The Holy Feast Of I Swear Daddy I Will Kiss The Next Man Who Walks In The Door

We all know that I usually have multiple books going at the same time, this week two of them have been Deadline and Discount Armageddon two very different books, but I noticed they seemed very similar in style.  Ha then I realized they are by the same author Seanan McGuire and her pen name Mira Grant, apparently I like her writing :-) Discount Armageddon was a really fun read, I enjoyed it thoroughly and laughed out loud at several parts.  It is in the dreaded first person narrative, but not a whole lot of angst so it worked. As always SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!

Verity Price is the middle daughter in the infamous Price family...well infamous if you run in cryptid circles.  What is a cryptid?  I'm glad you asked, because it is crucial to the story.  Cryptids are what we humans would consider creatures from fantasy, everything from the bogeyman to the tooth fairy.  There are also less well known creatures such as the religious Aeslin mice that have been known to make a Holy Feast out of just about anything.  Anyways the sheer variety of cryptids of every shape and size keep our intrepid heroine busy.  Verity is part of group/family that does there best to protect the balance of cryptids/humans.  She protects humans from the nastier cryptids who prey on them, and also protects the more vulnerable of the harmless cryptids from discovery and harm.  She also helps protect them from the Covenant, an organization that shows no mercy when it comes to cryptids, pretty much using the line of thinking that no cryptid is a good cryptid.  Her family is considered traitors for not only leaving the Covenant when they discovered that most cryptids were not only sentient, but harmless as well; but for also intermarrying with the occasional
incubus. Verity lives in New York City with her own little colony of Aeslin mice, keeping the humor factor at a maximum.  She is trying to become a professional ball room dancer and in between keeps an eye on the resident cryptid population.  To help her attempts at keeping the cryptid balance, she works as a waitress and Dave's Fish and Strips.  Yep our girl works at a strip joint, but not just any strip joint, a cryptid strip joint.  The place is owned by Dave the bogeyman and he employs mostly cryptids such as Candy the dragon princess who is impervious to fire, Carol the lesser gorgon who has to wear a wig so her snakes don't bite customers and Ryan a smoking hot Tanuki who can become quit animalistic when the need arises.  Going about her business of Tangoing, waitressing, and patrolling Verity runs into Dominic De Luca a Covenant member who has been sent to the New York area to see if they need to do a purge.  After a bit of a fight Verity escapes to inform her family of his very unwelcome presence in her city.  Later at a ballroom competition she runs into Dominic again, this time he asks her if she has been helping cryptids leave, as he has noticed a marked drop in the population. Verity is confused as she attributed the disappearances to Dominic's Covenant cleansing.  Together, along with Verity's psychic cuckoo of a cousin discover a sleeping dragon.  This is exciting and a wee bit terrifying as dragons were thought to be extinct, long ago exterminated by the Covenant.  Verity uses her contacts in the cryptid community to find out more information. Dominic tags along, shocked to find out that most cryptids are not only sentient, but posses personalities, feelings, and other traits only attributed to humans.  Apparently in their quest to exterminate all non-humans the Covenant keeps up a pretty hard line of propaganda dwelling only on the potential cryptid danger to humans.  After a narrow escape from a new type of lizard man monster that neither of the two had seen before, Verity and Dominic get it on.  Afterwords they get into a huge argument, both of them realizing they will never agree on the way cryptid/human interactions should be dealt with.  Verity tells Candy, the dragon princess about the

sleeping dragon, causing Verity to be "invited" to the Nest. There Verity discovers the dragon princesses are actually the female of the dragon species, evolved and adapted to fit in with humans.  The supposedly extinct dragons were only the male of the species.  The females have been able to reproduce and keep at least the female side of the species alive by parthenogenesis, but they can't keep it up forever.  They eventually figure out that it is all unmarried females disappearing and that a snake cult is trying to wake and control the dragon through virgin sacrifices (note that this is not the way to wake a dragon up, but silly stupid humans don't know that).  When one of the cryptid girls that Verity and Dominic had talked to goes missing Verity takes to the sewers to find her.  Unfortunately the girl is dead, and Verity herself makes a very narrow escape.  She runs into Dominic who takes the death of the cryptid girl to heart, realizing that he cannot just blindly kill all cryptids he offers to go get the body while Verity goes to work to warn the other girls.  At the club Verity, Candy and Istas a Waheela get ambushed by the lizard men.  Candy gets away but Istas and Verity are taken to become virgin sacra fices to the sleeping dragon.  After a bloody battle won with the help of Dominic and Sarah (Verity's cousin) who had been summoned by Candy the dragon wakes up.  He and Candy have a moment and the dragon turns out to be very nice.  Dominic and the dragon make a deal that as long as they leave each other alone, one will not hunt the other.  Dominic agrees to keep Verity's presence in New York a secret and not hunt harmless cryptids.  Verity goes back to dancing, waitressing and cryptid keeping and the start of a new series is born.

I really enjoyed this book, it was funny, the pacing was good, the characters were all well written, just a good book overall.  Verity is how you write a kick-ass girl.  I know sometimes I complain about the trope of a kick-ass girl, but that is because that seems to be all there is to them.  With Verity it works for a couple of reasons a) She was raised to be a kick-ass girl, so she has a reason to be, it's what keeps her alive. b) She is not a perfect kick-ass girl, she has her believable weaknesses, the biggest being that sometimes she believes to much in her own kick-assness and forgets that other people/cryptids are capable of kicking her ass. c) There is a lot more to her then just her kick-assness. I like how this is written in a kind of classic, almost comic book style, there is fighting, supernatural creatures, and even the occasional skimpy clothing...ok there is a lot of skimpy clothing, but even that serves a purpose.  I think one of my favorite things in the whole book (besides the Aeslin mice), which I have noticed in the authors other books as well is that there is a good bit of actual science in the story.  Now a lot of books would either skip this part, or get really bogged

down in the details, but Ms. McGuire manages to stuff a lot of it in without once slowing down the pace of the book.  I also liked how she used science to point out some of the problems with the hard line Covenant thinking.  In science what makes a gorilla a protected animal, but a Sasquatch a cryptid in need of extermination?  A Madhura who for all intents and purposes is a sweet loving human who just happens to be able to slow decay and bleed sweet smelling blood needs to be killed, but a homicidal human is to be protected?  I also like how Dominic does not have an instant change of heart...not even after he sleeps with Verity.  His change is gradual and comes about as he learns about real life away from the sheltered, propaganda ridden walls of the Covenant.  He also does not come all the way around to Verity's way of thinking, just becomes a bit more tolerant of it, also he call her insufferable woman a lot, which for some reason reminds me of Pride and Prejudice, which is always a good thing. The only things I didn't like are super nit picky.  I wanted to see more of Verity's dancing, she talks about it a lot, but we only really get to see her do it twice.  I want to know more about Verity's family, they seem fascinating, but I think that we will get more of that in later books.  I am definitely looking forward to reading the next books in the series!
Why do tropes sometimes work and sometimes suck patootie?  What cryptid most intrigues you?  What do you think defines a cryptid versus "normal" nature?  Do you sometimes just love a kick-ass book?  Do you think that I really like to type kick-ass?