★★☆☆☆ How to Bake a Pie, by Seanan McGuire
Another small step toward an end we already know
How to Bake a Pie
Seanan McGuire
Another small step toward an end we already know
How to Bake a Pie is Seanan McGuire's October 2022 Patreon reward. It is an Incryptid story. The Incryptid series recounts the adventures of the Price family in a world that is peopled not just by humans, but also by cryptids -- strange, fantastical, and often dangerous creatures. The Price family consists of the children and grandchildren of Thomas Price and Alice Healy-Price. From the family trees in the front of the Incryptid novels we have long known that Thomas and Alice will marry in 1960 and will have two children, Kevin in 1962 and Jane in 1965.
At the time of How to Bake a Pie (1958 or 1959?) Thomas and Alice are in love but separated. Thomas has been confined to his house as a result of a magical bargain he made to save Alice's life (which Alice doesn't know about), and Alice's father Jonathan Healy, who disapproves of Thomas (in general, but especially has a match for Alice) sent Alice off to library school in Ann Arbor. Furthermore, Jonathan has taken on the job of picking up and delivering Thomas's mail, and guess what? He's blocking all communication between Thomas and Alice. He's also stopped Alice's mail to her grandfather (Jonathan's father) Alexander Healy. Neither Thomas nor Alice knows he's doing this, and they are both very unhappy that their letters to each other receive no answer.
So, the big question has been, how will Alice and Thomas find out about Jonathan's interference and get close enough together to make babies?
There might have been some suspense about this, except that McGuire blew it up in her latest Incryptid novel, Spelunking through Hell. Spelunking ends with a prequel novella that tells how Alice and Thomas get together at last (basically: Jonathan gets killed by parasitic cryptid wasps) and a prolog that describes the final abduction of Thomas into another world while Alice is pregnant with Jane. Thus, all the big questions about Alice and Thomas have already been answered.
How to Bake a Pie takes one small step from where we were before Alice and Thomas managed to get together to another slightly later time when they still haven't gotten together. At this point, it's difficult to care much.