Angel of the Overpass by Seanan McGuire

Short version: one of the best books of 2021 for sure!

Long version: I came to Seanan McGuire late - I didn’t realize that she and her pen name, Mira Grant, were the same person for a long while. I found Mira Grant when Parasite was nominated for the Hugo award and my librarian bought all of that year’s best novel Hugo nominees for the library’s ebook collection. I loved Parasite, devoured the Newsflesh trilogy, and then went looking for more. I was too intimidated to start one of her long running urban fantasy series, so I picked Sparrow Hill Road, which I believed at the time to be stand alone. I loved it so much! It was lyrical, haunting, utterly amazing. I was hooked.

So I was thrilled when DAW and NetGalley gave me an eARC for Angel of the Overpass, the third (but I hope not concluding) book of the series. This one picks up on where we left off with Rose Marshal, the hitchhiking ghost, in the last volume, The Girl in the Green Silk Gown. This novel also follows up on some world-shattering events from the Inncrpytid books (specifically the final Antimony book) that have massive repercussions for the ghost roads. I wondered, reading this book, if Seanan McGuire had sold it to her publisher as a chance to resolve dangling plot threads and provide closure to some storylines, because the book manages to do that incredibly well. The first novel was a fix-up, as the material had originally been published as connected short stories. That format seemed to result in some inconsistencies and didn’t always have enough room to allow some of the ideas to breathe, especially related to Rose’s high school sweetheart. This book satisfied tremendously on all fronts.

Two things I must point out that made me sqee, which I will try to keep as spoiler free as possible. 1) dinosaur! 2) there was a moment in the book that didn’t mean much to Rose, but meant the world to me as a fan of Sarah from Incrpytid.

What are you waiting for? Go buy this right now!!!

Thanks to Netgalley and Berkley for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Rose Marshall is an intriguing character. She's been dead for decades, but she still has an afterlife. And the beast of a man who forced her from the daylight into the twilight's debt has come due. Because of the events of Annie's books in the Incryptid series, particularly 7 and 8, there's a huge vacuum in power in the land of the dead that has left Bobby Cross in a precarious position. And unfortunately for Rose, she owes some powerful beings some favors for the things they've helped her with before, which leaves Bobby's destruction up to her.

One thing I always love about Seanan's books is the depth of her characters, and Rose is certainly deep. This is just book three of the series, and we know an awful lot about her. Even more importantly, because of this depth, we've seen Rose's choices and rooted for her, not realizing that every choice she's made has led her down this path. It'll be interesting to watch how these choices and this path forward change her story, and I'm totally there for it.

Highly recommend, but please start with book one... and maybe read up through Incryptid 8 at least, if you've not read that series. It's not entirely necessary, but this will spoil that a bit.