All Hail The God Of Absolutely Never Smiling No Not Ever

Hello to all my bookworm friends and welcome to another ramble for my messy little brain.  Today we shall explore all the things I loved (and a few things I didn't) about Midnight Blue-Light Special the second book in the InCryptid series by Seanan McGuire.  I grabbed this book last week (or was it the week before) because it was easy to carry and I spent the next four hours lying on the grass on the National Mall enjoying myself thoroughly.  First lets get through a quick synopsis as always SPOILERS AHEAD.

When we left Verity at the end of the last book she had just dismantled a snake cult and found what could be the last living male dragon, Hurrah!!!  She is now working at The Freakshow, a new nightclub owned by Kitty a bogeyman (bogeywoman?) and the niece of the former owner Dave of Fish and Strips.  Verity is the head choreographer and lead dancer for the burlesque type shows in this strange little club that mixes humans and cryptids.  What are cryptids? They are creatures of legend, think dragons, gorgons, bogeymen, bigfoot and so forth.  In between shifts at the Freakshow, Verity spends her time studying, protecting and on rare occasions slaying cryptids as part of her Price family work. This all gets complicated when her sometimes boyfriend Dominic DeLuca of the dreaded Covenant (a group working on exterminating all cryptids just

because) stops by to tell her that the Covenant is coming to New York City to do a purge of the cryptid population.  This of course gets Verity all hot and bothered and in need of reinforcements.  Her cuckoocousin Sarah (a human looking creature who naturally manipulates all living things in her environment), her adopted Uncle Mike, Ryan the super hot Tanuki, and his frills loving Waheela girlfriend Istas all move into an old warehouse in the meatpacking district to come up with a plan.  Dominic slips information to Verity so she can watch the arrival of the three Covenant agents who are coming to do the prep work for the purge.  Among the agents is one women named Margaret Healy, a cousin of Verity and hell bent on getting revenge on the Price/Healy family for leaving the Covenant and actually considering most cryptids to be non-evil.  Much jumping, running, fighting and Aeslin mice (you remember these religious fanatic rodents who provide some great comic relief from the last books right?) ceremonies, all leading up to Dominic finally deciding to leave the Covenant and join the Price family in their fight to protect the cryptids.  Unfortunately he decides this a tad to late as Verity has now been captured by the Covenant agents.  Sarah takes over the narrative for a while, which is really cool and gives us a new perspective on both events, and her own character.  She and the rest of the gang come up with a plan to try and save Verity and/or warn the rest of the cryptids who are hiding out at the Freakshow.  We switch back to Verity who is being tortured for information, but finally manages to attempt to escape.  The tension mounts and all the groups finally clash on the roof with Sarah using her mental powers to implant false memories in the Covenant agents saving everybody.  Verity wakes up in the hospital to learn that Dominic loves her and is staying on her side, the agents have been sent packing and the New York cryptids are as safe as ever.  Unfortunately the mind trick Sarah used on the agents also sent her into a telepathic coma...with the results yet to be seen.  The book ends with Verity and Dominic heading back to the Price family compound, Sarah going home with her mother and a promise of more to come.

Obviously there is a lot more to this book, but that is the bare bones of it (I say this in almost every rambling don't I?)  I loved the first book, and I love this book, it has all the fun stuff spunky, sassy heroines, kick-ass fighting, crazy cryptids, love, hate, family it is so so so much fun.  I still love Verity as a central character, she retained all the traits I loved about her the first time around so I won't rehash that bit, but I will say that her character showed some believable growth which I enjoyed.   One of my minor complaints in the last book is that we did not get to see a lot of Verity's dancing, which was supposed to be her passion, this was addressed beautifully in this book by Verity deciding that while dance was her heart, protecting the cryptids was her soul and she would focus on that.  The Dominic/Verity love story is awesome plain and simple.  Verity has no delusions that Dominic is wholly on one side or the other, she is fully aware that he can betray her at any moment (which I think is part of his appeal for her).  In the end Dominic has his own growth arc and comes to learn that he needs to pick a side.  I like that he chooses to leave the Covenant, not just because of Verity, but because he truly no longer believes that all cryptids are mindless evil creatures.  This time around we get to learn a lot about some of the other characters, especially Istas and Sarah.  Istas cracks me up and may be my favorite character in these books.  She is a solid, beautiful, violence loving cryptid who loves frills, lace, and carnage.  Her interactions with the other characters adds great dimension to this story.  Istas relationship to the Aeslin mice is my favorite as they are natural enemy as Istas eats

rodents.  They come to an understanding when they bond over a bbq of evil rat and all is good.  Sarah becomes a main character in this book and our understanding of this cuckoo creature becomes more complete.  Sarah is not a typical cuckoo and is constantly trying to balance her instinctive telepathic tenancies with her moral and ethic compass she was raised with.  There are a few minor things that drove me nuts.  Verity free-runs all over New York, which is great, but the author talks about it all the time, describes it, tells us Verity's feelings on it, like 57 times, I get it Verity likes to free-run, it makes her feel good, it makes me write run-on sentences, enough already!  I also wanted more cryptid information...but that is because I always want to know more.  There is a great little appendix in the back that gives some extra info, but if the author wanted to write a whole book version of it...I would totally buy it...wait, here, she has an online version  The author said that the next two books in the series are about Verity's older brother Alex, which is hopefully gonna be awesome as it feels like Verity's story is pretty complete.  Also if this is the trend I cannot wait to read about the youngest Price sister!  In case you didn't get it, I really enjoyed this book and already have the next one on my shelf.  I give it 8 out of 10 cryptid cabarets.
What kind of cryptid lives near you?  What kind of cryptid do you wish you could be?  How does one acquire a colony of Aeslin mice?