Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Tidal Creatures by Seanan McGuire Narrator: Amber Benson
Series: Alchemical Journeys #3
Published by MacMillan Audio on June 4, 2024
Genres: Science Fiction Fantasy
Length: 16 hours, 31 minutes
Format: Audiobook
Source: NetGalley
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Every night, a Moon shines down on the Impossible City…
All across the world, people look up at the moon and dream of gods. Gods of knowledge and wisdom, gods of tides and longevity. Over time, some of these moon gods incarnated into the human world alongside the other manifest natural concepts. Their job is to cross the sky above the Impossible City―the heart of all creation―to keep it connected to reality.
And someone is killing them.
There are so many of them that it's easy for a few disappearances to slip through the cracks. But they aren't limitless.
In the name of the moon, the lunar divinities must uncover the roots of the plot and thwart the true goal of those behind these attacks―control of the Impossible City itself.
Tidal Creatures is the third book in the Alchemical Journeys series and needs to be read in order to make any sense. Seanan McGuire focuses on the the lore of the moon and all the gods who have incarnated into this world in Tidal Creatures. People are chosen to take on aspects of different moon deities and travel across the sky of the impossible city at the heart of creation. The Alchemists are looking for a way to use them to finally make it to that Impossible City to rule the world.
At its heart, Tidal Creatures is a murder mystery. Jane, the human aspect of Change’e, goes to meet up with one of the other moon gods as he travels back to the from his journey across the sky and pick up the key to the door. However what she finds is the aspect of Mani, another moon god, carrying a dead body. One of the other moon gods was killed on the path to their journey across the sky and no one knows why. Jane will enlist some help from a few other of the more powerful of the aspects of the moon to try and find the killer, and figure out how they got into the secret area in the first place as there is supposed to only by one key.
The second thread of the story follows Kelpi. She thought she was transformed in a horrible lab experiment. But the truth is much different, the alchemists were trying to create familiars of the moon gods in order to find one of the more powerful ones. Kelpi is the incarnation of Artemis’s Hinde. She has her own journey to take once she leaves the lab and will run into some people that might be able to assist her as she tries and finds the Goddess she was made for, before the Alchemists find her.
The story is set at Berkley and Jane is avidly trying to avoid a certain professor there as she thinks she will be discovered. Said professor is Roger and as a reader I couldn’t wait for him to enter the story since I loved most of the characters from Middlegame. Roger, Dodger and company do finally enter the story and we learn a lot of what they have been up to and why they haven’t tried to get to the impossible city yet since they are the living embodiments of the Doctrine of Ethos and the city is theirs to rule.
I enjoyed most of this story. The lore and creativity of the story is fantastic and Seanan McGuire remains one of the most creative writers with her worldbuilding and storylines. Most of her characters are rich, complex and mostly good even though they can be terrible and fierce when needed. That said, I think she has also fallen into something that I’ve seen a lot of writers do lately with some of the social concerns in the current world and they try to jam pack too many of those in small snips and snipes into one story. There were multiple times and characters the referenced white males in a negative connotation and twice it occurred at times I really didn’t think it fit. Also the other “bad” person was a rich white housewife that was bored and just wanted to be special but there was so much emphasis on her ‘privilege’. There are ways to put things into stories that do not take your reader out of the story and when they pile up and the author’s bias shows it can be distracting.
Overall, if you enjoyed Middlegame, I think this is going to fit into your life quite well and be very entertaining. I will say that the ending felt a little rushed but overall the pacing in the book is really good and kept me very engaged in the characters and the mystery. I loved Kelpi and her overall arc. The Alchemists are mostly a terrible bunch, evil scientists and all that, but they are also amazing at the things they create and their ambition towards their ultimate goal to get to the impossible city. While I did think this was the last book in the series, there is still going to be one more and I’m really excited to see how it all plays out and if we will get some of the characters from Seasonal Fears to contribute to the ending as well. Carry on to the Impossible City!
Narration:
Amber Benson is back again for Tidal Creatures, she did a great job on both of the other books of the series and so I’m happy to see her back to reprise her rolls of the prior characters and create new voices. She has a great flow for the story and I enjoy her cadence. Amber’s narration makes sure you can tell all the voices apart and some of them carry almost a singsong effect, but I think that for those characters it is fitting. I enjoyed her performance and believe it adds to my overall enjoyment of the story. I was able to listen at my usual 1.5x speed.
Listen to a clip: HERE
About Amber Benson
Amber Benson is what we call “a maker of things.” A prolific writer, she is the author of the Calliope Reaper-Jones urban fantasy series—for which she read the audiobooks—and the middle-grade book Among the Ghosts. She has narrated over a half dozen titles, including the John Scalzi bestseller Lock In. Behind the camera, she codirected the Slamdance feature film Drones and cowrote and directed the BBC animated series The Ghosts of Albion. In her previous incarnation as an actor, she spent three years as “Tara Maclay” on the cult television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Amber does not own a television.
About Seanan McGuire
Hi! I’m Seanan McGuire, author of the Toby Daye series (Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night, Late Eclipses), as well as a lot of other things. I’m also Mira Grant (www.miragrant.com), author of Feed and Deadline.
Born and raised in Northern California, I fear weather and am remarkably laid-back about rattlesnakes. I watch too many horror movies, read too many comic books, and share my house with two monsters in feline form, Lilly and Alice (Siamese and Maine Coon).
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I do still need to read this author. I do get brought out of stories sometimes when they do those types of things in scenes of a story that it doesn’t really fit into. So thanks for the heads up! Great review!