Seanan McGuire is one of my favourite authors. I love her October Daye series, her InCryptid series, and especially her latest series, Wayward Children. I am also highly enamoured of her work under the name Mira Grant, the zombie-fied Feed series, in particular. All her books are autobuys, for me.
(And she did some Geek vs Geeks for me a couple of times.)
But this one… let’s just say, it’s not my favourite.
Part of the problem, I think, is that this book was originally released as a serial novel, so explanations and descriptions are repeated, and it’s annoying. (On the other hand, backstory repetition is something of a McGuire quirk — the InCryptid books are redolent with it.) Still, some casual editing would have eliminated that issue.
The story itself is intriguing, and largely enjoyable, if utterly surrealist. Fairy tales are real, and the mystical “narrative”, ie. fate, is determined to act them out, using unsuspecting people whose lives make them targets. (Blonde girls who live near the woods might become Goldilockses, gifted musicians might be Pied Pipers, etc.) Entrusted with stopping these “incursions” from manifesting is the ATI Management Bureau, peopled mostly by individuals who are themselves affected by these tales in some way. Our lead agent, Henry Marchen, is a Snow White, and she is our first person protagonist — except, when she’s not.
I’ve always found it disorientating when my book’s perspective shifts from first to third, and this one does that all the damn way through. (The worst is when we see inside the head of hateful, shrill “Wicked Stepsister”, Sloane. Ugh.)
Yeah, so… no, this one is not my favourite. But it does make me want to dive into the five or six other McGuire books I have awaiting me on my shelves (she is very prolific, it’s hard to keep up), because while this tale didn’t entirely capture me — and I will not, unusually for me, be reading its sequel — it is a solid reminder of her immense talent and imagination, and makes me excited to get back to those of her worlds that I do genuinely adore.
SCORECARD
TBR DAY 50: Indexing (Indexing #1) by Seanan McGuire
GENRE: Alternate History, Fantasy
PUBLISHED: 2014 (serialized: 2013)
TIME ON THE TBR: 4 years.
PURCHASED FROM: Amazon.
KEEP: Yep.
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