Antimony Price,
youngest of the Price siblings is Not Happy. I mean, she’s never been her older
sister Verity’s biggest fan but after she effectively declared war on the
Covenant and revealed their continued existence to their old enemy she’s
effectively put the whole continent - and her family in particular - at risk
They need to know
what the Covenant is planning. They need a spy - and Antimony is the only
current family member who doesn’t LOOK like a Price, she has to be the one to
do it.
Of course being
American - and with her skillset in travelling fairs - she’s also prime
recruitment material for the Covenant which has never succeeded in getting a
foothold in the US… but being a Price pretending to be Covenant pretending to
be a performer certainly doesn’t make things simple
To me this book
really proved just how well established and developed the main characters of
this series are.
Because I didn’t like
Antimony at the beginning of this book - I actively disliked her. Why? Because
she doesn’t like her sister Verity and is very angry with her. I’ve read 3
books with Verity as the protagonist; I’ve followed her story, I’ve invested in
her, I’ve cheered her on, I’ve loved the Arboreal Priestess. So when Antimony
expresses her dislike I’m here on a firm “Excuse you, are you coming for my
lady, Verity?! Oh hell no, you go through me Annie!”
Because this is how
good those books were and how good Verity is: I’d invested in her sufficiently
that I have a knee-jerk need to stand up for her against another fictional
character.
(And, honestly, I’m
not entirely over it by the end of the book - because while I didn’t dislike
Antimony by the end, I still very much like Alex and Verity more).
I quickly grew to
like Antimony, of course, because she’s also awesome and her beef with Verity
is based on reason. I don’t agree with all of it but there’s more of a kernel
of truth to it and it also underlines the great differences between the two
sisters (It also means we can look back at Verity and Alex and their opinions
of Antimony and see their views of their hostile and excessively violent sister
are in turn skewed). Antimony has never had the same conflict as her sister.
She has always known who she is and what she wants to be. She has takes her
duty and family legacy extremely seriously alongside her dedication to weaponry
and skills; she never had Verity’s conflict over what she actually wanted to be
and do. Her views of her sister come from this lens and they’re not wrong - nor
entirely right - but from such very different perspectives.
From that nuance I
also love Antimony’s work with the Covenant. This is the first time we got to
see inside the Covenant and learned a lot more about their training regime,
their obsession with bloodlines and more of their hatred of all things
supernatural and cryptid. I like the way they’re balanced - I expected them to
be shown as human rather than cackling maniacal monsters, that kind of is
expected now. I even expected Antimony to be somewhat sympathetic to a couple
of characters (especially the layers of complexity towards her cousin, the
Covenant loyalist who is treated appallingly simply because of the Price
family’s defection). But so often when you have these “oh look the evil bigots
are human!” it’s used to forgive or forget their bigotry and evil (a habit
followed by news media as much as books). But while Antimony can see the
humanity of the Covenant, at every single point of introspection she remembers
that these people want to murder other sentient creatures just because of what
they are. That is never forgotten, that is never downplayed no matter how human
the covenant can be. Newspapers should take note.
I also like how it
really highlights the viewpoint of the Price family - from looking on a classic
picture of George slaying the dragon and seeing the horror of a murderer
killing a sentient being just because of its species. While also being clear
that the Price’s are themselves not all fluffy and kind - when she finds a
clear murderous cryptid she doesn’t hesitate to fight and kill. But even then
we have an excellent piece of examinations as to the why - including isolation
and lack of knowledge of how to BE a cryptid when most of your species have
been wiped out.
Nothing is taken
simplistically - the causes and effects are examined and questioned and the
cryptids are treated as people. Even a cryptid that eats people will get the
Price family asking “well why is it eating people?”
This is this
excellent world setting that really works with perfectly developed characters
to create something truly fascinating - all the while with a good amount of fun
action and hijinks. I also love how much research and thought is put into
things like giving Antimony a cover identity - all these little details really
make the story real. And it’s why I love them so much (and the Aislinn Mice of
course. Hail!)
Is there a downside…?
I think there’s a floppiness in the middle of the book. Like Antimony has
infiltrated the Covenant and now is in this travelling fair pretending to be a
performer. And… and what? I mean, if she didn’t start throwing rocks at her
cover, what was her end game here? She barely communicated to her family about
anything she learned about the Covenant (numbers, training methods, prominent members,
definite plans for North America?) nor did any real sabotage. There’s just a
section of this book which feels directionless and I’m confused as to what is
actually supposed to be being achieved here.
We have an excellent
female protagonist and while the focus is very very very much on her, there are
certainly other women of the story who are both worthy of respect AND respected
by Antimony - not least of which the owner of the fair herself. We have some
POC in minor roles - a South Asian and an East Asian cryptid travelling with
the carnival but the second most prominent character in the book is an Asian
man of Japanese descent, a cryptid and also with actual personality that makes
him a full character (one of my previous complaints about
We do have a very
brief appearance at the beginning of the book of one of Antimony’s cousins who
is a lesbian or bisexual woman… but this pretty much sums up the entirety of
her presence.
This is rapidly
becoming a series that begins to make me nervous.
It makes me nervous
because a part of me recognises that one day this series will end and make my
reading life considerably worse because of it. One of the reasons I love the
Urban Fantasy Genre is I love these epic series of several books developing characters
and worlds and histories and storylines, becoming richer and more powerful and
deeper with each installment (well until they end or spiral off into some
terrible terrible shark-jumping depths). The Incryptid series is one of
those still rising, still building something awesome with each book and still
making me eagerly reach out for the next one. This is a series that will always
have a definite place on my metaphorical shelf.
And, as always, Hail
the Aislinn Mice! Hail the Precise Priestess! HAIL!
