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Discount Armageddon
by
Seanan McGuire
paranormal romance in a paperback edition that was published by DAW Books on March 6, 2012 and has 352 pages.
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Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night, Late Eclipses, One Salt Sea, Home Improvement: Undead Edition, “Never Shines the Sun”, Chimes at Midnight, "In Sea-Salt Tears", Indexing, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Half-Off Ragnarok, Midway Relics and Dying Breeds, Games Creatures Play, The Winter Long, Sparrow Hill Road, The InCryptid Prequels, Pocket Apocalypse, Black as Blood, Blocked, White as a Raven's Wing, The Ghosts of Bourbon Street, IM, "Good Girls Go to Heaven", A Red Rose Chain, "Full of Briars", Reflections, Once Broken Faith, "Dreams and Slumbers", Shadowed Souls, Chaos Choreography, Magic For Nothing, Indigo, Every Heart a Doorway, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, The Brightest Fell, "Of Things Unknown", Beneath the Sugar Sky, Night and Silence, "Suffer a Sea-change", The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, "The Recitation of the Most Holy and Harrowing Pilgrimage of Mindy and Also Mork", Tricks for Free, That Ain't Witchcraft, "The Measure of a Monster", The Unkindest Tide, "Hope is Swift", Come Tumbling Down, Imaginary Numbers, "Follow the Lady", In an Absent Dream, "The Fixed Stars", "Forbid the Sea", "No Sooner Met", Across the Green Grass Fields, A Killing Frost, "Shine in Pearl", When Sorrows Come, "And with Reveling", "Singing the Comic-Con Blues”, "Candles and Starlight", "Such Dangerous Seas", Sleep No More
First in the InCryptid urban fantasy series revolving around the dancing Verity Price, a human supernatural enforcement agent in New York City.
My Take
Oh, I do love Seanan McGuire. I adored her October Daye series and she is not disappointing me at all with this new one! You will crack up when you read this. I absolutely adore the Aeslin mice. I’m sitting here typing and laughing as I remember their antics . . . oh, hail . . .Verity has such a lovely acceptance of them and all their religious festivals . . . snicker, giggle, oh heck, guffaw . . . I want my own colony! Suicidal gummy bears . . . oh my . . . Then there’s the dance routine with the saltine crackers that Verity reckons could make Disney sit up and take notice.
Oh, oh, oh, and there’s the epigrams at the start of every chapter. Don’t skip those, really.
I hate that I have to wait until 2013 for Midnight Blue-Light Special!
Verity certainly had a unique childhood. Her version of hide-and-seek is certainly not ours . . . I do love her parkour approach as well. I have to keep reminding myself that she’s merely human. Yup, suckered in completely by page five with comments like “made up for my shameful modesty with a blood-red velvet bustier . . . and . . . had steel corsetry boning . . . room for five strategically placed throwing knives.” McGuire’s description of Verity’s shower-taking contortions . . .
Ya know, it’s kinda scary when I started thinking that Verity’s usual mode of transportation sounds normal . . . Okay, I don’t get Sarah’s life. On the one hand, McGuire explains how cuckoos operate and then there’s Sarah living in a fancy hotel and I keep trying to relate the explanation with the life. It’s just not meshing for me.
Oh, there is just something about the way McGuire talks about the tooth fairy . . . and the tooth fairy dust . . . that just creeps me out.
The Story
Unlike most of the human world that’s aware of the supernaturals, the Price family believes live and let live whereas the Covenant is more interested in kill and kill again. So while Verity pursues her work as a cryptozoologist, she maintains order amongst the supes in New York City . . . with luck they’ll evade the notice of the Covenant and live happily ever after.
Yeah. Sure. Especially when there’s a dragon sleeping under New York City and some crazy cult is slaughtering cryptids right and left in an effort to wake him up and control him. AND, there’s a member of the “shoot first, don’t bother with questions until after Covenant” in town . . . oh, crap.
The Characters
Verity Price of the urban legendary Prices is pursuing her dancing career in New York City while she waits tables at a Dave’s Fish and Strips, a supernatural strip club. Her parents are Evelyn and Kevin Price and she has one sister, Antimony, who is obsessed with trapping. Her brother Alex — the one who was so proud of his first concussion at age five — is an accountant.
Sarah Zellaby is a cuckoo. Telepathic, not human, and her blood can heal most anything. She’s also Verity’s cousin-by-adoption and her sometime partner when she’s checking out the nightclubs. Oh, yeah, baby, Verity likes to dance. Sometimes on the dance floor and sometimes with weapons; sometimes with both at the same time. There’s also Aunt Jane married to Uncle Ted. Cousin Artie is secretly in love with Sarah. And vice versa. Only they won’t tell. Grandpa Thomas somehow ended up in Hell and Grandma Thomas spends most of her time trying to get him out.
Her strip club coworkers include Kitty who’s off playing stage candy for her boyfriend’s band; Carol is a gorgon and, man, it is a bitch to get that wig on over all the snakes; Marcy is an Oread; Candice, a dragon princess; Istas is a waheela and you do not want to piss her off!; and, Ryan, a therianthrope, is one of the bouncers. Their boss, Dave, is a bogeyman. Never go into a dark room with a bogeyman. Piyusha is a Madhura and I so love the sound of their shop . . . and the lovely aromas. I gotta try that trick with the honey and the candles. Sunil and Rochak are her brothers. Betty Smith is the queen of the dragon princesses with her very own agenda. William is the dragon.
Dominic De Luca is an orphan. And Covenant. A bigoted, kill’em-all, religious monster hunter. New York City is his first mission for the organization. The Covenant has branded the Healys, Prices, and Bakers traitors with essentially a shoot-to-kill order on any Price. Too bad Verity is a descendant of all three.
The Cover and Title
The cover is practically a schoolgirl-themed porn shot of Verity posed with a gun in hand, a sword sheathed at her back, and a knife sheath strapped to her thigh high atop the buildings in New York City. Her tiny pink and black plaid miniskirt and her pink cropped top tied under her breasts, black bra showing at her cleavage with her pink dancing pumps. I can’t quite figure out the pink stocking on one leg while the other is bare, though.
The title is pretty funny and, yeah, it is a Discount Armageddon what with the threat of a dragon waking and two human adversaries undecided as to his fate.
