The Literate Kitty

Last year, when giving my two cents’ worth on Midnight Blue-Light Special (the second installment in Seanan McGuire’s urban fantasy “Incryptid” series, which you can catch up on/refresh your memory about, here ), I mentioned a few things of which I have no knowledge whatsoever. (And no, nothing has changed on those fronts, in case you’re wondering… including my utter lack of skill with an onion.) That brings me to another area in which I have no personal expertise: knowing what it’s like to be the eldest child (or the middle, youngest, or any other position in the familial pecking order, for that matter, being an only, myself).  Sure, I can sort of imagine what it must be like, growing up with siblings—splitting the attention, resources, space, blame, responsibility, etc.—but I’ll never actually know . Not so with Alex Price, star of the third “Incryptid” tale, Half-Off Ragnarok . The first-born child in a branch of the family hailing from a very long line of cryptozoolog...

The world is full of things we know about... and things about which we know jack. For instance, I know a lot about cats, a respectable amount about fitness, and next-to-nothing about, oh, wild boars. Or jai alai. (Or how to chop an onion into neat little pieces rather than hideously mangling it, but that’s another story.)  For the most part, it’s okay not understanding everything ; I’m fine with my ignorance of meaner-than-snot hogs and weird handball offshoots (although I do secretly envy those who’ve mastered slicing-and-dicing).   Now, let’s take monsters. They’re everywhere (remember the bogeyman who slithered from your closet to under your bed in the dark every night? or the Tooth Fairy, who only left you money when you placed your sacrifice-- a bloody tooth --under your pillow?), but given that most people allow themselves to forget about all the things that go bump in the night once they’re adults, our knowledge of monsters is sadly lacking.  That’s...