“Never underestimate the power of a good story.”Good advice…especially when a story can kill you.For most people, the story of their lives is just that: the accumulation of time, encounters, and actions into a cohesive whole. But for an unfortunate few, that day-to-day existence is affected—perhaps infected is a better word—by memetic incursion: where fairy tale narratives become reality, often with disastrous results.That’s where the ATI Management Bureau steps in, an organization tasked with protecting the world from fairy tales, even while most of their agents are struggling to keep their own fantastic archetypes from taking over their lives. When you’re dealing with storybook narratives in the real world, it doesn’t matter if you’re Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, or the Wicked Queen: no one gets a happily ever after.Indexing is New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire’s new urban fantasy where everything you thought you knew about fairy tales gets turned on its head.
Since Seanan was making an appearance at ICON 41, I decided that perhaps I should give one of her books a shot. Looking at Seanan’s published works on GoodReads can be quite overwhelming so I asked my best friend Erin for a recommendation as she has slowly been reading everything that Seanan has ever published. Erin told me to start with Indexing as I have a penchant for fairy tales, folklore and their associated retellings. I’m happy to report that Erin made a good recommendation. ☺ Seanan took two things I’m familiar with—cop shows and fairy tales—and stirred them together in a dark satisfying way.
As someone who has been known to suddenly get stuck in a loop watching Law & Order SVU on ION on a Saturday afternoon, Indexing was an enjoyable adventure. The idea that fairy tales do exist in the known world and are quite dangerous should they manifest (Sleeping Beauty setting off a sleeping plague in a hospital) added on going tension to the plot. There was just enough suspense underlying the overall mystery to keep me asking “What?” and “Why?”
I’m definitely looking forward to reading the 2nd book in the Indexing series, Reflections, and trying more of Seanan’s books. The worlds she creates and the characters puts a unique twist on the old tales turning them into enjoyable imaginative adventures.
This review was originally posted on Second Run Reviews
Reading updates
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Started reading
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25 September, 2016:
Finished reading
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25 September, 2016:
Reviewed