Melanie is 'the sick girl'. She was supposed to be a twin but something went wrong during her mother's delivery and both her mother and sister died. Melanie was left with a bad heart and she has had multiple surgeries and hospitalizations. Her father is overprotective and Melanie just wants to be a regular girl. Harry is her boyfriend. They have been drawn to each other and together for years and he watches out for her and protects her.

But now everything has changed. They both passed out at the same time and it turns out that it is because it's time for their destiny. Melanie will be a contestant as the new Winter Queen and Harry as the Summer King. There are other contestants and each is determined to take the prize, even killing the other contestants if necessary.

Harry and Melanie flee town and take off to determine what they need to do in this new situation. They are accompanied by Jack, who is sent to shepherd Melanie through the process and along the way they pick up Jenny, who does the same for Harry. They meet both friends and foes along the way and there is violence. Who will win through and become the next King and Queen?

Seanan McGuire is well known in the fantasy genre and as Mira Grant, the science fiction/horror genre. She holds the record for most Hugo nominations in one year when she had five in various categories. In this book, which is the second in a trilogy, she gets the teenage relationship just right. The world building feels right and Melanie and Harry both have secrets in their lives that are slowly revealed. I listened to this novel and the narrator did a great job in bringing the action alive. This book is recommended for fantasy fans.

dnf - 10%

i know this is so incredibly late, and i am so sorry for that, but three years ago i dnfed and never picked it back up. it just didn't hold my interest then and i just can't see myself ever picking it back up.

I will read everything Seanan McGuire writes. Period. Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for the opportunity to listen in exchange for a review.

I was excited for this one to come out, but looks like this one wasn't for me. Too confusing and jack frost was the only redeeming factor of this book. I cannot in good conscience rate this any higher than 3 stars.

I have tried to get into this series so hard because one my favourite content creators loved the first book. I had the physical book which I just kept finding distractions to reading, so I purchased the audiobook. Also the narrator is Amber Benson who I love and does an amazing job, but I still have yet to finish the book. And then…. said favourite creator didn’t like the second book but said it was ok. I have come to terms with the fact that while I may listen to the book, it will be a while from now. Once again I am very appreciate of being approved for an ARC.

Can Seanan McGuire do any wrong?? I'm not convinced it is possible. Middlegame was difficult to muddle through the first time, and a bit more user friendly the second due to the audiobook, but Seasonal Fears does not have the same issues. (And to be frank, I LOVE Middlegame) Seasonal Fears is the second installment in McGuire's Alchemical Journeys and it is compulsively readable as long as you suspend some disbelief and hang on to what you learned in Middlegame! I loved the concept of having incarnate seasons and that they are region specific and learning how they manifest and begin to control their powers is just so cool. This was nothing like I expected, and I'm just upset it took me so long to get around to - but I can blame needing to re-read Middlegame for that, right??

Another wonderful book by Seanan McGuire, but I don't think that it made a good audiobook. Fortunately I had the audiobook and ebook so when the audiobook was confusing, I stopped it and switched to the ebook. I really enjoyed the story, but I couldn't follow everything going on in the audiobook.
While I didn't enjoy this one as much as Middlegame, it was still really good. Pacing was a bit slow to start, but still went at a decent pace. I enjoyed the characters and liked that past characters were brought into the story.

The longer I think about this book, the more questioning I am with my rating. I felt like with Middlegame, there was a slow burn as we unraveled the mysteries of this world, and this one? It just wasn't. The pace was relatively quick as we follow Harry and Melanie across the country in their search for the labyrinth. But apart from relatively few action scenes, most of it is just 2 teens in a car complaining about how much they love each other. Not sure if I'll be continuing with this series or not.

*Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for an ALC in exchange for my honest review*

Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for the audioARC of this! I switched back and forth between that and the ebook from my library.

I requested this without reading any information about what it would be about, since I enjoyed the first one and I was expecting a continuation of Roger and Dodger’s story from book one. This instead follows a different duo, with different types of powers and a whole new quest, though we do see some familiar faces. I really enjoyed it anyway, and Amber Benson continued to narrate really well.

Seanan McGuire is such a great author!

Seasonal fears is the follow up to McGuire’s Alchemical Journeys series, which follows Melanie and Harry, teenagers in love. However, as devoted to one another as they are, Melanie has a terminal illness that eventually catches up to her, causing her to collapse.

This leads to a journey for both teens, and I’m excited to see if additional books will be released in this series!

*many thanks to the publisher and Macmillan Audio/Netgalley for the gifted copy for review

Seasonal Fears is 2nd book in the Alchemical Journey series. Its more like a standalone fantasy conjoined version of the world created by McGuire - alchemical and with shadow organisation. At the core, Seasonal Fears is just a love story, between two teens and their fate to personify Summer & Winter.

When the King of Winter & the Queen of Summer dies, fight begins for their crowns! Harry & Melanie have their love for each other to guide and protect through the quest if becoming human versions of two seasons. I honestly liked these two characters better than the ones in Middlegame. This love is tender and cute!! It might feel complex with the magic and the alchemy of humans and seasons, but it is well balanced with the affectionate love between the two main characters.

McGuire is a remarkable writer and it shows in the literature-fantasy. Its incredible and I haven’t read anything like this. I enjoyed the story despite some parts being iterated quite a few times, but it could be just the case with the advanced reader’s copy.

Thank you Tordotcom for the giveaway win!! I am under no obligation to write this review, thoughts are my own.

So I really wanted to like this more than I did. It has a lot of promise and it’s possible it’s just me but when the first quarter of the book is the main characters just repeatedly asking one character to explain something simply (literallly saying things like “explain it to me like football” or “explain it to me like I’m a child”) and then when they are trying to explain they interrupt to ask them to explain it simply again, it was getting kind of frustrating. After a while it was clear that it wasn’t that the concept could be understood but just couldn’t be believed by the main characters so instead they should have moved on. But it was almost as if the author thought the readers were stupid? I know some of it was supposed to be recap of the first book but that shouldn’t have lasted until 30% into the book.

Once they finally moved past that, the story could finally get legs but it was really a struggle getting past it.

- thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC in exchange for an early review.

This was my first audiobook from NetGalley, and I'm both grateful for and surprised by the quality of the platform.

On to Seasonal Fears . . . Seanan McGuire is such an imaginative and smart writer. This book is not a continuation of Middle Game, but rather an adjacent story within the same world. The narration was quality and captured the essence of the Up and Under. This story is rather complex and requires keen attention, but it is worth it. As far as world-building goes, Seanan McGuire is the among the best.

Seasonal Fears by Seanan McGuire

I feel like I have been waiting for this book for years! I really, really enjoyed it, but I might have built it up in my head a little too much.

I love Seanan McGuire. (Note: I review a bunch of her books so I am copying part of some of my other reviews here to save time.). She has quickly become my favorite living writer and I feel very lucky that she is so prolific. I was first introduced to her work when her book Parasite, written as Mira Grant, was nominated for a Hugo Award. I loved it and quickly devoured the Newsflesh series before I realized that Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire were the same person.

I started reading her works under her own name, starting with Sparrow Hill Road, which is amazing, but I picked it because I was intimidated by her long running October Daye series. I had read some Urban Fantasy before, and I fondly remember Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde books, but my tastes run more to science fiction and then secondary world fantasy, so I was hesitant to dive into such a long series. I picked up the first book, Rosemary and Rue, when it was on sale as a kindle daily deal, and I found it somewhat disappointing compared to her other work. I reminded myself that it was her first published novel, so I cut it some slack. Then Incryptid was nominated for the Best Series Hugo in 2018 and I dove into that instead. I loved it! So I vowed to give Toby another chance. And I was so glad that I did! It is no one of my favorite series.

I really enjoyed Middlegame when it came out and voted for it as best novel on the Hugo Awards at the time. The writing there was lyrical and a little dreamlike in a way that was a little different from most everything else of hers (but reminded me of the Parisitology books a little).

I remember going to a comic book store in October 2019 when I got her to sign some Ghost Spider and Nightcrawler comics (she was amazing, BTW, and was so kind to my then 7-year-old daughter, who was wearing a ghost spider hooded sweatshirt) and asking her if there would be a follow up to Middlegame. She couldn’t tell me that there would be, so I was extra excited when Seasonal Fears was finally announced. I was even more thrilled when I realized that it was a book she had been talking about for years on her livejournal blog.

So I was overjoyed when The publisher and NetGalley awarded me an audio eARC of Seasonal Fears (I had already preordered a kindle copy beforehand). This was a fantastic book in so many ways. I loved the writing style, so very reminiscent of Middlegame. I loved Harry and Melanie, and how real they felt as little kids in the earlier parts of the narrative. I loved the entire Seasonal control structure we learn about in this book. I wish we had spent more time with Harry and Mel as teenagers before their world changed, so I could’ve appreciated their loss more. And I feel like there was a place about 1/3 of the way through where the story dragged a bit, when Harry kept asking Jack the same things over and over again. I also felt the conclusion was a bit rushed. That being said, I really enjoyed this book a ton, and as a bonus, it was nice to see Roger and Dodger again!

I was less pleased with the audiobook narrator. I loved Amber Benson on Buffy, but she just left me feeling flat on this audiobook. She didn’t engage me and I kept feeling myself drifting. I don’t think she did anything wrong, but her style just didn’t work for me.

Seasonal Fears is a successful, though tonally different return to the McGuire’s world of alchemy, mad scientists, and the Improbable Road to the Impossible City. This is certainly a necessary book if McGuire is planning on writing more Alchemical Journeys, as it answers a lot of the questions readers might have about how alchemy works; it fleshes out the worldbuilding and magic system in a really satisfying way. Whereas Middlegame was an experimental fever dream of a novel, Seasonal Fears is a far more straightforward plot with far fewer questions left unanswered. I can see readers who adored the weirdness of Middlegame not liking this as much, or readers who were baffled by the lack of explanation of the first book finding that this helps things click into place. It can read a little younger than Middlegame - the main characters are 17 - but the more straightforward plot might appeal to a crossover audience and draw them into McGuire’s adult novels. While there are certainly references to Middlegame - Roger and Dodger make multiple appearances - this could probably be read on its own, or before Middlegame. (It might even make the alchemy in Middlegame make more sense!) The audiobook is excellently narrated by Amber Benson; she captures the characters’ voices and narrative cadence perfectly.

This is a sequel of sorts but for once you don’t need to read the first book to understand what is going on. The main characters are not even in the first book. So don’t worry that you will miss anything. The only thing is that it will spoil what happened in book one. Melanie and Harry have been best friends since they first met. Melanie has a heart condition but that hasn’t stopped Harry from being her friend even when some of the other kids have hung back. But everything changes one day in high school when they both drop dead at the same time and yet rise as if nothing happened to them. Going to the Homecoming dance plans go out the window when a very young Jack Frost comes to Melanie to tell her she is a potential Queen of Winter, and she needs to leave now to head to the coronation. Harry picks her up for the dance and finds out he is a potential King of Summer, but no Corn Jenny has come to tell him this. Melanie finds out that her dad has been killing the Jack Frosts that have come in the past to try and teach her to be Queen and no one can figure out why Harry’s Corn Jenny has never met him but the two are on the run now and heading to the coronation. It seems the seasons need people to be personification of them and there are always lots of candidates to take the job but due to the wrong person having the job as King of Winter he stayed in his position for three hundred years. Now the two are on the run meeting other contenders for the crown and hopefully a few allies to get them where they are going.
I really liked the story and this universe, and I want to see more. It is nice to know that I’m not sure what I will see next in this story universe. The audio version of the book was great and I’m happy I listened to it as well as read it.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley

This is the companion novel to Middlegame. You can probably read this without reading Middlegame but its easier to understand the bizarre things that happen if you do read Middlegame first.

In the alchemical world, natural occurrences in the world are represented in human form. When the King of Winter and the Queen of Summer for North America die a new king and queen must be crowned. This follows Melanie and Harry, high school students who have been in love with each other their entire life. They're in the race for king and queen if they can survive long enough to make it to the labyrinth and be crowned.

This was mostly okay. It started out really cool and I liked it more than Middlegame but it quickly got repetitive and boring. It was mostly just a road trip book with little focus being given to the actual competition.

I personally think Seanan McGuire's novellas are better than her novels.

I listened to this as an audio book and I really like the narrator, Amber Benson. I think she did a wonderful job with all the different characters and added something interesting to the telling of this story.

While it doesn't quite overtake its series predecessor in terms of storytelling nor character development, this smaller-scale entry into McGuire's alchemical world still holds its own as an Odyssey-esque tale of enduring young love. Both leads are well fleshed out and, though their love for one another is a mythical love-for-the-ages sort of thing, McGuire does a great job bringing up little disagreements and imperfections that make their relationship feel authentic even in this wild world of seasonal superpowers. The constant exposition feels a little less natural than in some of her other work, but holds true to the themes of the story and our main character's inability to accept what is happening to him.

A great read for fans of the Fair Folk, enduring romances, and epic quests across the US.

Amber Benson brings a lovely, dream-like quality to the narration that sells the fairy-tale style of the story.

Seasonal Fears is the second installment in the Alchemical Journeys series. I have not read the first book but did not feel lost jumping right in.

This is the story of Melanie, a high school cheerleader who has always had a serious heart condition that will ensure her a short lifespan, and her football star boyfriend Harry, who has been in love with her since middle school. But this is not a high school romance, by any means. Mel and Harry find themselves on a path to destinies that would leave their old lives behind but are necessary to ensure Mel has a future. As the two of them follow the signs and their path, they are accompanied by their spiritual guides, attacked by rivals, and aided by divine beings. There is a bit of intense info-dumping at a few points along the way that provides the specifics of their predicament as well as background and history. As Harry and Mel both attempt to believe in the fantastic and magical elements driving them on their path, we see them struggle to decide what lines they will cross to achieve this quest and whether or not they will still care for one another as the path wrought the duo into less than innocents.

As a hardcore Buffy fan, I love Amber Benson's narration.