TW/CW: Death, violence, fantasy violence, language

RATING: 4/5

REVIEW: Backpacking Through Bedlam is the 12th book of McGuire’s InCryptid series. It is told from the point of view of Alice Price, who has returned home at last to a world that she has not been a part of for some time.

I enjoyed this book very much, as I always enjoy McGuire’s work. I love the originality of it, the world building, the characters, the stories that suck the reader in and keep them entirely interested.

While this book felt to me to be divided into two distinctly different parts, that wasn’t a bad thing. I look forward to seeing where Alice goes and how she works her way back into her family.

This book also included a novella which I adored – it kept with the themes of the main story, but also had the first-hand perspective of the Aeslin mice which is one of the best things I’ve read.

I definitely recommend this book to fans of McGuire and Urban Fantasy. ( )

First on of McGuire's that I didn't finish. ( )

I loved this! I like how it resolves the situation from the end of [Spelunking through Hell], but also ties into the consequences of things that happened in New York with Verity several books ago, as well as stuff from Sarah's and Annie's books. Alice is a hell of a lot of fun, and so is Sally, who gets a bunch more screen time in this book. I also really liked the extra novella with James and the mice. ( )

Not the strongest book in the series. However, at this point the backstory has gotten so complicated that I remember very little of it, so I appreciate the recaps, and I was delighted with the opportunity to hear the next installment of the saga. I particularly like that many of the adventures/characters overlap and those overlaps are becoming more explicit. I also really like that Alice's total abandonment of her children for her husband is considered a complex thing that people really want her to deal with. I love this series. I love the characters. It is starting to suffer, however, with the same lack-of-editing that plagues the ghost road series. We, the audience, don't actually need to hear every conversation that the characters have with every new/old person that they reconnect with. We were there for a bunch of the action, and it is ok to summarize a little rather than repeat. Also, if you are unfamiliar with the Prices, it's an opportunity to go back read previous books to get to know them by their previous actions/adventures, rather than by having their various philosophies repeated unto dust. We are not the Aeslin, but sometimes it feels like we are part of the cult.

I was also super pleased to discover the bonus novella at the back, and I can't wait for the James/Sally reunion. Still wonderful, but woo-buddy, it's ok to make your readers work a little for the story. ( )

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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BACK TO THE COVENANT STORY
The first few books of this series featured an ongoing arc concerning the looming threat of an invasion of the Americas by The Covenant of St. George. In the fifth book, Chaos Choreography, Verity basically invited that invasion. In the next book, Antimony went undercover to infiltrate them in order to gather intel on the coming invasion—and we largely abandoned that storyline for the rest of the Antimony-trilogy (the Covenant was around, obviously, but other things seemed far more important most of the time). Then with the next three books, that storyline took a giant backseat and most of the action focused on non-Earthbound species and/or didn't take place on Earth.

Now that Alice, Thomas, and Sally are back on Earth, we can rejoin the Covenant story, already in progress.

WHAT'S BACKPACKING THROUGH BEDLAM ABOUT?
This is precisely what this novel is about—Alice trying to reintroduce Thomas and Sally to Earth (the latter will be far easier since she hasn't been gone quite as long) while coming to fight alongside Verity's ragtag "army" in New York to protect the dragon.

Thomas doesn't have to just remember what Earth is like and catch up on a few decades worth of technological advances, political and cultural changes, etc.—he also has to get used to his wife again. They've both grown and changed—yes, still deeply in love and committed to each other. But...they're not the same people they were when he left.

Meanwhile, Alice has to learn to accept Sally as the not-quite-adult-daughter she's never met. And Sally has to figure out her place in her new family. All while Verity and the rest of the Prices are going to have to adjust to Thomas actually being alive.

And, yeah, they have to fight a war and protect as many cryptids as they can from the Covenant. Should be a walk in the park, right? Or maybe that's where the titular Bedlam comes in.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT BACKPACKING THROUGH BEDLAM?
When Verity declared war, I remember being taken aback by it—but also thinking, "all right, now things will get really interesting!" Just for that to be pushed to the background—or not even discussed—for quite some time. After getting over my initial disappointment, I settled in and didn't have a problem with it, because what we got was plenty entertaining and intriguing on its own—who needed them to be the focus of the antagonism when you had all this other stuff going on?

But, I tell you what, it felt good to get back to this story. I really appreciate that we came back to it as we did, with Alice and the others having to jump in and catch up. This made it easy for the reader to get backstory thrown at us and we didn't have to go back to the time of Magic for Nothing or thereabouts to see watch the invasion.

This was a solid novel in the series, and I think will serve as a really good way for the next arc to launch—letting us see all the Prices (in one way or another) fighting the Covenant. I don't have much to say beyond that—InCryptid books bring a lot of snark, a dash of romance, a good amount of action, and some interesting musings on life, family, and what makes a decent person (human or not). That's what you get in Backpacking through Bedlam.

I have no idea what's coming next—or who our primary character will be in the next book—and I don't care. I'm just eager to see it.

This wouldn't be a bad place to jump on—there's enough recapping of various and sundry storylines going on that it's probably the best one since the fifth book (books 1, 3, 5, and now, 12 I think are the optimal jumping-on points). Just know that if you try it, you're going to want to go back to the beginning. ( )