Discount Armageddon: 05/29/22

Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire and Emily Bauer (Narrator) is the start of the InCryptid series. Verity Price is spending a year in Manhattan to hone her cryptozoology skills. She'd like to be a professional dancer but she has to do that in secret. But she can use her dancing skills for hand to hand combat.

Verity has other problems. A man from the Covenant of St. George is studying cryptids in Manhattan to decide if there needs to be a purge. As far as Verity is concerned, a purge would be genocide. Yet, cryptids have started to disappear. He claims he's not doing it and vows to help her.

Once the novel settles on the world building and basic concepts, it settles into a paranormal mystery akin to the Dresden Files but with a much more engaging main character. Take away the paranormal and the mystery itself is one of missing people, primarily young women. Someone is kidnapping them.

The kidnapping is happening against the backdrop of there being credible information that there's a dragon under Manhattan. Here, though, is where I started giggle snorting. Of course there's a dragon! He was covered in The Dragon That Lived Under Manhattan by E.W. Hildick (1970).

There's the expected betrayals. The big fight at the end. It's all the trappings of the sort of mysteries I like but with an interesting urban fantasy setting.

The second book in the series is Midnight Blue-Light Special (2013).

Four stars

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