, who can blame Jane for feeling that way. Suffice it to say Alice doesn't feel terribly connected to her remaining family after focusing on getting her man back for so long. But why has it been so fruitless for so long? Here's where we find out why.
Alice has been getting help from Naga, a giant snake dude who's a professor on his own world. He and his allies have been supplying magical tattoos to her and free assistance in keeping her young...which involves skinning her alive to do so. Repeatedly. Y'all can't even imagine. But when the Healy family luck finally kicks in, Alice comes across some books by another magical dimension-hopper that indicate that people can be stashed on dead/dying worlds. Reasonably assuming that sounds like the perfect place that an evil crossroads might dump someone in, Alice heads over there--but in the course of finding out this information, starts suspecting that her old buddy Naga may not have been telling her everything and frankly, may have been operating for his own ends. Like...why didn't you mention this fifty years ago?!?
Anyway, Alice finds the place, and finds that Thomas is alive, well, and froze his own aging and is now running a group of people under a fake patriarchal regime so that the other trapped factions will leave the ladies alone. Sally, James's missing best friend, turns up there too. Their reunion is happy and that's certainly what I hoped for :) Suffice it to say that the next goal is to get everyone out of there and back to their respective homes before the world completely dies. This is a satisfying plot and I was happy to see them finally reunited (in a sexy way, this is probably the sexiest book the author's ever done) after all of this.
More spoiler space below the imaginary cut...
The novella at the end, "And Sweep Up The Wood," covers the death of Alice's father Jonathan, taken out by apraxis wasps, and her having literally nobody around to back her up when the darn things are going to hatch out of his body later. Assuming she's going to die dealing with the issue, Alice finally confesses her love to Thomas/gets sexy (again, this is the sexiest I've ever seen the series) only because she's fairly well convinced that she's about to die. One definitely gets the feeling that Thomas and Alice are the author's OTP above all other OTP's.
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I was genuinely shocked that Naga has been doing what he was doing towards his own ends. He was helping Alice, sure, but not in a ah...super successful way for her, let's put it that way. Also, clearly he's getting paid in magical whatever there. Of course, he's gotta die for that one. I'm not sure if I feel totally satisfied there, even though we do find out what was going on. I think the author covered that material, but maybe that's just me?
I also didn't like how the book did briefly reunite Alice/Thomas/Sally with a bare minimum of people in Oregon, and then were all "We're going to take another YEAR taking everyone back home," sigh. I wanted to fast forward past that. I don't know if the series ends here or not (there's no mention of a next after this one), but I'd be very intrigued to see what happens when Thomas and Alice rejoin the family. What happens then? Is Jane still super mad (deservedly so)? Will Thomas help Antimony with her magic? Does everyone get into big ol' fights? (Probably.) Anyway, I hope the series continues, and since it's gone to a bigger size book this time, I assume it will. Good job! OTP 4-EVAH.
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