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Inflatable Angel
February's Patreon Creation
Published February 1, 2021
About the author
Seanan McGuire
484 books16.5k followersHi! 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).
I do not check this inbox. Please don't send me messages through Goodreads; they won't be answered. I don't want to have to delete this account. :(
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).
I do not check this inbox. Please don't send me messages through Goodreads; they won't be answered. I don't want to have to delete this account. :(
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 4, 2021
A lesbian ghost story with the most inventive haunting I think I've ever read about.
September 30, 2021
King of the Cats, Alice and Thomas, Fairies, bogeymen, and assorted entertainments
I will begin by clarifying what I am reviewing here. Seanan McGuire has a Patreon Creator page. Patreon is a website where artists can share their work with subscribers. Subscribers pay a certain amount (usually monthly, but that varies from artist to artist), and in return get access to things ("rewards" in Patreon-speak) that the artist posts on Patreon. "Things" can mean images, videos, or (most relevantly in this case) eBooks. Typically there are multiple reward tiers -- the more you pay, the more you get. McGuire set up her Patreon page in June 2016 and has posted a story every month since then, which makes 64 now (September 30, 2021, when I am writing this), plus a few one-time extras. These "stories" can be pretty substantial literary works. For instance, the reward for July 2021 was an 80,000-word novel. The way Patreon works, if you subscribe to a tier, you typically get access to everything that was posted for that tier at any time in the past. (In principle an artist could delete past rewards to prevent subscribers from gaming the system, but few of them do that. And in fact, this is a great way to lure in new subscribers. I subscribed in June at the CAD 1.50 level (CAD=Canadian dollar) and in this way immediately got 61 stories.) Most of the stories are posted in MOBI, ePub, and PDF form. MOBI files can be converted for reading on Amazon kindle, and that is how I have read most of these.
I started reading McGuire not long ago after stumbling on Discount Armageddon, the first book in the Incryptid Series. The Incryptid Series consists mainly of novels: ten currently published, with the eleventh due out in March 2022. Although McGuire has a stated intention of making the novels stand on their own, she has also released many Incryptid stories separately. The Incryptid Short Stories page on her web site lists about two dozen of these, some published in anthologies but most available free for download (completely free -- no subscription required). This list does not include the Patreon stories. In addition to the Incryptid Series, McGuire is best known for another series, October Daye. She also has a page of October Daye short stories on her web site.
I have read all ten currently available novels of the Incryptid series (that is, through Calculated Risks) and all the Incryptid short stories listed on McGuire's web site Incryptid Short Stories and the 49 stories posted in her first four years on Patreon (June 2016 - May 2019). I will assume you have, too, in the sense that this review may include spoilers for those works. Aside from Patreon stories, I have not read any October Daye works, so you're fairly safe from spoilers on those. I will try to avoid spoilers for the works I am reviewing here, which are the 12 works McGuire posted in her fifth year on Patreon. These are:
Wishes and Tears (Tybalt #11), June 2020 Patreon reward
Ratting, July 2020 Patreon reward
What was I meant to do? (Dave #1), August 2020 Patreon reward
Belief, September 2020 Patreon reward
Poor Fancy’s Followers, (Tybalt #12), October 2020 Patreon reward
What You Pay For, (Alice and Thomas #8), November 2020 Patreon reward
Our Trial Patience, (Tybalt #13), December 2020 Patreon reward
What You Build, (Alice and Thomas #9), January 2021 Patreon reward
Inflatable Angel, February 2021 Patreon reward
The Hand of the Forest, (Alice and Thomas #10), March 2021 Patreon reward
earth for charity, (Tybalt #14), April 2021 Patreon reward
By Any Other Name, (Alice and Thomas #11), May 2021 Patreon reward
This year was dominated by Tybalt (four stories) and Alice and Thomas (also four stories). Tybalt is from the October Daye world, and Alice and Thomas from the Incryptid world. We have another Incryptid story here, What was I meant to do?, and then we have three standalone stories.
In past years I have not liked the Tybalt stories. Tybalt was a pompous jerk who was difficult to like. However, in Patreon Year 4 he began an evolution towards a better person, and that continues this year. Overall, I had fun with this batch of Tybalt stories. They fit together into a bigger story, one that reflects well on Tybalt, so that was good.
This year's Incryptid stories were very good. We start with the unusual What was I meant to do?. This is told in the first person by Dave, the bogeyman who sold Verity out in Discount Armageddon. This little bit of treachery did not go as planned -- Dave was caught, and what's more, Verity survived. So Dave flees New York as if the whole Price family was after him. I enjoyed this story for two things. First, we are treated to Dave's musings on Prices, the Covenant, and humans in general, and thus to a view of how the North American cryptid community sees the Prices and the world. Second, Drew Baker, who was adopted by Angela Baker and thus became a member of the extended Price family, shows up. He tells most of the story of how that happened. So that was informative.
Then we have the four Alice and Thomas stories. These are, broadly speaking, about the courtship of Alice Healy and Thomas Price. We already know from allusions in the main Incryptid novels as well as the family trees they contain, that Alice and Thomas will eventually marry and have two kids, Kevin and Jane, who will go on to become the parents of the latest generation of Prices. So, we know this courtship is eventually going to work out, although we also know it isn't entirely, because something bad is going to happen to Thomas. Alice is by way of being the central figure of the Incryptid world, as McGuire told us in the Acknowledgments of Calculated Risks, so the courtship of Alice and Thomas is an important story. The first real Alice novel, Spelunking Through Hell will be released in March, and McGuire clearly feels some pressure to get certain aspects of the Alice and Thomas story fleshed out before then. In fact, the next two Patreon stories, To Build a Better..., Halfway Through the Wood (not reviewed here because they are from Year 6) also continue Alice and Thomas's story, and Halfway Through the Wood is not just a story, but an 80,000-word novel. These stories were very good. And in By Any Other Name we finally meet the other Price family dead aunt, Rose, who is the central figure in the Ghost Road series.
The three standalone stories are diverse. Inflatable Angel is a typical McGuire ghost story. Like many of her ghost stories, this one is pretty upbeat. Ratting is also a typical kind of McGuire story, what I call a "ruin story", because, as she once explained, "Sometimes I ask my friends what they want me to ruin for my patrons." The ruin stories are mostly about about a sort of apocalypse or dystopia -- a future where something connected with the thing to be ruined has gone badly wrong. Ratting takes the Covid pandemic to an extreme. Like most of the ruin stories, this one is bleak and dreary. Then we have Belief. There is nothing supernatural in this story. I can't improve on McGuire's introduction to this story: "For this month's story, we're exploring what it means to believe in something bigger than yourself, and why Santa is unfair. A story about a little girl and the post office."
I will begin by clarifying what I am reviewing here. Seanan McGuire has a Patreon Creator page. Patreon is a website where artists can share their work with subscribers. Subscribers pay a certain amount (usually monthly, but that varies from artist to artist), and in return get access to things ("rewards" in Patreon-speak) that the artist posts on Patreon. "Things" can mean images, videos, or (most relevantly in this case) eBooks. Typically there are multiple reward tiers -- the more you pay, the more you get. McGuire set up her Patreon page in June 2016 and has posted a story every month since then, which makes 64 now (September 30, 2021, when I am writing this), plus a few one-time extras. These "stories" can be pretty substantial literary works. For instance, the reward for July 2021 was an 80,000-word novel. The way Patreon works, if you subscribe to a tier, you typically get access to everything that was posted for that tier at any time in the past. (In principle an artist could delete past rewards to prevent subscribers from gaming the system, but few of them do that. And in fact, this is a great way to lure in new subscribers. I subscribed in June at the CAD 1.50 level (CAD=Canadian dollar) and in this way immediately got 61 stories.) Most of the stories are posted in MOBI, ePub, and PDF form. MOBI files can be converted for reading on Amazon kindle, and that is how I have read most of these.
I started reading McGuire not long ago after stumbling on Discount Armageddon, the first book in the Incryptid Series. The Incryptid Series consists mainly of novels: ten currently published, with the eleventh due out in March 2022. Although McGuire has a stated intention of making the novels stand on their own, she has also released many Incryptid stories separately. The Incryptid Short Stories page on her web site lists about two dozen of these, some published in anthologies but most available free for download (completely free -- no subscription required). This list does not include the Patreon stories. In addition to the Incryptid Series, McGuire is best known for another series, October Daye. She also has a page of October Daye short stories on her web site.
I have read all ten currently available novels of the Incryptid series (that is, through Calculated Risks) and all the Incryptid short stories listed on McGuire's web site Incryptid Short Stories and the 49 stories posted in her first four years on Patreon (June 2016 - May 2019). I will assume you have, too, in the sense that this review may include spoilers for those works. Aside from Patreon stories, I have not read any October Daye works, so you're fairly safe from spoilers on those. I will try to avoid spoilers for the works I am reviewing here, which are the 12 works McGuire posted in her fifth year on Patreon. These are:
Wishes and Tears (Tybalt #11), June 2020 Patreon reward
Ratting, July 2020 Patreon reward
What was I meant to do? (Dave #1), August 2020 Patreon reward
Belief, September 2020 Patreon reward
Poor Fancy’s Followers, (Tybalt #12), October 2020 Patreon reward
What You Pay For, (Alice and Thomas #8), November 2020 Patreon reward
Our Trial Patience, (Tybalt #13), December 2020 Patreon reward
What You Build, (Alice and Thomas #9), January 2021 Patreon reward
Inflatable Angel, February 2021 Patreon reward
The Hand of the Forest, (Alice and Thomas #10), March 2021 Patreon reward
earth for charity, (Tybalt #14), April 2021 Patreon reward
By Any Other Name, (Alice and Thomas #11), May 2021 Patreon reward
This year was dominated by Tybalt (four stories) and Alice and Thomas (also four stories). Tybalt is from the October Daye world, and Alice and Thomas from the Incryptid world. We have another Incryptid story here, What was I meant to do?, and then we have three standalone stories.
In past years I have not liked the Tybalt stories. Tybalt was a pompous jerk who was difficult to like. However, in Patreon Year 4 he began an evolution towards a better person, and that continues this year. Overall, I had fun with this batch of Tybalt stories. They fit together into a bigger story, one that reflects well on Tybalt, so that was good.
This year's Incryptid stories were very good. We start with the unusual What was I meant to do?. This is told in the first person by Dave, the bogeyman who sold Verity out in Discount Armageddon. This little bit of treachery did not go as planned -- Dave was caught, and what's more, Verity survived. So Dave flees New York as if the whole Price family was after him. I enjoyed this story for two things. First, we are treated to Dave's musings on Prices, the Covenant, and humans in general, and thus to a view of how the North American cryptid community sees the Prices and the world. Second, Drew Baker, who was adopted by Angela Baker and thus became a member of the extended Price family, shows up. He tells most of the story of how that happened. So that was informative.
Then we have the four Alice and Thomas stories. These are, broadly speaking, about the courtship of Alice Healy and Thomas Price. We already know from allusions in the main Incryptid novels as well as the family trees they contain, that Alice and Thomas will eventually marry and have two kids, Kevin and Jane, who will go on to become the parents of the latest generation of Prices. So, we know this courtship is eventually going to work out, although we also know it isn't entirely, because something bad is going to happen to Thomas. Alice is by way of being the central figure of the Incryptid world, as McGuire told us in the Acknowledgments of Calculated Risks, so the courtship of Alice and Thomas is an important story. The first real Alice novel, Spelunking Through Hell will be released in March, and McGuire clearly feels some pressure to get certain aspects of the Alice and Thomas story fleshed out before then. In fact, the next two Patreon stories, To Build a Better..., Halfway Through the Wood (not reviewed here because they are from Year 6) also continue Alice and Thomas's story, and Halfway Through the Wood is not just a story, but an 80,000-word novel. These stories were very good. And in By Any Other Name we finally meet the other Price family dead aunt, Rose, who is the central figure in the Ghost Road series.
The three standalone stories are diverse. Inflatable Angel is a typical McGuire ghost story. Like many of her ghost stories, this one is pretty upbeat. Ratting is also a typical kind of McGuire story, what I call a "ruin story", because, as she once explained, "Sometimes I ask my friends what they want me to ruin for my patrons." The ruin stories are mostly about about a sort of apocalypse or dystopia -- a future where something connected with the thing to be ruined has gone badly wrong. Ratting takes the Covid pandemic to an extreme. Like most of the ruin stories, this one is bleak and dreary. Then we have Belief. There is nothing supernatural in this story. I can't improve on McGuire's introduction to this story: "For this month's story, we're exploring what it means to believe in something bigger than yourself, and why Santa is unfair. A story about a little girl and the post office."
October 25, 2023
Sometimes, you just need a happier haunting tale. That is to say, Inflatable Angel is a ghost story, but unlike a lot of Seanan McGuire's ghost stories, she promises that this one will be happier. I agree with that (though obviously, it still involves dead characters, so there is the implication of a tragedy in the past). Still, Inflatable Angel was a nice deviation from the trend, and I enjoyed the break from all the bleakness in the world.
You Can Also Find Me On:
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You Can Also Find Me On:
Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks | Quirky Cat's Comics | The Book Review Crew | Monkeys Fighting Robots | Storygraph | Bookhype | Bookstagram | Twitter | Tumblr | Reedsy
May 30, 2023
Clever afterlife story.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews