Words I Write Crazy: Week 36 Reviews: Imaginary Numbers, Follow the Lady, Calculated Risks, Singing the Comic-Con Blues

Saturday, September 6, 2025

Week 36 Reviews: Imaginary Numbers, Follow the Lady, Calculated Risks, Singing the Comic-Con Blues

From Goodreads:
The ninth book in the fast-paced InCryptid urban fantasy series returns to the mishaps of the Price family, eccentric cryptozoologists who safeguard the world of magical creatures living in secret among humans.

Sarah Zellaby has always been in an interesting position. Adopted into the Price family at a young age, she's never been able to escape the biological reality of her origins: she's a cuckoo, a telepathic ambush predator closer akin to a parasitic wasp than a human being. Friend, cousin, mathematician; it's never been enough to dispel the fear that one day, nature will win out over nurture, and everything will change.

Maybe that time has finally come.

After spending the last several years recuperating in Ohio with her adoptive parents, Sarah is ready to return to the world–and most importantly, to her cousin Artie, with whom she has been head-over-heels in love since childhood. But there are cuckoos everywhere, and when the question of her own survival is weighed against the survival of her family, Sarah's choices all add up to one inescapable conclusion.

This is war. Cuckoo vs. Price, human vs. cryptid…and not all of them are going to walk away.

From Goodreads:

The tenth book in the fast-paced InCryptid urban fantasy series returns to the mishaps of the Price family, eccentric cryptozoologists who safeguard the world of magical creatures living in secret among humans.

Just when Sarah Zellaby, adopted Price cousin and telepathic ambush predator, thought that things couldn't get worse, she's had to go and prove herself wrong. After being kidnapped and manipulated by her birth family, she has undergone a transformation called an instar, reaching back to her Apocritic origins to metamorphize. While externally the same, she is internally much more powerful, and much more difficult to control.

Even by herself. After years of denial, the fact that she will always be a cuckoo has become impossible to deny.

Now stranded in another dimension with a handful of allies who seem to have no idea who she is–including her cousin Annie and her maybe-boyfriend Artie, both of whom have forgotten their relationship–and a bunch of cuckoos with good reason to want her dead, Sarah must figure out not only how to contend with her situation, but with the new realities of her future. What is she now? Who is she now? Is that person someone she can live with?

And when all is said and done, will she be able to get the people she loves, whether or not they've forgotten her, safely home?

My first review of Imaginary Numbers, Follow the Lady, Calculated Risks, Singing the Comic-Con Blues
My Review:
I enjoyed reading these books again so much! I had to reread them, since I got a copy of Butterfly Effects, the next book in the series, and it's also Sarah's story again, so I had to come back and reread these, since I'd only read them the once as they were coming out.

Sarah is such an interesting character, she's a cuckoo, one of only 2 that has something looking like human moral compass. That she's a telepath in a worth with only a few others is always interesting to see, she was raised functionally as a Price, as a cryptozoologist, someone who helps the creatures and critters not known or recognized by science.

These books were so good, building out of knowledge of cuckoos and their history and their abilities, that are being strengthened in Sarah so they can use them to jump ship from our world-which would destroy said world in the processs-yeah, Sarah's story is compicated.

Not to mention her relationships with the family member's she's closest to, especially Artie, and how she ends up wiping their memories of her from them. To have them not know her, when they're in an alternative dimension, I knew that it would mostly work out but I'd forgotten how we got there, and I really enjoyed the process of getting there again!

Loved reading these books again and I need to continue on with the series again!

Author: Seanan McGuire
Series: InCryptid #9, 9.5, 10, 10.5
First Read: February 24th, 26th, 2020, January 3rd, 3rd, 2021

Read: September 5th, 5th, 5th, 5th, 2025
Source: Own
Reason Why: Reread, and they're Prequel & Sequel Challenge 2025 Books!
Publisher: DAW Books
Published: February 25th 2020, February 25th 2020, February 23rd 2021, February 23rd 2021

Imaginary Numbers: