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Seasonal Fears (Alchemical Journeys Book 2) by [Seanan McGuire]

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Seanan McGuire

Seasonal Fears (Alchemical Journeys Book 2) Kindle Edition

by Seanan McGuire (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

281 ratings

Part of: Alchemical Journeys (2 books)

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From New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire, Seasonal Fears is the extraordinary companion novel to Middlegame.

The king of winter and the queen of summer are dead. The fight for their crowns begins!

Melanie has a destiny, though it isn’t the one everyone assumes it to be. She’s delicate; she’s fragile; she’s dying. Now, truly, is the winter of her soul.

Harry doesn’t want to believe in destiny, because that means accepting the loss of the one person who gives his life meaning, who brings summer to his world.

So, when a new road is laid out in front of them—a road that will lead through untold dangers toward a possible lifetime together—walking down it seems to be the only option.

But others are following behind, with violence in their hearts.

It looks like Destiny has a plan for them, after all….

"One must maintain a little bit of summer even in the middle of winter." —Thoreau

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Print length

475 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tordotcom
Publication date

May 3, 2022
File size

2897 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

SEANAN McGUIRE is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award–winning Wayward Children series; the October Daye series; the InCryptid series; the delightfully dark Middlegame; and other works. She also writes comics for Marvel, darker fiction as Mira Grant, and younger fiction as A. Deborah Baker. Seanan lives in Seattle with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls, horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09C4FZCX8
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tordotcom (May 3, 2022)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 3, 2022
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2897 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 475 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1250768268
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #49,246 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #819 in Action & Adventure Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- #887 in Dark Fantasy Horror
- #1,012 in Dark Fantasy

Customer Reviews:
281 ratings

About the author

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Seanan McGuire

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Seanan McGuire is a native Californian, which has resulted in her being exceedingly laid-back about venomous wildlife, and terrified of weather. When not writing urban fantasy (as herself) and science fiction thrillers (as Mira Grant), she likes to watch way too many horror movies, wander around in swamps, record albums of original music, and harass her cats.

Seanan is the author of the October Daye, InCryptid, and Indexing series of urban fantasies; the Newsflesh trilogy; the Parasitology duology; and the "Velveteen vs." superhero shorts. Her cats, Lilly, Alice, and Thomas, are plotting world domination even as we speak, but are easily distracted by feathers on sticks, so mankind is probably safe. For now.

Seanan's favorite things include the X-Men, folklore, and the Black Death. No, seriously. She writes all biographies in the third person, because it's easier that way.

Customer reviews

5 star		57%
4 star		24%
3 star		15%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Berni

Read a new classic!

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2022

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I liked this book a lot. I think it's even better than the first in this series, Middlegame. Part of that is because I found the two main characters in this book, Harry and Melanie, more relatable than Roger and Dodger. I think, too, that having read Along the Saltwise Sea made this a little easier to grasp.

I loved that McGuire incorporated the Snow White imagery that she used extensively in her Indexing books as well as the personifications of the seasons as in her Velveteen stories. They work perfectly here and are just seamless. If I hadn't read the earlier works, I would have been wowed by these new additions as well. (I'm still wowed, just wowed at how well she transferred them to a new story.)

My one quibble is that the book needs a better copy editor. It's long been a quirk of McGuire's writing that she gives us the same information two or more times, often just a page or so apart. I attribute this to how quickly she writes, and it's the editor's responsibility to catch this. Ms. McGuire has really upped her writing game. The editing needs to be better to let the books shine as brightly as they can, for these are classics.

One person found this helpful

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SymaMasy

An Amazing Book 2

Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2022

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It starts slowly, but after the halfway point, the book transforms into a tour de force. It is a narrative labyrinth worth every moment. The connections to Book 1 are lovely.

I look forward to the rest of the series.

3 people found this helpful

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Princess Buttercup

An excellent successor to Middlegame.

Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2022

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I loved Seasonal Fears. It's predecessor, MiddleGame, is a must read for me in SciFi/Fantasy, and Seasonal Fears is a wonderful followup. Like MG, SF gets into your head, it makes you think far after the book is closed. The alchemical world that this lives in is so new and so incredible, this series is like nothing you've ever read.

One person found this helpful

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LA in Dallas

In which the course of True Love DOES run smooth

Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2022

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Early in the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei take an oath in a peach garden to be as brothers to each other. Three Kingdoms is a story of extraordinary complexity, but from a certain point of view it is simple. Liu, Guan, and Zhang can rely completely on each other -- this gives them an advantage over the hundreds of other generals and would-be emperors they face, for whom treachery is entirely routine and to be expected.

In a similar way Seasonal Fears is simple. Melanie and Harry are childhood sweethearts, “You’re probably never going to meet people more ridiculously and unrealistically in love than these two”, as Jack Frost tells Corn Jenny. At the time of most of the action they are seventeen years old. And for them, contra Shakespeare, the course of True Love runs smooth as a bicycle on a well-paved road. They are never not in love, and never in serious doubt of each other's love.

Now, let me be clear about one thing: when I say the course of True Love runs smooth for them, I don't mean to imply that the course of the lives of which that love forms a part runs smooth. On the contrary, like Liu, Guan, and Zhang, Melanie and Harry are in grave danger, competing and fighting with a swarm of others whom they must defeat in order to complete their quest and survive. But like the Peach Garden Oath brothers Melanie and Harry each have someone on whom they can rely totally, while those with whom they compete are a crew of treacherous backstabbers. This gives Melanie and Harry a huge advantage over their opponents. Whether it is ultimately decisive I will not tell you.

Thus Seasonal Fears is two stories, a complex outer story of magic and a quest to become the human embodiments of summer and winter, and a much simpler inner story, which is a love story.

In this it somewhat resembles Middlegame, which is a very complex outer story wrapped around a simpler inner story of the fight against loneliness. Middlegame is an extraordinary book, a truly Great Work of Literature. Seasonal Fears is good -- I can enjoy a soppy love story as much as anyone -- but it is not the remarkable book that Middlegame is.

3 people found this helpful

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Margaret

Tiresome

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2022

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I bought this book because I love the Incryptid series, liked Middlegame okay and thought this might be better than MG. But it’s worse. Talky, tiresome and never surprising. I know a lot about alchemy, which may be partly why I was bored, but mostly there’s just not enough strangeness. It’s all teen romance and murder and so what. YMMV.

4 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

The book is good but the audio is terrible

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2022

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I'm liking the book itself, but the editing on the audiobook is the worst I've ever heard. It's a shame because Amber Benson is one of my favorite narrators, and this series is one I enjoy listening to. I expect much better from MacMillan and Tor.

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2022

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I generally love McGuire’s books, but this one was kind of unusual. It felt, if anything, that it was edited to be less traumatic after the fact. Some things that threatened horror just kind of vanished from the book, and there were some odd loose ends. But it was so well written that it was a pleasure to read, and I really liked the main characters. And it’s possible that a little less horror isn’t a bad thing right now.

Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2022

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Middlegame was a fantastic mix of science, magic, and adventure. This book falls flat. It’s boring, lacks depth, and the characters are unlikable.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

M. Mullany

Middlegame: The B-Side

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 30, 2022

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Book one of this series, Middlegame, was one of my favorite fantasy books of recent years, with compelling main characters and a propulsive narrative. However, Seasonal Fears is a sophomore slump in the series. The main characters are under-drawn, the plot is simplistic and a brief appearance by Middlegame characters feels like a TV crossover event for sweeps. A good editor would have told the author to shelve this for a year and then try a rewrite because the concepts had a lot of potential.

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