Spelunking Through Hell, (A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld), by Seanan McGuire (DAW)
I have enjoyed Seanan McGuire’s “Incryptid” series since I discovered
it. Earlier volumes felt like related, spin-off stand-alones set in the same
world with characters who were loosely related to one another. I was
particularly delighted to discover that Rose Marshall, from The Girl in the Green
Silk Gown, a series I loved, is a distant, although usually off-scene
character. The last couple of volumes were a bit of a disappointment, but on
the strength of the earlier ones, I decided to give Spelunking Through Hell
a try. It was richly worth it.
The crossroads—as in the place you go to make deals with the
devil that never, ever turn out well for you—are sentient entities who make an
appearance from time to time in McGuire’s related novels. To say they are nasty
is an understatement. One of those bargains involved the magician, Thomas Price.
He’s been confined to the premises of his (haunted, see Rose, above, and Mary
Dunlevy, a ghost who occasionally doubles as a babysitter) house, but it’s part
of the price he pays (to the crossroads, see above) for getting to be with his
adored wife, Alice Healy. But when the crossroads eventually come to collect
their debt, not even Mary can forestall them. Then he vanishes in the middle of
the night and everyone is convinced he’s dead…except Alice, who waits only long
enough to give birth to their second child and then embarks upon a five decades-long
cross-dimensional search for her husband.
Along the way, she acquires friends and allies, including
Ithacan satyrs, Helen and Phoebe, and Naga, the giant snake-man who is a professor of
extra-dimensional studies. She also survives dimensions that are dying because
their world-souls have been stripped, world inhabited by maniacal cannibals,
and worse yet. Her kids won’t talk to the mom who abandoned them. Yet she
refuses to give up.
This book is about her happy ending and what it cost her. It’s
a brilliant, touching page-turner.
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