Discount Armageddon (Seanan McGuire)

Discount Armageddon
The InCryptid series, Book 1
Seanan McGuire
DAW
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Verity Price came to New York City to pursue a professional dancing career. Unfortunately, Prices have other obligations, namely keeping an eye on the local cryptid population and ensuring that their interactions with oblivious mundane humans don't get too messy... not to mention keeping her identity secret in case anyone from the Covenant of St. George, a secret sect that believes God charged them with killing any and all "unnatural" beings (plus a generations-long grudge against the "traitor" Price clan), comes around. Juggling two lives is tough under the best of circumstances, but lately it's grown a whole lot tougher. Cryptids are disappearing across the city, just as a Covenant soldier, Dominick De Luca, turns up. When he turns out not to be the cause, Verity has little choice but to accept his help in seeking the real culprit - a search that points to a monster more dangerous than anything she's dealt with before. For a girl raised hunting the deadliest beasts out of legend, that's a high bar.

REVIEW: With a tough, snarky heroine, a hot yet shady love interest, and a host of oddball characters ranging from lizard-men and shapeshifters to talking mice with a fixation on their peculiar invented religion, Discount Armageddon delivers humor and action in more or less equal doses, plus a sizzling smatter of romance on the side. Verity may have been born to a clan of cryptozoologist monster hunters, but her true passion is ballroom dance... a passion she has to set aside while her friends in the cryptid community are under siege from an unknown threat. Dominick was raised by the Covenant, and never thought to question their teachings until he encounters Verity. They make an uneasy partnership at first (natural, considering how Dominick was raised hearing how her ancestors betrayed their oaths to the order), but tend to pull their own weight and fight their own battles. Things move fairly quickly from the start, wending through the hidden world of New York City's cryptid society, many of whom are little more dangerous than the average human despite Covenant propaganda. In keeping with the city's melting pot origins, the cryptids originate from all over the globe, without falling back on urban fantasy staples like zombies and vampires. They come across less as manifested angels or demons and more as part of a strange yet vital ecosystem, one that humans have (inevitably) mucked up without noticing or caring about the consequences. The whole makes for an amusing, interesting, and quick (if not entirely unexpected) read, in a series I might follow through a book or two more.

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