Daily Archives: March 31, 2014

Review-Half-off Ragnarok

Posted by 38caliberreviews on

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I simply love Seanan McGuire’s writing. Both series, so completely different, have caught and held my interest, though I have heard rumblings about the last October Daye book.

Ragnarok is the first book about Alex, Verity’s brother, the only returning character from the first two books is Sarah, who is making a slow recovery from the events of Midnight-blue Light Special. Alex is every bit as charming a character as Verity in his own way and he also comes with a colony of Aeslin mice.

Because if we are all honest we are only reading these books for the mice.  😉

Alex is in Ohio at the Columbus zoo giving lectures at the reptile house and doing covert studies of the local fricken population. Fricken=feathered frog. The fricken population is growing and the reason might not be good news for any of us.

Unfortunately there is even worse news- someone or something is turning employees of the zoo and the neighbor of Alex’s grandparents into stone. Whoever it is wants Alex dead, too, or maybe it’s Alex’s sort of girlfriend, Shelby, a visiting big cat specialist from Australia.

Alex, Shelby, and Alex’s assistant, Dee, are all keeping secrets, secrets that they will have to share if they want to catch a killer and sharing those secrets is not easy when the secrets have kept them alive.

As in the first two books McGuire introduces us to a lot of interesting characters, Alex’s grandparents, his assistant, a young wadjet and her fiancé; and also new creatures, his Church griffen, a cockatrice, frickens, lindworms.

I love her world, I love what she’s done with the state of Ohio.

Excerpt from Half-off Ragnarok:

“Shelby blinked. Then she blinked again, and finally, looking somewhat nonplussed, she asked, “Is anyone in Ohio human?””

Well, Shelby, I live in Ann Arbor and none of us think so. Go Blue! And cake and cheese for all.