Book Review: Angel of the Overpass, The Ghost Roads Book 3, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: Angel of the Overpass, The Ghost Roads Book 3, Seanan McGuire
Rose Marshall died in 1952. Run off the road by Bobby Cross, an actor who made a bargain to stay young and alive forever so long as he collected souls. She managed to escape his clutches when she died and was a brand-new ghost. She has continued to escape ever since, running for her life, or is that for her death? Regardless, the time for running has ended.
The “Crossroads,” the evil power that made the “souls for eternal youth” bargain with Bobby Cross, is dead. Killed by the young sorceress Antimony “Annie” Price (a main character in the author’s InCryptid series), they are no longer able to protect Bobby. For the first time since he killed Rose, Bobby is vulnerable. Rose is not the only one who wants him dead and gone. She is, though, the one best positioned to end him.
She recognizes that she will need help when given this task, so she reaches out to powerful allies for their support, including Persephone, goddess of the dead. But attracting the attention of gods comes with its own risks. Nothing is ever given freely when a god blesses a human–even a dead human. Bobby Cross poses a real and immediate threat to Rose and the people she loves, both living and dead. But what is she willing to exchange for an end to his terror?
Seanan McGuire is such a talented storyteller. One reviewer said she did not write fantasy. Instead, she created mythology. The brief and (hopefully relatively) spoiler free description above may be absurd and confusing out of context. McGuire makes it coherent and even believable within her books. Her imagination is somewhere beyond creative. She takes the world we think we know, injects it with a strong dose of the incredible, and then violently shakes it to create a new world that is simultaneously recognizable and incomprehensible. Then, somehow, she makes it all make sense.
Her books allow readers to see the familiar through unfamiliar eyes. When driving to work, I approach intersections with a new sense of caution. Could this be a “crossroads”? Is that walker really a road witch? Is that young girl actually a phantom in search of a borrowed jacket and a gifted meal? Is that fancy car a midlife crisis or a visitor from the twilight? My eleven-minute commute becomes an adventure in imagination thanks to the gifts bestowed from Seanan McGuire.
Also see by Seanan McGuire —
Book Review: Calculated Risks, InCryptid Book 10, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: Imaginary Numbers, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: The Brightest Fell, October Daye series #11, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, Ghost Roads Book 2, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: Middlegame, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: Night and Silence, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: Sparrow Hill Road, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: In an Absent Dream, Wayward Children Book 4, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: Come Tumbling Down, Seanan McGuire
Book Review: Angel of the Overpass, The Ghost Roads Book 3, Seanan McGuire