Book Review: Dusk or Dawn or Dark or Day, Seanan McGuire

Fantasy: Dusk or Dawn or Dark or Day, Seanan McGuire

Seanan McGuire knows her ghosts and witches. Whether it is Rose Marshall hitchhiking the roads of America or the powerful members of the Price family trying to keep the world safe for (and from) Cryptids, her novels often walk the line between this world and the next.

Dusk or Dawn or Dark or Day is a different sort of ghost story. Although it is not incompatible with her other works, it is a stand-alone novella that is not obviously set in the world inhabited by the Price’s (or the underworld of the ghost roads and Rose Marshall). This novel is set mostly in New York City. Jenna works nights as a volunteer for a suicide prevention hotline. Her sister had killed herself many years before and Jenna blamed herself for her death.

She also blamed herself for her own death, killed in a storm that arose while she was running outside in grief over Patty’s death.

Now, far from Kentucky where her body is buried, Jenna lives(?) in New York, renting an apartment from a ghost-landlady, working days in a coffee shop and nights at the hotline, doing good where she can and hoping someday to be reunited with Patty.

Until the ghosts of New York begin disappearing.

Ghosts come and go, especially in a large city. But ALL the ghosts have gone, except Jenna and her landlady. This concerns the local witches enough that one of them offers to work with Jenna to find out what happened to the ghosts. Because every place not only has its ghosts. It NEEDS its ghosts. And if New York can lose its ghosts, it is not safe to be dead anywhere.

I like to think that McGuire has fun writing. Not to say it isn’t work–she is prolific and talented and makes no apologies for wanting to pay for the little things in life such as food and shelter and health insurance (she is in America, so that ain’t cheap). Still, I like to think of her coming up with some off-the-wall idea, say a Kentucky ghost pairing up with an Indiana corn witch in a diner in New York City and the two of them going on a road trip, and saying to herself “that sounds like fun…what happens next?” And then, because she’s talented and imaginative and Seanan Freaking McGuire she starts writing and eventually we get to go on this incredible trip with her.

Dusk or Dawn or Dark or Day is a novella that can be easily read by most readers in a day or two. It is a ghost story that won’t give you nightmares. It may, though, remind you that people are people, even when they are no longer people.

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