Butterfly Effects – Seanan McGuire

Well written, but hard to finish. Obviously, if I’m reading book 15, I’ve been enjoying the ride. This installment was the opposite of read-cover-to-cover. (Read-from-first-to-last-epage?) I would read a chapter, put it down, and come back to it a bit later.

This book serves to tidy up the dangling plot lines left over from “Calculated Risks”. The author is diligent about supporting new readers, or readers who haven’t read enough of her previous books. Enough is explained that such readers can enjoy the ride. The author also gives us an entertaining view of what the Price family’s “let’s pull the pin from this grenade and see what happens” version of problem solving looks like to the rest of the world.

What made this a hard book to pick up once I put it down? Two things, I think. The plot was disjointed. People kept running to or from danger, and getting no closer to success, and it didn’t matter, because half the characters are (or are descended from) Kairos - people clad in plot armor. And most of the characters were marinating in angst. So it wasn’t fun in the way several of the books in this series have been.