After four generations of caring for the Price family, Mary Dunlavy has more than earned a break from the ongoing war with the Covenant of St. George. Instead, what she’s getting is a new employer in the form of the anima mundi, Earth’s living soul made manifest, and a new assignment: to hunt down the Covenant agents on the East Coast and make them stop imprisoning America’s ghosts.

All in a day’s work for a phantom nanny, even one who’d really rather be teaching her youngest charges how to read.

One ghost can’t take on the entire Covenant without backup, which is how she winds up on a road trip with the still-mourning Elsie and the slowly collapsing Arthur, both of whom are reeling in their own way from the loss of their mother. New allies and new enemies await in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the path of the haunting leads.

With the anima mundi demanding results and Mary’s newfound freedom at stake, it’s down to Mary to make sure that everyone gets out of this adventure alive.

It’s been a long afterlife, but Mary Dunlavy’s not ready to be exorcised quite yet.

In the current installment of the InCryptid series, Installment Immortality, Seanan McGuire continues creating a story that is emotional and complex while still full of action. Right from the beginning the novel is off to an exciting start as Mary re-emerges from six months away from her family after she almost got destroyed. The set up of the story and how she is swept up into helping the anima mundi makes for an interesting start but what makes this novel so complex is the way that it addresses and deals with the emotional trauma that both Elsie and Arther have endured. 

Throughout the novel, in between helping the ghosts that she encounters, Mary deals with the emotional damage that she caused in disappearing for six months, which although was unavoidable, still left scars on her family. As always when entangling with the Covenant, Mary and the others also have to address the damage done to their family but also in defending themselves, the damage caused to the Covenant and to their agents. The narrative does so in a empathetic straightforward way and while there is not a full resolution with the Covenant, there is a sense of emotional resolution with the ghosts that Mary is there to save. I also happen to love that the spirits and InCryptid are not one dimensional plot devices, they are full characters in their own rights. 

If you like urban fantasy with emotional and complex stories, this novel is for you. I do warn you that it is part of a series and if you haven’t read the other books, you may miss some of the plotline. While Seanan McGuire does her best to help salt in information to help with the past story, there are a lot of books to cover and it may be easier to start from the first book. That said, I found this latest installment fast paced, complex emotionally and an ending that ties up Mary’s origins and purpose. And there still is plenty more narrative for more books about the Price family. 

Rating: 5 out of 5 ghost dogs

MacMillan Publishing

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