So as some of you might know, I'm a big fan of Seanan McGuire. I've made it one of my goals this year to reread all of the October Daye series (I'm at the start of book 6 now, thanks largely to audiobooks), but I also enjoyed what I've read of the InCryptid series quite a lot, so I jumped on the chance to grab this review copy from netgalley. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free copy in exchange for an honest review!

"Trauma changes who you are, and there's no way to say 'well, I'm finished with this, I'm going to move on now.' You have to figure out how to reconcile it with everything else you understand about yourself, and sometimes it really sucks." ~ Alice Price-Healy

First off, if you've not read an InCryptid book before, I definitely recommend the series as a whole. There are different places where you can start, like the first book, or arguably when the POV characters change. Probably not this book, though. I'd read up to book 5 at least, and then stopped due to unavailability at the local library/in local stores. I had no problem following the events here, but it'd be a lot harder with no context at all, and definitely having read the Antimony books would've helped me with some context. On the plus side, I now want to go and reread the whole series.

This series... It's a fun romp, there's loads of cryptids and monsters and funky weird creatures, and talking mice, and it's funny and light to read, until it's not. Alice is a tremendously fucked up character, with 50 years of trauma - some of which is self-inflicted - and this novel is about her reaching the end of her quest and dealing with what that means for her as a person. How do you move forward when your whole life was about finding that one person, and you now have to consider "what's next". I don't normally do quotes but the one above just encapsulates the book so well - and also captures what resonated with me.

It was surprisingly fast-paced, although I should not be surprised because this whole series is fast paced short novels, but I didn't expect Alice to get to where she was going in less than 40% of the book. There were of course other challenges after that and I loved how the story unfolded. I'm also looking forward to seeing Alice and the others do a bit of healing. And hoping we'll see Sally again in the future, because she was a fun not-quite-antagonist-slash-adopted-kid to read about!
Overall an entertaining read that's made me want to dive back into the whole series!

trigger warnings for the book: parental abuse/neglect, panic attacks, wasps, graphic descriptions of physical injuries and flaying, mentions of cannibalism and rape.

This feels like a culmination.

Spelunking Through Hell is book 11 of a series about a family of cryptozoologists - monster scientists and preservationists. It switches POV every few books and some are more interconnected than others. The events that led to this one really kicked off at the end of book 5, which started a domino chain through books 6, 7, and 8, with books 9 and 10 detouring slightly. In addition to the novels, there's a bunch of short stories and novellas - some released for free on the author's website, other in anthologies or on Patreon - detailing past generations. I can't tell you how well this one stands on its own because it stands SO WELL with its prequels, drawing two straight lines from the current continuity and the past that got us here to the culmination of what feels like a lot of things.

Thematically, it's a quest. Alice Healy has been hunting for her husband for fifty years, smashing through the walls between dimensions and giving people nightmares. She's abandoned her children, now grown, and somehow still looks about the age of their children, or even younger. The last time she saw her granddaughter Antimony, she learnt news that changed everything and gave her hope again. We meet her as she back onto Earth, right before her infamous Healy luck points her in a new direction. It might be a trap. It might be the answer to everything. It's definitely going to be a wild ride.

Alive has a very different perspective from her grandkids. She's older, far more cynical, and her focus is finding Thomas, with neither Covenant nor cryptozoology in sight. She's cheerful and damaged and tremendous fun to read even as you groan at some of her choices. She makes a lot more sense now I've read her backstory.

I'm trying not to gush but my flatmate caught me grinning at my phone during one particular fight scene and I found myself going back to reread choice bits (and then found myself rereading pretty much all of it). There's a bit of body horror and references to Alice's very poor parenting, but if you've read any of this series and enjoyed it, you will love this. I'd just recommend reading the Patreon stories for it to have maximum impact. It feels like a culmination, but it also feels like an inflection point, and I can't wait to see where the Price-Healy family do next.

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

Spelunking Through Hell is a wonderful addition to the In Cryptid series. This book focuses on Alice Price-Healy and her search for her husband, Thomas through many dimensions and worlds. It's fun, action-packed, and pulls a little bit at the heartstrings. I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in female focused storylines!

This installment of the InCryptid series is from the point of view of Alice, the grandmother of Verity, Annie, and the other characters who have been our POV narrators up to this point. But in case you’re not familiar with the Price family, Grandma Alice isn’t the cookie-baking, sweater-knitting type of Grandma. She’s more the magically tattooed, pistol-packing, interdimensional-bounty-hunting kind of lady. Ever since her husband Thomas disappeared through a dimensional portal in 1965, leaving Alice and their two small children behind, Alice has been searching across realities for him. She hasn’t aged in that time, either, and won’t tell anyone how she managed that. And now that the Crossroads – the entity that took him from her in the first place – are no longer an issue, she’s more determined than ever to get him back.

This is a story I’ve been waiting to read (and a POV character I’ve been wanting to see) for a long time, and it didn’t disappoint! This might be one of the best in the series so far. Just as a warning, the truth about how Alice stays young is pretty horrifying, so if you’re squeamish, tread lightly – though if you’re already familiar with some of the gorier parts of Seanan McGuire’s work, you’ll probably be fine.

The print and ebook versions (I don’t know about the audio) also contain a novella called “And Sweep Up The Wood...” about Alice’s youth, the woods she grew up in, and how she and Thomas got together. It was also really good, and added depth and context to their story.

Representation: Lesbian characters

CW: violence, torture, gore

Series Info/Source: This is the 11th book in the InCryptid series. I got a copy of this to review as an eGalley from NetGalley.

Thoughts: This was an amazing continuation of this series. I loved finally getting Alice's story and background. This was really, really well done.

This book actually takes place in current time but there is a novella that goes back into Alice's past included after the main book as well. We get to join Alice on her journey through different dimensions as she gets closer and closer to finding her husband Thomas (after 50 years of searching).

I loved the different dimensions we journey through, they were very intriguing and creative. I also loved the fast pace and all of the action here. Alice is one tough cookie and watching the way she couples pure toughness, magic, and training was fun. I also loved how this whole story ties in with the larger story that is woven throughout this series involving the crossroads…. Oh, and there are Aeslin mice aplenty, you have to love the mice!

The novella included at the end was an excellent read as well. We get a lot more background on Alice and Thomas’s past in that and it was a wonderful read.

My Summary (5/5): Overall I think this was the best Incryptid book that I have read in quite some time. I really, really loved the dimensional traveling and getting to spend time with the legendary, kick-butt Alice. This was an incredibly fun read and tied many things from earlier books in the series together beautifully. I think you could read this as a stand alone and enjoy it, but you will enjoy it so much more if you have read the previous novels as well! So much fun :-)

Spelunking Through Hell, by author Seanan McGuire, is the Eleventh installment in the authors InCryptid series. Alice Price-Healy knows what pain feels like. She lost her mother at a young age and her father years later. She fell in love with a man named Thomas Price whose family was part of the dreaded Covenant which wants to rid the world of Cryptids. 65 years ago, in order to save Alice from dying painfully, Thomas made a bargain with the malevolent entity known as the crossroads. 56 years ago, Thomas was separated from his wife, their son, Kevin, and newborn baby daughter, Jane.

After Jane was born, a heart broken, and shattered Alice left her kids with Laura Campbell to raise thus beginning her quest to find Thomas. For 50 years, Alice has all but abandoned her children, as well as her Aeslin mice, for a never ending search for Thomas, and to finally bring him home. Alice nearly made her own bad bargain with the Crossroads, only to be stopped by Mary Dunlavy, the family babysitter who also helped Antimony on her quest. Her search has led her across a variety of dimensions. Nobody seems to know what happened to Thomas.

Alice's one break was a hint from Antimony a few books ago when she faced off against the Crossroads. She now has confirmation that Thomas is still alive and out there somewhere. Since she was a kid, Alice has been helped by a Naga. She works for him tracking down bounties while she searches for any trace of where the Crossroads might have sent her husband. When she finds a book in a cave while she is retrieving her backpack, the discovery of journals and a dimensional map by a famous explorer sets her on a new path. Thanks to her friends in Ithaca, Alice might be getting closer.

As we've seen from other books, Alice appears to be in her early twenties and is covered in magical tattoos that help her heal and use magic on her search for Thomas. But the dimensions are not kind, and neither is her most reliable helper. The addition of new worlds, including Ithaca, also introduces readers to characters who have been helpful to Alice on her never ending search for Thomas. Without spoiling anything, Alice is not a pushover and has a bit of power. She has a forest back in Michigan that loves her, and an Aeslin mouse congregation complete with Priest that keep records and prays for her, but they were left with Antimony some time ago.

There are things that I can say without spoiling what happens. The reunion, yes. It goes about as you expect it to go. A new character named Sally who was taken by the Crossroads is pretty cool. She's very protective of Thomas and it takes a whole lot for her to believe Alice isn't an assassin. The world that Alice ends up in is a nightmare that forces the parties to use curious ways to escape. The bitterness between Jane and Alice will one day need to be fixed. Alice has a whole lot to make up for. I can also say that the Aeslin mice to make an appearance, but Alice, Thomas, and Sally have one more adventure to finish before retiring.

The novella at the end of the book, And Sweep Up the Wood, features a young Alice and Thomas which is something readers of the series should definitely read until the end. In typical McGuire fashion, she has allowed characters several books like Sarah. I am curious if another Alice book is in the works now that Thomas, and Alice, and Sally seem to be a team.

Here it is, Incryptid fans: Alice Price-Healy narrates her own story and her quest to find her wayward husband Thomas comes to an end. This novel is best if you've read all of the Incryptid novels and short stories, because characters like Naga the kindly giant snake play vital roles. Alice has been searching through the multiverse for her husband Thomas since the Crossroads stole him away when she was pregnant. Now, more than 60 years later, Alice finally has the clues she needs to find him, if her allies don't stop her. A fun and essential part of the Incryptid saga, Alice's story shows the ways that the Price family is what she made it, despite her absence.

I still live for this series! I own every title in this series and every time I see a new one is announced i get so excited. I love getting to see these characters again and learn more about this world McGuire has been creating. I honestly have nothing else to say buy please do yourself a favor and go check out this series! In fact just go check out all of McGuire's work and you can thank me later.

I’m always curious to get into a new Seanan McGuire novel and I happily dove into this new novel.

This time, we follow Verity’s grandmother: Alice. She who has not aged because she goes from dimension to dimension to find her husband who has been missing for 50 years. Will she finally find him now that the crossroads have disappeared? This new quest may bring her what she has been searching for, but she will also discover revelations she would rather never have known.

I was curious to discover Alice’s story, but in the end I have to say that I found it harder to get hooked on this new novel. I found it less fast paced, but it may also be that we are moving away from the main plot with the Covenant and that the characters are perhaps less iconic than our three Prices.

Either way, it was a nice new volume and I can’t wait to see who we follow in the next one.

TITLE: Spelunking Through Hell (InCryptid Book 11)
AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire
352 pages, DAW Books, ISBN 9780756411831 (paperback, also in e-book and audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): Love, noun:

1. An intense feeling of deep affection; may be romantic, filial or platonic.

Passion, noun:

1. A strong or barely controllable emotion.
2. Enthusiasm, interest, desire.
3. See also “obsession.”

It’s been fifty years since the crossroads caused the disappearance of Thomas Price, and his wife, Alice, has been trying to find him and bring him home ever since, despite the increasing probability that he’s no longer alive for her to find. Now that the crossroads have been destroyed, she’s redoubling her efforts. It’s time to bring him home, dead or alive.

Preferably alive, of course, but she’s tired, and at this point, she’s not that picky. It’s a pan-dimensional crash course in chaos, as Alice tries to find the rabbit hole she’s been missing for all these decades—the one that will take her to the man she loves.

Who are her allies? Who are her enemies? And if she manages to find him, will he even remember her at this point?

It’s a lot for one cryptozoologist to handle.

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

MY THOUGHTS: Spelunking Through Hell, the eleventh book in Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series chronicling the adventures of a family of cryptozoologists (the Prices), is an action-packed emotional rollercoaster that caps off a long-running subplot and bodes a momentous change in the family’s status quo going forward. Oh, and it just happens to be the first book in the series narrated by nominal family matriarch Alice Price-Healy.
I say “nominal” because in the preceding ten novels, Alice has been more conspicuous in her absence and its effect on her children and grandchildren. She’s been travelling between dimensions in search of her stolen husband, and that has absolutely put a strain on her relationship with her descendants. Most of the important things that have happened in this series? Alice has been absent for, and whoever is narrating a particular book (grandchildren Verity, Alex, and Antimony; extended family member Sarah) usually comments on it. It’s been an effective way to build interest in Alice and her quest, a great slow boil sub-plot that finally pays off as we get to see Alice in her element and hear her voice.

And that voice is straightforward, no nonsense. Alice is committed to her path. She will find her lost husband if it kills her (and it comes pretty darn close several times), even if it damages her familial relationships (as we know it has), even if it means she never returns to Earth (a distinct possibility). We’ve seen this commitment, this willingness to risk all for the right cause, in her grandkids – especially Antimony – so clearly Alice has been an influence on them. But it becomes clear there is so much Alice has not told her loved ones, that she has done Things of Which the Family would Not Approve (as the Aeslin mice would say, pronouncing all those capital letters along the way). Those things are just the latest trauma that has made Alice the woman she is.
This book is a wild adventure with fight scenes galore and fascinating world-building (the way dimensions work and dimensional travel happens is fascinating and not like any other version of such I’ve read) but it is also a treatise on the way repeated trauma informs who we are as well as how we can become inured to it.

Those who have read the short stories chronicling Alice’s childhood, teen, and college years on McGuire’s website and Patreon know just how much emotional and physical trauma Alice has experienced: several near-death experiences, the loss of her mother at an early age (which also caused her father to become emotionally distant and controlling), the later violent losses of the grandparents who helped raise her as well as her father, and of course the taking of her husband by the Crossroads. Any one of those events is traumatic enough to cause one to seek therapy; a lifetime of them would be more than many of us would survive. Alice could not rescue her parents or grandparents, so rescuing her husband becomes not just a goal, but a mission, an obsession. As long as she’s focused on that, she can justify the further trauma she experiences, both self-inflicted (abandoning her son and daughter to the care of family friends, as well as something else I won’t spoil because it’s a major plot point) and inflicted by others (she starts the novel with another near-death experience). I haven’t been through anywhere near as much trauma as Alice has, but I recognized some of the language she uses and some of her coping mechanisms as similar to my own. McGuire understands trauma, understands coping mechanisms, and understands that sometimes the latter fail and we’re left raw. And she does not back away from or soften those moments. Nor should she.

If there’s a downside to this book, it’s a minor one: because Alice spends most of her time (and thus most of the book) away from Earth, any on-going plots regarding the Price family’s relationships and danger from the Covenant get put on hold. It’s a little jarring at first, but McGuire has more than earned the opportunity to veer off from the main narrative to finally tell the story she’s been anxious to tell from the start. It’s not a total disconnect, as events from the previous books are mentioned – especially those of Antimony’s novels which had a direct effect on Alice’s decisions at the start of this book.

The book also contains a novella that chronicles a key moment in Alice and Thomas’ shared past. It is both sweet and horrific at the same time. Which is something Seanan McGuire does so well.



I received an electronic advance reading copy for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

You know how sometimes you don't realize how much you needed something until it was sitting right in your lap? That is what happened to me with Spelunking Through Hell. I never realized how badly I needed to read a novel from Alice Price's perspective, but thankfully that's no longer a concern.

Spelunking Through Hell is the eleventh novel in Seanan McGuire's InCryptid series. It's also the first story from Alice Price/Healy's point of view. Given the pattern of the series so far, it seems unlikely that it'll be the last. Oh! It also contains another classic InCryptid novella, And Sweep Up the Wood. More on that in a moment.

Alice knows what pain feels like. She lost her mother at a young age and her father years later – not that he was ever the same after his wife's death. Yet she fell in love with a man named Thomas Price – a Covenant man.

It's been fifty years since that very man disappeared into another dimension. Fifty years of searching - as Alice is never one to give up. She's sacrificed so much to get to this point, and yet it feels like she's closer than ever after finding one critical piece of information. Will Alice and Thomas finally be reunited?

Seanan McGuire has done it again. Spelunking Through Hell is another fantastic addition to the InCryptid series. Seriously, fans of this series need to make a point of picking it up and reading it ASAP.

I'll be honest with you here: I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from Alice's POV, thus Spelunking Through Hell. Previously, all I've ever seen of Alice has been through the perspective of her grandchildren, so it's been a bit of a mixed bag.

Now? Now I have a solid idea of Alice's character and how much determination that woman carries within it. More than that, I know how much pain she has gone through to find the one she loves most. It's pretty endearing, not that I would ever say that to her face.

Getting a chance to see more dimensional travel within the InCryptid world was a delight, if I may say so. There's so much to learn and explore here. I thought I already knew that, but as it turns out, the previous books barely scraped the surface. I cannot wait to see more (I'm assuming/hoping that Alice will be the primary perspective for the next novel).

To say that there's a lot in this book would be a serious understatement. Alice on her own would be a lot. Throwing in magical tattoos, dimensional travel, the endless quest to find her husband, and several other curveballs? Well, that makes the perfect recipe for another InCryptid novel, doesn't it?

One of the many things I loved about Spelunking Through Hell is the dominant theme throughout the pages. Trust. Secondary to that is the ever-present debate over how much time can (or can't) change a person.

Once again, I find myself thrilled with the latest novel from Seanan McGuire. Likewise, I'm already counting down the days to the next release, as they always prove to be enchanting. Stay tuned below for a review of the novella included alongside Spelunking Through Hell: And Sweep Up the Wood.


And Sweep Up the Wood

I've concluded that all of the Price/Healy short stories/novellas will hurt my heart in some way, shape, or form. At least part of that pain stems from the fact that many of the novellas have been set in the past – meaning that I know what will ultimately happen to those characters.

And Sweep Up the Wood is set long before the events of Spelunking Through Hell – by fifty-plus years. It's set before Alice needs to take up her lifelong quest, but after the man she falls in love with has come into her life.

As such, one would think this story would be predictable since we know what happened before, and we know what follows. One would be wrong. This story is arguably one of the most emotionally compelling novellas I've read from the InCryptid-verse in quite some time – and that is saying something. It's a melancholy tale, one that resonated with me. I won't say why it did so, as that would open the door for spoilers. But it hit close to home on several occasions.

On a happier note, the Aeslin mice are back! Their presence was understandably minimal during Spelunking Through Hell (though I'm sure they would have loved the opportunity to see and carry those stories), but they were also very much missed. Here is a bit of a chance to see more of them, which I appreciated. As always, they are my favorites. That is all I will say on that matter.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I decided to request this book (Incryptid #11) despite not having read the first ten books because -- well, one has to start somewhere! And although it's usually at the start, I'm familiar enough with paranormal investigation series that run this long to know that although there are ties backward and forward, they are generally pretty standalone.

That was 100% the case with this book, which had the occasional moment of oddity I could tell was a reference to a previous book (like the offscreen handling of the Crossroads) but which otherwise kept all elements of its central story, both the emotional story and the literal narrative plot, completely self-contained. It felt like a great place to begin, which is a fantastic thing for such a long series to do with any one book. Maybe I just got lucky and the last 9 wouldn't have been good places, but if it's luck, I'll take it!

I really enjoyed this book. It had a fun adventure, a strong emotional drive that was really sold from the prologue, and a great plot (both A and B). The narrative voice was consistent, and its tone just *felt* right for a paranormal investigation story -- many paranormal investigation stories try to imitate the combination gritty patter/humor of the original trailblazers, and often come across not quite making it there, but this one sells the fantasy completely.

The only negative is one that didn't bother me too much -- but basically, I didn't always buy what I saw of the worlds Alice went to. For example, why, in a world that's in a famine so bad that even though they used to trade and thrive, they choose to try to eat the first traveler who comes instead of trade with her, are there so many inhabitants that they can blot out the sky when pursuing Alice (the trait of a famine is rarely a booming population)? Why, in a world struggling to live due to the effects of a dead dimension nearby, would the area where there was the most life be the one closest to that other world instead of the one with the least life? Etc. In the text, most of these got left as 'Well dimensional differences are weird', which was fine enough for me to handwave them, but they didn't always feel completely grounded rather than just a cool idea.

That said, these moments were few and Alice's drive sold the rest of it; I didn't always like Alice (an admittedly bad mother who literally cut away every part of herself that wasn't finding the man she loved) but I always believed she was a real person with real motivations. A really fun read, and I'm looking forward to going back and giving the rest of the series a go.

One really nitpicky thing I can't not mention: Spelunking is a term specifically reserved for caves and the hell in this book doesn't have a single cave in it. It's like calling it Mountaineering through Hell and putting Hell on the plains. Schlepping or Sauntering might have been better choices. Yes, I know this is super nitpicky, and it would never impact my star rating! But I was really hoping for some fun cave horror sequences, and the closest was one cave on a non-hell world early on! It might be metaphorical caves -- "Seanan McGuire's allegory of the cave" my wife offers -- but still.

Also: This ARC includes an additional InCryptid novella at the end, which deals with some of Alice's younger years and is incredibly moving. I definitely cried for some mice. Really good!

Another fun, bloody, action-packed installment in a favorite series! Looking forward to many, more books about the sprawling Price-Healy clan!

Spelunking Through Hell by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Do you see that cover on the book?

Yeah, that's one hell of a hot octogenarian. And she kicks ass, doesn't care if she gets skinned alive, will destroy hell dimensions and adjacent universes with all the heavy armament she can carry and doesn't care about the cost.

Knowing the rest of the family, grandma isn't all that surprising. And she's been searching for her husband for 50 years after he was whisked away for a crossroads price like a legendary cross-dimensional true warrior.

This is her story. Finally. And it's a blast. Literally. Lots of gunpowder, broken dimensional barriers, and a few surprises. :)

I have been waiting FOREVER for Alice and Thomas’s story and finally with Spelunking Through Hell, the 11th book of the Incryptid series, we are finally here. Alice has been on a journey to find her husband, taken by the Crossroads over fifty years ago. It is her obsession and if all she finds is a headstone, well that is fine too at least she will know. But, she has loved Thomas since before she was supposed to love a man and she can’t move on until she knows.

With the Crossroads gone, Alice’s quest has been reinvigorated and she is more determined than ever to find the love of her life. She has confirmation that Thomas is still alive and out there somewhere. After finding a book from a long ago dimensional traveler and cartographer, she has a new direction and hope to go towards and some doubts about the individual she considered a friend that had helped her all of these years.

Alice will risk everything to be reunited with her husband. Will she find him? Well I think it is a sad story indeed if that didn’t happen. Will he remember her? Alice is pretty unforgettable and she is going to need all the Healy luck to be able to convince the universe it is time to give her husband back.

The readers get to find out so many mysteries in this series. Such as:

1 – How is Alice in her eighties now but still look to be 19 or 20. Let’s just say ewww and ouch.

2 – What kind of impact did this have on her kids growing up? Hard to have mommy bail to go find daddy and never really come home.

3 – What has this life cost her? So much more than she probably knows.

4 – How does dimensional travel work and how can Alice do it?

5 – Where was the Crossroads stashing some of the people it made bargains with.

So many questions answered and so much chaos ensues, but what else would you expect with Alice jumping around in the Universe.

I had so much fun with this book, although I was a little impatient to get to the part where we actually find Thomas. But patience pays off and I’m really looking forward to how all of these new developments are going to rock the world of my favorite Cryptozoologist family.

I discovered the Incryptid series via Netgalley, became addicted and thoroughly enjoyed this story that kept me reading till late in the night as I couldn't stop reading.
It's one of those book high on sleep deprivation due to fun and low on bore or dragging plot.
Alice is a fabolous characters and I rooted for her and Thomas.
The world building is excellent and the storytelling well done.
I can't wait to read the next book in this series.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Ok, spoilers before publication are kind of evil so I’m going to try to write mine pretty spoiler free. I was really happy to get an ARC of this book through NetGalley. It’s on my buy anyway list but I don’t want to wait!
While there’s zero reason to not read the rest of the series if you haven’t (and if you haven’t why are you looking at book 11?) I think you could read this one as a stand alone. Alice is so isolated from the rest of humanity with her obsession and decades of isolation that it really doesn’t matter what the rest of her family is doing. Alice is doing Alice. If you’re a series fan you’ll love this one too!
Here’s where I’d usually talk a favorite plot point but I can’t think of non spoilers to talk. I found the story satisfying. I enjoyed the characters. But Alice really really some professional help. She is not ok. Page turner of a story. Good short story at the end of the book too. And I can’t believe I found myself sniffling… okay crying a bit over a ****** ****.

Spelunking Through Hell is the eleventh* novel in Seanan McGuire's second urban fantasy series, InCryptid. For those who don't know the series, it follows the Price/Healy family, a family of cryptozoologists as they try to protect the Cryptids of North America, the creatures sciences says couldn't really exist, from human intervention, such as that of the Covenant of Saint George (which hunts them as "monsters"). The series features a bunch of short stories set in various past generations of the family and then a series of novels dealing with the present generation (mainly), with each book/arc featuring a different Price as the narrating main character.

*Technically McGuire released a short prequel novel a few months back on her Patreon in this series, Halfway through the Wood (which I reviewed here), but I'm not counting that as it's not a mainline entry.*

The result is an urban fantasy series that is incredibly fun and enjoyable, with the interactions between the usually human protagonists and the various cryptid species and peoples they interact with keeping up a good bit of variety (and then there's magic-users and other strange things as well), especially as each new protagonist narrator has very different perspectives and character struggles. So yeah I love this series and I was psyched to get an early copy of the latest volume.

Spelunking Through Hell is an oddball installment of the series - it's a single novel arc featuring not one of the latest Price generation, but Alice Price-Healy, the current family's kind of insane grandma, who has magically kept resetting her age as she hunts through different dimensions for her lost husband Thomas. But Alice is highly entertaining - not to mention deadly - as she goes through different dimensions with different peoples, even as the book makes clear quite quickly that something isn't quite right with her in a way that even she doesn't realize (and well she knows she's quite broken). I've really loved reading the short stories featuring Alice and Thomas 50 years in the past, and so I was really excited to read adult Alice, to see her finally find Tommy and to see how they would react after everything that had happened. And I was not disappointed.
------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
50 years ago, when Alice Price was pregnant with her second child, her husband Thomas was taken away by the Crossroads and banished to some other dimension. Only the health of her unborn child kept Alice from following right after him, and as soon as her child Jane was born, Alice pawned Jane and her son Kevin off on her best friend Laura and began chasing after Thomas.

50 years later, Alice Price-Healy has gone places no human from Earth has gone before - or should EVER go in the first place, as she's hunted through countless dimensions for her husband. She's used unspeakably painful magic to keep her health and youth to keep searching and, has even taken on a side job as an interdimensional bounty hunter to keep her busy along the way. But the one thing she hasn't found is Thomas, even after all these years.

But things have changed - most notably, Alice's granddaughter has destroyed the Crossroads, meaning the force that once took her husband away is now gone. And when a bit of luck provides Alice with the lead on her husband that she never dreamed of finding, Alice gets ready to embark on her most dangerous journey yet. For return from this journey might be impossible, even if Alice finds Thomas....and who knows what he will be like after 50 years, assuming he's still alive.......
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Alice Price-Healy has been one of the InCryptid series' greatest mysteries since the beginning - a woman who should be in her 80s, but who has somehow found a way, in between dimensional traveling, to repeatedly reverse her aging, such that she always looks like she's in her late teens or 20s - and has never quite been willing to say how she's accomplishing that. What happened to her husband Thomas has been slowly revealed over the short stories, but whether he'd be alive in the present has always been in question (although Seanan McGuire doesn't really do super depressing endings in her non-horror work, so spoiler alert: he is). And when we have seen Alice on page in the present day, she's always been incredibly trigger happy and reckless, willing to blow things up seemingly on a moment's notice, and more than a little bit unstable. So seeing her carry a book was always going to be interesting.

And it is VERY interesting. While Alice has always been portrayed in prior present stories as a bit crazy and oblivious to that fact, this book makes it clear that's quite the opposite: Alice is very very aware that she's a broken woman, who has screwed up her chances at a happy life with her family for her 50 year search for her husband. She's endured terrible pain, and made some horrible choices - to the point where it's very easy for an "ally" of hers to clearly be manipulating her (something that's incredibly obvious to the reader from the narration) without her noticing, because she can't tell those feelings that something is wrong from her otherwise common paranoia - among other reasons. But broken though she may be, she will do absolutely ANYTHING to find her husband, no matter how dangerous, and her recklessness makes even the previously most reckless Price member (Antimony) seem levelheaded.

This makes her a lot of fun to read, and McGuire does an excellent job here in creating a fun environment in the multiversal - well multi dimensional - space for Alice to adventure in, as she goes from one dimension to another, each with its own strange creatures and denizens, to try and find her way to Thomas. The last time the series switched dimensions, the last book Calculated Risks, it kind of felt a bit off, as the new dimension wasn't really that interesting with its Cryptid species, which are really the draw of this series (well that and the Mice). Here, Alice's travels give us a wide variety of different encounters, dangerous and otherwise, and Alice's reckless treatment of her own health makes those encounters fun and interesting.

And so we have a book that deals with a character who is incredibly broken, going on one final crazy reckless adventure to get what she needs, and coming away in it all with happiness, with some really fun and crazy surprises along the way (we meet one character referenced previously who is far more entertaining and enjoyable than I could've hoped). You certainly can't start the series here, but if you were considering whether you wanted to start the InCryptid series at any point (and there's two very good entry points in books 1 and 3), this book should only further give you incentive to do so.

Electronic ARC review.

I've been waiting for Alice's story for so long, and Spelunking Through Hell does not disappoint. I loved finally getting a chance to see inside Alice's head (she is somehow just as competent as I've always assumed and also an epic disaster of a person, which is hilarious). I found the first half of the book slightly repetitive, as it takes Alice awhile to really gain momentum and she doesn't spend a lot of time with other characters, so there is a lot of internal monologue. The second half of the book was much more fun, and brings some long awaited answers along with the action. I'm trying to avoid saying anything too specific, but as with every recent Incryptid book I find myself excited about the new developments and wanting to know where things go from here. The novella at the end was also a delight, giving us a long awaited moment in Alice and Thomas' past (I really can't get enough of young Alice and Thomas, they're seriously the best).

Friends. Spelunking Through Hell is a JOURNEY. A literal one for the plotline of the novel as Alice does, in fact, go on a journey to find / recover her long missing husband Thomas and bring him back to the mortal realm. But, also, a deeply emotional journey. Spelunking Through Hell is the culmination of the previous eleven novels that set up everything we need for this novel to feel as earned as it does.

I wouldn’t normally think to quote the acknowledgements page in talking about a novel, but I’ve known for a while that this is the book Seanan McGuire has built entire Incryptid series up to and she puts it far better than I could.

“Here we go again, and finally. You see, Spelunking Through Hell was literally the book I used to pitch this series in the first place and everything since then has been one long con to convince you all to care about this vaguely disturbed, definitely damaged woman and her wild, possibly futile search for the man she lost fifty years before. Alice came before everything else.”

You *could* go into this book cold and enjoy and appreciate Spelunking Through Hell. Seanan McGuire is really, really good at setting up the beginning of a novel with just enough recap and context to pull the reader along. I just wouldn’t know what that looks like because I’ve hooked on this series since book one and I’ve read all of McGuire’s Incryptid stories on Patreon that’s been filling in the family history up through Alice and Thomas. I can’t get my mind in the place to understand what cold reading would look like. I’m invested.

Throughout the series Seanan McGuire has been seeding the idea of Alice Price-Healy. She is referenced by the current generation almost as a legend, but they know that Alice is still around and searching for her husband, Thomas. The current generation, Verity, Alex, and Antimony, are grown. Alice is their grandmother. Thomas has been lost for more than fifty years - except Alice looks like she is the same age as her grandkids because magic and mystic quests. Spelunking Through Hell gets into it (and uses the worse “flense” far more often than one would expect).

We also actively meet Alice in the novel Chaos Choreography and in the bonus short story “Follow the Lady” that is included with the novel Imaginary Numbers.

There’s a point to this - which is that the legend of Alice and Thomas is a founding principle of the Incryptid series and of the Healy / Price family. Thomas didn’t die, he was lost. Readers of the short stories know that he made a deal with the Crossroads to save Alice’s life. In the opening chapter of Spelunking Through Hell we see the Crossroads come collect.

Alice has spent the rest of her life searching for Thomas. *She* knows that he isn’t dead, even if nobody else does. And when Antimony destroys the Crossroads in That Ain’t Witchcraft (spoilers, but what are you really here for?) that finally opens the very real possibility that Alice will find Thomas. She doesn’t have anything else except her quest. Not really.

“Until one day I’d looked around and realized the only real anchors I had left were a dead girl, a house that wasn’t mine, a forest that loved me, and a colony of talking mice.”

Spelunking Through Hell is a quest story, an adventure across multiple worlds and dimensions and we see just how much of a bad ass Alice Healy-Price is and has become, as well as how much this obsession has cost her.

“There’s only so much pain the mind can process before it starts shutting things down, and while the liquid I hung suspended in was designed to keep me from slipping into shock and dying from the sheer intensity of it all, it was impossible for them to deaden my nerves enough to keep the removal of my skin from being the worst thing I had ever experienced”

For the most part, Seanan McGuire’s novels never approach being true horror (she writes as Mira Grant to get closer to that). McGuire has such a light touch with her prose and she seldom lingers on the details, but damn, she can really turn an image when she wants to. This is a novel where she wants to.

For me, Spelunking Through Hells works because Seanan McGuire is a phenomenal storyteller and she has spent the previous ten novels earning my trust. With each book she introduces just a little bit more until we get to Antimony destroying what seems like a fundamental part of the world and Sarah Zellaby moving between worlds and dimensions. Spelunking Through Hell perhaps does not work nearly so well if it is the second novel in the series because what it does is such a leap from the smaller ideas of “supernatural” creatures being real things in our world and a family studying and protecting against those who would kill them simply for existing. Getting from there to here is a journey itself. Earning that journey is something else. McGuire does.