Review: Backpacking Through Bedlam by Seanan McGuire

The twelfth book in the InCrypid series has us follow Grandma Alice Price-Healy and her long-long, now-found husband Thomas, as they readjust to being married. It's been a very long time coming for readers and for characters, but it's well worth the wait. They have had fifty years of trauma and separation, and they need some time to fit their edges back together, but the world doesn't stop and neither do their problems. From those outstanding at the end of book eleven Spelunking Through Hell to threads from granddaughter Verity's adventures in book one Discount Armageddon, everything is coming together. It's extremely satisfying.

As I was reading, I was acutely aware of the intricate way the Incrypid universe fits together. The events of multiple previous books and five generations of short stories (many free on the author's website or available on Patreon) play into this story, these characters, and their interactions. To make things more complicated, time moves oddly when interdimensional travel is involved so not everything is as we - or Alice - left it. It takes a brilliant mind to fit these stories into such a cohesive whole and I love how this continuity grows and builds upon itself more and more. It's definitely best having read the rest of canon.

I really enjoyed this book. I loved seeing characters love and laugh and consider what it means to be family and care for one another - and themselves. If you like light urban fantasy, families who adore knives, and recognition that not all people are human - don't pick up this book. Pick up the first one, and when you've blitzed through them all, come and yell with me about how amazing this series is.

I received a copy of this book NetGalley; all opinions are my own.