★★★★☆ To Build a Better, by Seanan McGuire
The courtship of Alice and Thomas continues
To Build a Better
Seanan McGuire
The courtship of Alice and Thomas continues
To Build a Better... is Seanan McGuire's June 2021 Patreon reward. It is Alice and Thomas story #12. It follows the May 2021 reward story, By Any Other Name. McGuire is rushing to get the story of Alice and Thomas's courtship finished before the release of Spelunking Through Hell next spring. This is a story whose end we already know because of hints dropped in the other Incryptid novels. Alice and Thomas will eventually marry and have two children, Jane and Kevin, who will become the parents of the current generation of the Price family: Alex, Verity, Antimony, Elsie, and Artie. Thomas will make a bargain with the Crossroads to save Alice's life, and as a consequence will go lost. Alice will become an interdimensional traveler seeking Thomas through worlds.
Alice is now 17 years old and in High School. Thomas is 26 years old. Alice has had a crush on Thomas for a year or so. Thomas is also smitten with Alice, although he is doing his best to do the right thing by remaining aloof. There is currently a coolness between Alice and Thomas because, in order to defend Thomas from a Covenant woman to whom he was formerly engaged, Mary pretended to be married to Thomas. Alice heard the marriage claim but doesn't yet know that it was a ruse, as she isn't speaking to Mary, and Thomas has not found an appropriate opportunity to explain, mostly because Alice has been confined to her bed convalescing from the fungal infestation from which Thomas saved her in the last story.
So, it's a standard incomplete information comedy-of-errors setup, but with intelligent mice and ghosts.
To Build a Better... begins with Alice feeling sufficiently recovered to venture outside on her own. Her mice petition her for help in expanding their living quarters, so she ventures into her Forest to collect Fricken down for them. Thomas shows up, gets her out of trouble, and helps the mice. Thomas makes the following utterly typical Alice observation:
Not for the first time, he noted that she was the kind of girl who didn't need cosmetics...but looked better with a bit of blood in her hair.
So, it's a fun little story about Alice and Thomas becoming incrementally closer. The big events are coming up in next month's Patreon reward, Halfway Through the Wood, which is a short novel.