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Phantom Pains

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About this listen

 In this sequel to the Nebula Award–nominated and Tiptree Award Honor Book that New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire called “exciting, inventive, and brilliantly plotted,” Millie unwillingly returns to the Arcadia Project when an impossible and deadly situation pulls her back in.

Four months ago, Millie left the Arcadia Project after losing her partner Teo to the lethal magic of an Unseelie fey countess. Now, in a final visit to the scene of the crime, Millie and her former boss Caryl encounter Teo’s tormented ghost. But there’s one problem: according to Caryl, ghosts don’t exist.

Millie has a new life, a stressful job, and no time to get pulled back into the Project, but she agrees to tell her side of the ghost story to the agents from the Project’s National Headquarters. During her visit though, tragedy strikes when one of the agents is gruesomely murdered in a way only Caryl could have achieved. Millie knows Caryl is innocent, but the only way to save her from the Project’s severe, off-the-books justice is to find the mysterious culprits that can only be seen when they want to be seen. Millie must solve the mystery not only to save Caryl, but also to foil an insidious, arcane terrorist plot that would leave two worlds in ruins. Fantasy Modern Detectives Mystery Supernatural Thriller & Suspense Ghost Magic Fiction Haunted Paranormal
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I bought the first in this series, 'Borderline' on the basis of reviews which advised that if listeners were wary of the supernatural 'fey' half of this genre mash up the characters and thriller elements were so well done it would still delight. This is true of the second in the series, but less so. Our intriguing, damaged heroine is still compelling but a much larger part of this second instalment is spent establishing the rules of the imaginary magical world. There are great screeds of exposition of fairy and mystical physics and history which often go on for some time in the middle of action sequences and are sometimes spelled out twice as one character then repeats them again for another. One can sense a complicated moral story and metaphor is being built up here in this basically enjoyable set of books but the intricacies started to feel a tad over complicated and demanding on the reader's patience. I will probably go for the third in the series and the performance of the reader is excellent, but I hope some of the snap and contemporary originality of the first returns.

Still engaging

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what can you do with a fairy story pitched into 1950s cold war logic? stop listening is my recommendation, now as then.

starts well. descends into propaganda.

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