
Author: Seanan McGuire
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 338 pages
Date read: April 2025
The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity--and humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and when her work with the cryptid community took her to Manhattan, she thought she would finally be free to pursue competition-level dance in earnest. It didn't quite work out that way...
But now, with the snake cult that was killing virgins all over Manhattan finally taken care of, Verity is ready to settle down for some serious ballroom dancing—until her on-again, off-again, semi-boyfriend Dominic De Luca, a member of the monster-hunting Covenant of St. George, informs her that the Covenant is on their way to assess the city's readiness for a cryptid purge. With everything and everyone she loves on the line, there's no way Verity can take that lying down.
Alliances will be tested, allies will be questioned, lives will be lost, and the talking mice in Verity's apartment will immortalize everything as holy writ--assuming there's anyone left standing when all is said and done.
It took a bit to get going, but once it did, I really enjoyed it. I found the struggles against the covenant a lot more interesting than the hunt for the dragon in the first book, and appreciated Dominic's struggles between his upbringing and his new-found beliefs. I also really enjoyed that we got a few chapters from Sarah's POV :-D She's probably my favourite character next to Verity.
The books are fairly self-contained, so I don't know that I'll run out to get the next one, but I'll definitely read it if I come across it.