Because I'm still catching up with the 'InCryptid' series, I'm only just getting to the point where it can remind me that mass market paperbacks are effectively dead as a go-forward medium, with a decision by huge distributor Readerlink to stop distributing them. This book is a mass market but it would be the last such for the series, with DAW publishing 'Aftermarket Afterlife', up next, as a trade paperback, and Tor continuing the series in that fashion as of 'Installment Immortality'. I'm saddened by the loss of an old friend, but then I cursed the tight margins here, so I'm OK with it.

It's rather appropriate timing, because being dropped into a familiar world only to realise that it has changed on me is precisely what happens to Thomas Price here. He's been trapped in a bottle dimension from our world for over half a century and finally gets to come back home, only to find himself part into a war between his family, cryptid protectors on the North American continent,  and his former employers, the Covenant of St. George, cryptid hunters based in Europe. His most telling line here is to say, "I feel rather as if I've just been dropped into the middle of a theatrical production with no program and no notes on what happened during the first two acts."

There's a brief prologue, set sixty years ago in Buckley Township in Michigan as Alice sets out for her annual jackalope count but has to be rescued from swamp hags by Mary Dunlavy. Then it's on to the present day with Alice being the one doing the rescuing. She finally found and rescued her husband Thomas in 'Spelunking Through Hell' and is still mopping up that affair here, as the pair are repatriating their "band of cross-dimensional refugees", a task taking them to Pteracercus, which we immediately recognise as where Sarah spent most of 'Calculated Risks'. It takes ninety-plus pages for them to actually get home.

I enjoyed all this, though it could be argued that everything here is transitional and these ninety pages, which feel like a novella to wrap a bunch of things up after 'Spelunking Through Hell', are only the beginning of that. What follows it in this novel, and in the actual bonus novella, joyously called 'The Mysteries of the Stolen God and Where His Waffles Went', feel like a prologue not just for the next book, 'Aftermarket Afterlife', but for the entire next phase of the series.

And so I need to explain some things. Seanan McGuire is a victim of her own success here, having built a universe with a sprawling ensemble cast, most of whom are both capable and willing to be the leads in multiple books. Of course, four of them already have, with three of those being Alice and Thomas's grandchildren. What that means is that they've all helped to generate a heck of a lot of story to get to this point, aided by Alice and Thomas's daughter-in-law's adopted sister who led two further books, not to forget the entire 'Ghost Roads' trilogy.

McGuire has said that Alice and Thomas came first and that the "entire modern-day series is one long exercise in getting people to invest enough in the search for Thomas Price that they'll care when Alice goes haring off to bring him home." No wonder I adored 'Spelunking Through Hell': it was what this series was always intended to be! And that means that this book gets to finally look at a new beginning, with the natural order of things restored in a whole host of ways.

Sure, Thomas is back in his home dimension, which is as it should be, but he's inherently returning at a crucial time. The Crossroads is dead, which is a ridiculously huge deal for everyone. It's been exposed as an alien world-spirit which invaded Earth and overpowered our natural Anima Mundi, a situation now overturned by Antimony Price, leaving room for the Anima Mundi to recover. The entire planet is returning to normal, not just Thomas. And, of course, the war between the Healy-Price family and the Covenant of St. George seems like it was always destined to be waged, a long simmer ended by 'Chaos Choreography' beginning to escalate here.

And so this book, as enjoyable as it is, is a transition. It's tidying up after what's gone before and warming us up for the war to come. What that means is that it's not much on its own. Of course, it ought to go without saying that nobody should start the series here, but it's probably fair to say that it's inherently doomed to be nobody's favourite. Coming after 'Spelunking Through Hell', as it was always meant to do, it feels underwhelming. It seems pretty likely that it's going to feel all the more like that after I dive into 'Aftermarket Afterlife' and the fit hits the shan. However, it's a decent enough book that would only be disappointing to readers expecting the war to kick in hard within its pages. It doesn't. This is a warm-up bout. The championship is next.

To give it some validity as an actual novel in its own right, McGuire doesn't give Alice and Thomas time to settle back into Buckley Township, where they can finally learn how to be together again. The best parts of this book are arguably the ones where they bump and bristle, clearly wanting to be comfortable now that their long awaited reunion has happened but, after over half a century, not really knowing how to do that. It's subtle character work compared to much of what happens in this series, but it's cleverly done.

Instead, McGuire whisks them away in Darius's vampire car to New York City to become a part of the fight to come. While it's not raging yet, it was already in motion early in the series in Verity's books. As we pick up from those, we find that the Manhattan Nest, home to North America's only male dragons, has become a sort of refugee camp, with Verity and Dominic as tolerated liaisons. So, when Sally is kidnapped during a pizza run and Cara and dragon children go missing too, Alice and Thomas spearhead a taskforce to get them back.

This story arc gives 'Backpacking Through Bedlam' some meat but it's a snack rather than a meal, the equivalent of a squash match in wrestling. Sure, we get to see favourite characters kicking ass and taking names, but the opposition only gets a couple of cheap shots in before the three count. Now, I enjoyed it all, but I wouldn't be lying if I didn't say that I enjoyed the scenes with the Aeslin mice still more. As much as McGuire has given us in this series, which is an awful lot, and will keep on giving us in books to come, which I hope will be an awful lot more, I doubt she'll give us anyone or anything more joyous than the Aeslin mice.

They're clearly supporting characters within the novel, as they tend to be, but I was happy to see them get more moments in the spotlight in the bonus novella, with the point of view shifting as it goes from James to Acadia, one of his clergy. This is a transitional piece too, as these novellas do tend to be, but it's a wonderful teaser for a reunion that we don't get to see this time out, James and Sally. We do get plenty of reunions in the novel and more have happened behind the novella, but it seems likely the big ones are coming next time out, this one likely included. Instead, we can focus on the mice and we learn a lot about how their religion adapts.

All in all, this one does its job, but its job is to wrap up the groundbreaking previous volume and to set us up for what has the potential for being a groundbreaking next volume. It has to be read on that basis. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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