After fleeing from the Covenant, Annie ran to Lowryland, a Disney World knock off (Disney exists in this universe, and Lowryland knows it comes in second), since being in large crowds would make it more difficult track her, even by magical means. When Annie arrives in Lowryland, she honestly expects to be fully on her own for the first time in her life, having even sent her Aeslin mice companions, Mindy and Mork of the Lost Colony, to Oregon. Luckily, once she’s hired and in line for housing, she runs into one of her roller derby friends, who is a cryptid, so she has at least one friendly face. Their third roommate is a Pliny’s gorgon, so even away from home, Annie doesn’t have to hide everything about herself. Her alias is actually her high school identity, Mel West, so even that is not an entirely new persona for her.
As the youngest Price, she also has the small advantage that Aunt Mary, the Price family babysitter/ghost, can still claim Annie as her charge and can check in on Annie without triggering the normal rules that apply when interacting with a crossroads ghost. This means that even though Annie can’t directly communicate with her family, they at least all know she is alive and safe. When weird occurrences start taking place at the park, Mary is able to give Sam enough information that he can follow Annie to Florida and help her face whatever the threat is.
After Annie and her friends stumble on a dead guy in the park after hours, Annie discovers that there is a group of powerful magic users among the upper management of the park, including a hedge witch in PR. The sorcerer offers to help Annie learn how to use and control her magic which she gladly accepts. Unfortunately, the dead guy is only the beginning of oddities since weird accidents keep happening near Annie. They don’t make any sense given the stringent safety guidelines the park follows, but there is no apparent sabotage, either. Figuring out exactly what is going on will involve luck and everyone pitching in.
While Sam is a very nice guy, I am not exactly super into him as a love interest (Leo, the Covenant heir, is more interesting to me, even if he is a horrible idea, and I, of course, don’t want him to succeed in his plan of brining the Prices back into the fold – he isn’t in this novel, though). Sam is a cryptid and a shapeshifter, but unlike Tybalt from the October Daye series or Curran from the Kate Daniels series, his human shape is his secondary shape and one he has to work to maintain. For the other shapeshifters, the human form is either primary or they are equally at ease in both. Sam’s primary form isn’t a straight up monkey since he isn’t a traditional shapeshifter but rather a monkey-man hybrid, and I guess that is where I draw the line for my romantic fantasy pairings. Shapeshifters fine; border-line furries – no, thank you. And Sam is very nice and loyal, which is probably a great thing in real life relationships but in fiction, I want a bit more edge in the love interest.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.