Brought to you by OBS reviewer Omar
A Look Into the Incryptid Short Stories by Seanan McGuire
The fourth book in the Incryptid Series, Pocket Apocalypse, just came out on March 3rd, to which you can read our review here. As you know, the series is centered around the Price children: Verity, Alex, and Antimony. Verity, was the narrator for the first two books, and her brother Alex for the third and now fourth.
If you are a fan of the series, you have had notice that the books come with a family tree of the Price Family. But during the books, the author and characters have mention older family members such as Alexander and Enid Healy, Jonathan and Francis Healy, Alice Enid Healy, and Thomas Price.
Alexander and Enid Healy are the great – great grandparents of the Price children. They were members of the Covenant of St. George, an old European group with the mission of killing off monster (cryptids) in the world. Alexander and Enid were the ones that escaped from the Covenant, and moved to Berkeley, Michigan in America, where their son Jonathan was born. Later on, Jonathan married Francis Brown, a circus performer when a strange creature started killing people in her circus.
In Seanan McGuire’s website, the author has published short stories for her series. In the Incryptid series case, it starts with the meeting of Jonathan and Francis in the story The Flower of Arizona. Although, this story is not free because it was released on February of 2012, by Daw’s publishing house in the anthology Westward Weird, but the summary is still there. The short story Stingers and Strangers is also not free, this story is in the anthology Dead Man’s Hand, released on May of 2014, by Titan books publishing house. From there on, there are more free short stories that narrate the lives of the Healy family. They show them through happy, sad, hard breaking, sorrowful and memorable moments of their lives. Children are born, friends are made, cryptids are discovered, and time ends and starts.
On February 23th 2015, author Seanan McGuire published the short story Broken Paper Hearts, where a cycle ends and a new one begins for the Healys. A story, fans of the Incryptid series, will like to read.
There are also short stories where the narrators are Antimony, cousin Artie, and the Waheela Istas. Only one of Antimony’s short stories is free, the one where she starts her career in roller derby. The other two, Bad Dream Girl and Jammed, have been published in different anthologies. Artie and his sister Elsie appear in these short stories, but Artie has his own called IM. Istas the Waheela, has three short stories. The first one, Red as Snow, is not free as it came out in the Fiction River anthology Hex and the City, released in December of 2013. But the other two are free and very interesting as they show her relationship with Ryan, a Tanuki, from the first two books of the series.
As a fan of the series, it is very helpful to read these short stories, as they show from where it is that Verity, Alex, and Antimony get their way of living. Other characters make appearances from the Incryptid world. The Aeslin mice are present in most of the stories, as their duty is to worship the gods and priestess that are the Healy family.
I recommend you check out these short stories. As reader, you’ll have a good time reading them and will laugh and cry with the characters as they live their lives. As the Healy family fight to preserve cryptids, author Seanan McGuire has preserved the stories of her characters through these short stories for you to read.
Have you read any of them? Let us know in the comments.
