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kathydavie's review against another edition
4.0
Seventh in the InCryptid urban fantasy series and revolving around the Price-Healy family, still with a shoot-to-kill-on-sight order on them by the Covenant of St. George. The focus is on the youngest daughter, Antimony Price, who is on the run.
My Take
There's plenty of action and minor stories within the overall story of Antimony hiding out and trying to get a handle on her magic. And I did enjoy how much of the previous series stories McGuire manages to pull in to Tricks for Free. Crossroads and hitchhiking ghosts, the family issues involving Grandpa Thomas and Artie, Antimony's past with her derby team and when she was with the carnival, and then adding in the glee of those magic lessons and Sam's luck.
Throwing in Cylia with her jink luck certainly makes things exciting, as ya just don't know which way the action will go. And as much as I dislike snakes, I crack up at McGuire's descriptions of how Megan's "hair" acts out, lol.
It's a first person protagonist point-of-view from Antimony's perspective, and hoo boy, the in-fighting amongst her fellow employees at Lowryland! Yep, makes it a real-world experience, all right.
That amusement park...it's an interesting blend of rah, rah, yay, rah...on the outside with penny pinching employers on the inside and a beautiful leavening of acceptance by Antimony of the cryptids around her. Everyone is welcome by the Prices *grin*. With all the hassles of working a tourist destination with all those kids and babies, I'll visit Disneyland with a whole different perspective after this!
It's about family and friends, about acceptance, love, a willingness to accept reality, and a desire to survive up against manipulative greed and betrayal in a simple human contract, however unexpected.
The Aeslin mice are my favorite part of the series, but they don't appear much in Tricks for Free. The mice see their job as keeping the family history, so it's essential there be at least one mouse with each member of the family. Oopsies...
I've slowly been working out the genealogy, and there is no way that Elsie and Artie can be Antimony's cousins if they're Kevin's siblings, especially since Kevin is the dad of Verity, Alex, and Antimony. They'd be aunt and uncle. So what gives? What am I missing?
The one bit that really annoyed me about the story was having to struggle so hard to work out who all the "partners" were of that underground cabal.
The Story
In a desperate move to throw off the Covenant and to hide from her family, Antimony "joins the circus". Again. Well, where else can she hide from a tracking spell but with a huge crowd of people?
Now if she could just get her fire magic under control...
The Characters
Melody West, a.k.a., Antimony Price, youngest daughter of the Price family, is a cryptozoologist in training whose fire magic is out of control. Verity is her older sister who trains as a dancer. Alex, her brother, worked at the Columbus Zoo.
Thomas Price is the magic-using grandfather who went missing; he was also a member of the Covenant of St George. Grandma Alice is Thomas' wife, and she's usually gone, dimension traveling for Grandfather. "Aunt" Mary Dunlavy had been the Price babysitter back in "Oh Pretty Bird", 0.1, and now she's a crossroads ghost, and "Aunt" Rose Marshall, a.k.a., The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, is a hitchhiking ghost (both are in Sparrow Hill Road, 1 ). Uncle Al is a jink living in Las Vegas.
Jane Healey-Price was Thomas and Alice's daughter, and she married Theodore Harrington, an incubus. Jane and Theodore have three children: Elsie; Artie, the reclusive, half-incubus/half-human empath, comic book-loving nerd; and, Kevin who married Evelyn Baker (they're Antimony, Alex, and Verity's parents). Antimony's maternal grandparents are a cuckoo and a Revenant. Sarah, a cuckoo who's a telepath, was adopted, and supposedly another cousin (in love with Artie). The Prices have a huge honorary family. Mindy is the Aeslin mouse sent with Antimony to infiltrate in Magic For Nothing, 6, where she met Mork. (The Aeslin mice keep an oral history of absolutely everything that happens in the Healy family.)
Lowry Entertainment, Inc., Lakeland, Florida, is...
...an amusement park rivaling Disney that was built by Michael Lowry. Monty Mule and Hilary Hinny are the premier characters for the park. Clarice does, er, did, intake interviews. Eddie is in security.
Megan and Fern are Antimony's roommates and fellow employees. Even better, Fern Conway, a sylph, had been a fellow skater (and a blocker) on the Slasher Chicks roller derby team back in Portland. Megan (her real name is Magaere) Rodriguez is a Pliny's gorgon and medical graduate doing her residency at the Lowryland Hospital. Cylia Mackie is captain of the Wilsonville Rose Petals, a rival derby team, as well as a personal assistant. She's also a jink, a cryptid who can manipulate luck. Tav had been her much-loved husband. Cylia is staying at an apartment above the Lakeland Ladies warehouse. Princess Ley-you-out, a chupacabra, is one of the jammers in the league.
Sophie Vargas, the captain of Antimony's high school cheerleading team, is now Sophie Vargas-Jackson and a vice-president at the park. Knighton. Other employees include Robin, who is the queen of mean; Cathy; Emily Doyle is one of the PR people and a routewitch; Andrea is an ambulomancer; Joshua is a trainspotter; and, Colin, a.k.a., Wand Guy, is a sorcerer who will teach Antimony.
The Spenser and Smith Family Carnival is...
...waiting it out in Indiana. Sam Taylor is a fūri, a kind of yōkai therianthrope of Chinese origin...and he looks like a monkey. And brilliant on the trapeze.
David Wilson bled out. Ginger is just a small child.
The Covenant of St George is...
...an underground organization that hates all cryptids and kills them wherever they find them. Leonard Cunningham is the heir presumptive.
Routewitches gain power from the distance they go on the road. Trainspotters are a type of routewitch who get power from trains. A cryptozoologist is a cross between a zoologist and an anthropologist who specializes in non-humans.
The Cover and Title
The cover is fireworks in fuchsia, oranges, and purples with Antimony (in a cropped tank top and blue jeans, wearing knee pads and sneakers while holding a cellphone in one hand and her beat-up skates in the other) perched on a rollercoaster rail with loops of tracks behind her. If you look carefully, you can see Sam in the distance hanging on to the tracks on the right. An info blurb at the very top with the author's name below it is in white. The title is centered at the bottom in orange with a yellow outline, giving it a neon effect. Below the title is the series information in white.
The title is an unexpected skulduggery Antimony doesn't expect, those Tricks for Free that she receives as does every other person coming to enjoy the park.
My Take
There's plenty of action and minor stories within the overall story of Antimony hiding out and trying to get a handle on her magic. And I did enjoy how much of the previous series stories McGuire manages to pull in to Tricks for Free. Crossroads and hitchhiking ghosts, the family issues involving Grandpa Thomas and Artie, Antimony's past with her derby team and when she was with the carnival, and then adding in the glee of those magic lessons and Sam's luck.
Throwing in Cylia with her jink luck certainly makes things exciting, as ya just don't know which way the action will go. And as much as I dislike snakes, I crack up at McGuire's descriptions of how Megan's "hair" acts out, lol.
It's a first person protagonist point-of-view from Antimony's perspective, and hoo boy, the in-fighting amongst her fellow employees at Lowryland! Yep, makes it a real-world experience, all right.
That amusement park...it's an interesting blend of rah, rah, yay, rah...on the outside with penny pinching employers on the inside and a beautiful leavening of acceptance by Antimony of the cryptids around her. Everyone is welcome by the Prices *grin*. With all the hassles of working a tourist destination with all those kids and babies, I'll visit Disneyland with a whole different perspective after this!
It's about family and friends, about acceptance, love, a willingness to accept reality, and a desire to survive up against manipulative greed and betrayal in a simple human contract, however unexpected.
The Aeslin mice are my favorite part of the series, but they don't appear much in Tricks for Free. The mice see their job as keeping the family history, so it's essential there be at least one mouse with each member of the family. Oopsies...
I've slowly been working out the genealogy, and there is no way that Elsie and Artie can be Antimony's cousins if they're Kevin's siblings, especially since Kevin is the dad of Verity, Alex, and Antimony. They'd be aunt and uncle. So what gives? What am I missing?
The one bit that really annoyed me about the story was having to struggle so hard to work out who all the "partners" were of that underground cabal.
The Story
In a desperate move to throw off the Covenant and to hide from her family, Antimony "joins the circus". Again. Well, where else can she hide from a tracking spell but with a huge crowd of people?
Now if she could just get her fire magic under control...
The Characters
Melody West, a.k.a., Antimony Price, youngest daughter of the Price family, is a cryptozoologist in training whose fire magic is out of control. Verity is her older sister who trains as a dancer. Alex, her brother, worked at the Columbus Zoo.
Thomas Price is the magic-using grandfather who went missing; he was also a member of the Covenant of St George. Grandma Alice is Thomas' wife, and she's usually gone, dimension traveling for Grandfather. "Aunt" Mary Dunlavy had been the Price babysitter back in "Oh Pretty Bird", 0.1, and now she's a crossroads ghost, and "Aunt" Rose Marshall, a.k.a., The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, is a hitchhiking ghost (both are in Sparrow Hill Road, 1 ). Uncle Al is a jink living in Las Vegas.
Jane Healey-Price was Thomas and Alice's daughter, and she married Theodore Harrington, an incubus. Jane and Theodore have three children: Elsie; Artie, the reclusive, half-incubus/half-human empath, comic book-loving nerd; and, Kevin who married Evelyn Baker (they're Antimony, Alex, and Verity's parents). Antimony's maternal grandparents are a cuckoo and a Revenant. Sarah, a cuckoo who's a telepath, was adopted, and supposedly another cousin (in love with Artie). The Prices have a huge honorary family. Mindy is the Aeslin mouse sent with Antimony to infiltrate in Magic For Nothing, 6, where she met Mork. (The Aeslin mice keep an oral history of absolutely everything that happens in the Healy family.)
Lowry Entertainment, Inc., Lakeland, Florida, is...
...an amusement park rivaling Disney that was built by Michael Lowry. Monty Mule and Hilary Hinny are the premier characters for the park. Clarice does, er, did, intake interviews. Eddie is in security.
Megan and Fern are Antimony's roommates and fellow employees. Even better, Fern Conway, a sylph, had been a fellow skater (and a blocker) on the Slasher Chicks roller derby team back in Portland. Megan (her real name is Magaere) Rodriguez is a Pliny's gorgon and medical graduate doing her residency at the Lowryland Hospital. Cylia Mackie is captain of the Wilsonville Rose Petals, a rival derby team, as well as a personal assistant. She's also a jink, a cryptid who can manipulate luck. Tav had been her much-loved husband. Cylia is staying at an apartment above the Lakeland Ladies warehouse. Princess Ley-you-out, a chupacabra, is one of the jammers in the league.
Sophie Vargas, the captain of Antimony's high school cheerleading team, is now Sophie Vargas-Jackson and a vice-president at the park. Knighton. Other employees include Robin, who is the queen of mean; Cathy; Emily Doyle is one of the PR people and a routewitch; Andrea is an ambulomancer; Joshua is a trainspotter; and, Colin, a.k.a., Wand Guy, is a sorcerer who will teach Antimony.
The Spenser and Smith Family Carnival is...
...waiting it out in Indiana. Sam Taylor is a fūri, a kind of yōkai therianthrope of Chinese origin...and he looks like a monkey. And brilliant on the trapeze.
David Wilson bled out. Ginger is just a small child.
The Covenant of St George is...
...an underground organization that hates all cryptids and kills them wherever they find them. Leonard Cunningham is the heir presumptive.
Routewitches gain power from the distance they go on the road. Trainspotters are a type of routewitch who get power from trains. A cryptozoologist is a cross between a zoologist and an anthropologist who specializes in non-humans.
The Cover and Title
The cover is fireworks in fuchsia, oranges, and purples with Antimony (in a cropped tank top and blue jeans, wearing knee pads and sneakers while holding a cellphone in one hand and her beat-up skates in the other) perched on a rollercoaster rail with loops of tracks behind her. If you look carefully, you can see Sam in the distance hanging on to the tracks on the right. An info blurb at the very top with the author's name below it is in white. The title is centered at the bottom in orange with a yellow outline, giving it a neon effect. Below the title is the series information in white.
The title is an unexpected skulduggery Antimony doesn't expect, those Tricks for Free that she receives as does every other person coming to enjoy the park.
katieinca's review against another edition
2.0
An InCryptid book with NO MICE. A muddled plot arc. And a lot of me turning to the other half of my 2-person book club saying "hey have you read this part yet? How is that supposed to have worked? Do they have special physics?" and "Huh, that character/concept was super important for just a chapter or two and then we don't think about it again?" I can roll with a certain amount of suspension of disbelief and slight of hand, but this got distracting.
It was ok.
It was ok.
distgenius's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
maxtrommelen's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
bunrab's review against another edition
5.0
Continues to be one of my favorite series. This volume is the continuation of Antimony's adventures. Roller derby is integral. The add-on story of Mindy and Mork's journey home is cute.
tani's review against another edition
4.0
After having some trouble getting into the previous book in this series, I was a bit worried about this one, but it turns out that my worries were completely unfounded. Tricks for Free was one of my favorite entries in the series to date. Annie has really grown on me, I guess.
So, in this book, Antimony is on the run from the Covenant, and is hiding out at Lowryland, the next best thing to Disneyland. She starts the book alone, without a plan, and still fighting to keep from burning down everything she touches. I don't want to say too much about what happens during the book, as I think this is one that is truly better if you don't know what's going to happen, so I guess I'll keep this relatively short.
First, the setting of this was a lot of fun. Disneyland is where I went for my honeymoon, so having a setting that was somewhat modeled after that was really amusing for me, and made the beginning of the book a bit more absorbing than it might have otherwise been.
Second, I loved that we got to learn more about magic in this book. We also got a few new incryptids, both of whom were pretty awesome, but the magic was a real highlight for me. I'm really glad that Annie is a magic-user because it adds a very cool extra layer to her character and the world-building, and its an element that I'm excited to see more of in the next book.
Third, there's a real found family theme building in Annie's books that I'm honestly loving. It's the kind of thing that absolutely makes sense for Annie, who feels pretty alienated from most of her actual family, and the people that she chooses for that found family are pretty awesome. Also, having a slightly larger cast of characters in this book was a real draw for me, and I hope that all of the characters get more time to grow and develop in the next book.
Also worth mentioning is the little novelette at the end of the book, which tells the story of a few things that happened in between this book and the previous one. It was a cute and touching addition to the series, and I'm glad I got to read it.
Anyway, I'm really excited that the next book will also feature Annie, and I can't wait to see where the story takes her!
So, in this book, Antimony is on the run from the Covenant, and is hiding out at Lowryland, the next best thing to Disneyland. She starts the book alone, without a plan, and still fighting to keep from burning down everything she touches. I don't want to say too much about what happens during the book, as I think this is one that is truly better if you don't know what's going to happen, so I guess I'll keep this relatively short.
First, the setting of this was a lot of fun. Disneyland is where I went for my honeymoon, so having a setting that was somewhat modeled after that was really amusing for me, and made the beginning of the book a bit more absorbing than it might have otherwise been.
Second, I loved that we got to learn more about magic in this book. We also got a few new incryptids, both of whom were pretty awesome, but the magic was a real highlight for me. I'm really glad that Annie is a magic-user because it adds a very cool extra layer to her character and the world-building, and its an element that I'm excited to see more of in the next book.
Third, there's a real found family theme building in Annie's books that I'm honestly loving. It's the kind of thing that absolutely makes sense for Annie, who feels pretty alienated from most of her actual family, and the people that she chooses for that found family are pretty awesome. Also, having a slightly larger cast of characters in this book was a real draw for me, and I hope that all of the characters get more time to grow and develop in the next book.
Also worth mentioning is the little novelette at the end of the book, which tells the story of a few things that happened in between this book and the previous one. It was a cute and touching addition to the series, and I'm glad I got to read it.
Anyway, I'm really excited that the next book will also feature Annie, and I can't wait to see where the story takes her!
malreynolds111's review against another edition
3.0
I received an advance copy from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
The latest installment of the InCryptid series continues the story of Antimony Price. I really didn't care for her attitude in the previous book, but felt like I got to know her better in this one. It didn't resolve her issues with the Covenant of St. George but I expect that to take a few books anyway.
The latest installment of the InCryptid series continues the story of Antimony Price. I really didn't care for her attitude in the previous book, but felt like I got to know her better in this one. It didn't resolve her issues with the Covenant of St. George but I expect that to take a few books anyway.
lisawreading's review against another edition
5.0
Another outstanding InCryptid story -- the 2nd featuring Antimony in the lead role, this time hiding out at a Florida theme park and running into a new, dangerous threat. Plus, lots of roller skating, hanging out with ghosts, gorgons, and a maybe-boyfriend, and all the silly banter we love from Seanan McGuire.
And now, I'm all caught up on InCryptids, and have to wait until 2019 for more. Sob.
And now, I'm all caught up on InCryptids, and have to wait until 2019 for more. Sob.