Review – Chaos Choreography (Incryptid, Book 5) by Seanan McGuire (5/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 368 pages
Publisher: DAW
Release Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-0756408138
Stand Alone or Series: 5th book in the Incryptid series
Source: Borrowed from Library
Rating: 5/5 stars
“Verity Price is back on the West Coast and getting back into the swing of the family business: cryptozoology. She’s rescuing cryptids from bad situations, protecting them from monster-hunters, and generally risking life and limb for the greater good, with her ex-Covenant partner/husband, Dominic, by her side. Her ballroom dance career is behind her—or so she thinks. When Verity gets the call from the producers of Dance or Die, the reality show she almost won several years before, she finds the lure impossible to resist, and she and Dominic are off to L.A. for one last shot at the big time.
Of course, nothing is that simple. When two contestants turn up dead, Verity will need every ally she can find with the investigation, without blowing her cover…”
I always enjoy both Seanan McGuire’s Incryptid and October Daye series. This book was an excellent addition to the Incryptid series and was incredibly entertaining and engaging.
In this book we get to delve deep into Verity’s dancing past and her undercover alias of Valerie. It was fun to see what Verity and her fellow dancers go through to be great dancers. In addition to this you have the whole reality TV show background going on…which let’s all be honest, you *always* want to know who will be eliminated the next week. All the reality TV drama is strangely (and sadly) entrancing and engaging.
The above would be fairly entertaining on it’s own but, add to the above the fact that the eliminated dancers are being killed after elimination in a bizarre and ritualistic way, and things really get interesting.
Verity grows a lot in this book. She realizes how much she’s changed since her early dancing days and realizes how much more important saving lives (both incryptid and human) has become to her. Dominic isn’t in the story as much as I would like. However we do get to spend time with a variety of wonderful new characters; one of which is Verity’s grandma Alice. Alice was an absolutely hoot and I adored her and hope we see her in future books.
There is some nice plot development around the dragon clan too; I am curious to see if this will be revisited in future books. The story is wrapped up nicely and I enjoyed it.
Overall an excellent addition to this series. There is a good mystery, tons of action, some awesome dancing, and some wonderful new characters (both human and not..human). I really enjoyed it a ton and can’t wait for the next book in the series. I would highly recommend this whole series to fans of light-hearted and action-packed urban fantasy.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– New Release Challenge
– Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge
