Installment Immortality (An InCryptid novel book 14) by Seanan McGuire (book review).
For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a cryptid is a creature that appears in mythology or folklore but has not been scientifically proven to exist. Someone who studies cryptids is a cryptozoologist. In Seanan McGuire’s fourteen-book ‘InCryptid’ series, of which ‘Installment Immortality’ is the fourteenth, the protagonists are members of the extended Price family. Not only are they cryptozoologists, but they also know cryptids exist. In fact, some of them have been adopted into the family. Different novels in the series follow the fortunes and misfortunes of various members of the family. This time, it is the turn of Mary Dunlavy to be the focal character.
Mary is a ghost. She is also the Healy/Price family babysitter. When she was killed by a hit-and-run driver at the age of sixteen, she became a crossroads ghost. That was in 1939. She has remained as the family babysitter down various generations. She also has a role as negotiator for the crossroads. When anyone comes seeking a favour from the crossroads, she has to try and persuade them not to do it. Though the crossroads entity no longer exists, the anima mundi, spirit of the Earth, does, and Mary, its intervention, is the reason for Mary’s continued existence.
When the Healy family originally came to America, they were fleeing from the Covenant of St George, an organisation that has a mission to exterminate cryptids. Mary’s adopted family protect cryptids, and there have been clashes, some fatal.
With the family growing up, Mary has more free time, and the anima mundi has a concern she wants Mary to investigate. The Covenant has found a way to capture and kill ghosts. The anima mundi wants that stopped. She recruits Elsie and Arthur, two members of her family who have been affected by events in previous volumes of this series. Having a focus on something the two youngsters need, they head to Worcester, Massachusetts, to try to stop the Covenant and find new allies to help them.
There are very few true humans in this book, except for the members of the Covenant, but we encounter more cryptids, and there is an appendix detailing a number of them and their characteristics. The most delightful of them are the colonies of Aeslin mice. They resemble ordinary field mice but are intelligent, can speak and worship various humans. Mary is regarded as the Phantom Priestess. They also pass on their lore orally and have total recall, so they are very valuable spies and collectors of information.
As a bonus, this volume also contains a novella, ‘Mourner’s Waltz’. For those who have followed this series, in a previous volume, ‘Aftermarket Afterlife’, Verity’s husband, Dominic, was killed. She is grieving and pregnant and lives in an apartment block that houses only cryptids. One of the roles she has is to be a troubleshooter for the block. At the point where she is grieving and not coping well, Malena, a chupacabra, arrives, sent by a dragon princess to be Verity’s helpmeet for a few months. Then the block is infected by alkabyiftiris slime, which digests anything it touches. The advent of this drags Verity out of her stupor of grief to deal with it.
For those who have been following the series, both the novella and novel will be a welcome addition to it, but for newcomers, they would find it more useful to start earlier in the series, as there are events and people who are referenced in the text. At the start of this novel, there is a family tree. It is about time this was updated to give a clearer idea of the relationships between referenced characters and those who do not appear in it.
Pauline Morgan
November 2025
(pub: TOR, 2025. 408 pages, paperback. Price: $19.99 (US), $26.99 (CAN), £15.28 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-250-37511-7)
Check out the website: https://torpublishinggroup.com/installment-immortality/?isbn=9781250375117
