What do cupcakes, Tara from Buffy and singing Zombie writers all have in common? They all were a part of my night last Friday. This post manages to be both SciFriday, Fantasy Friday and FAN-tasy Friday. Triple score!
One of the fantastic things I’ve discovered while living in the east bay is a group known as SF in SF – Science Fiction in San Francisco. I threw my name down on their listserv a little while back and get delightful updates each month about a variety of science fiction events (movies, book signings, doctor who marathons) taking place in the city across the bridge. It’s pretty awesome though often with my schedule I can’t attend nearly everything I want to go to. Last Friday was a delightful exception to this as I got to attend a reading/signing/musical extravaganza headlined by Seanan McGuire for her new book “Midnight Blue-Light Special”. Not only can she write but she can sing too and wait, there’s more! Amber Benson (aka Tara from Buffy) was there along with Sara Kuhn who wrote a romantic romp about hooking up at Con. I was unfamiliar with Kuhn before this past Friday but I found her delightfully entertaining. She’s got a book about killer cupcakes in the works…like killer tomatoes but with batter and frosting. I’m so excited. Okay well the book isn’t actually about the cupcakes, it’s about superheroes, but you mention baked goods in a scifi setting to me and I’ll focus on that for obvious reasons…..
Anyway the book release, and main subject for this week’s scifriday post, is actually an urban fantasy book. The aforementioned “Midnight Blue Light Special” which is the second in McGuire’s “InCryptid” series about a family of Monster..scientists? Professors? Hunters? Cryptozoologists is the technical term and the Price family essentially does all they can to learn about, protect and at times “control” the population of things that go bump in the night. Everything from dragons to chupcabras and three, yes count them THREE, varieties of Gorgon. While it seems that the series arc is going to explore all members of the Price family over time, the first two books follow the eldest daughter Verity Price a ballroom dancer and monster liaison for New York City. What does she do exactly? Well she keeps tabs on the various creatures, “Cryptids”, and makes sure they behave themselves amongst the human population. She also works to make sure the human population behaves themselves around the monsters as there is a not-so-nice group of Monster-hunters (the Covenant) that kill all cryptids indiscriminately. Not all cryptids are bad you see and even the oogey woogey Boogeyman can live in harmony with the human populace…that is assuming you call operating a strip club harmonious.
Verity’s character sums up a weird Buffy Summers/Speedster mashup in my head. I’m not sure that’s quite the intended picture as some ballroom dance skills out to be tossed in there too, but I just can’t quite un-picture Brea Grant delivering Buffy quips when I read these books. They’re fun. They’re fairly light reading compared to some of the heavier things sitting on my shelf. They’re great for scratching your female ass-kicker itch.
They also have hyper-religious talking mice. Not the Disney varieties mind you; these mice don’t captain tugboats or sew pretty dresses. Aeslin mice spend their time either worshipping their religious figures (in this case our main character) or form hunting parties with some pretty serious hardware to kill other animals for religious feasts. Obviously you’d want to keep them away from the Gorgons. Despite being rodents, invasive of our main character’s privacy and congregants with a fanaticism that the Catholic Church would lust after, these characters are pretty much the most damnable adorable thing I’ve read about in ages. I totally want my own colony because their love for food and my love for baking would presumably go hand in hand quite nicely.
When I went to the book release for the second novel I brought along a batch of homemade gingerbread inspired by another cryptid in the books—the Madhura. The Madhura are a race of mammals that are human-like in appearance (Indian specifically) and remarkably non-threatening. Instead they seem to love all things sweet and candy-like and run bakeshops called GingerBread Pudding. “They consume fructose the way humans consume protein, and most seem to live on a diet of fruit, honey, and refined sugar. Examination of Madhura teeth has found them to be entirely devoid of tooth decay.”
Damn. I want to be a Madhura.
Anyway if you are looking for a fun read, love petite blondes who kick ass, enjoy monsters, mayhem nibble on an InCryptid book or two. Bake gingerbread to accompany it for genuine bibliovore pleasure. Just remember that when you give an Aeslin mouse a cookie…he’ll want holy milk to go with it!
Adapted from King Arthur Flour’s Cookie Companion Read more