First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Tor/Forge for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

NEW HEIGHTS

Let's get it out of the way: if you adored Middlegame but felt that Seasonal Fears was a bit of a letdown, you only need to read Tidal Creatures to fall in love with the series all over again. And no, not only because this time Roger and Dodger play a huge part in it (though it does help 😉 😍). For one, the amount of exposition is just right - there's a lot to take in, that's for sure, and some of the concepts are tackled more than once, but you never feel like you're hammered over the head with them when it happens. Every time the god-incarnate situation, the alchemical procedures or the Impossible City (a.k.a. the center of creation) are discussed, the reader is given a new piece of information, or sees a familiar event from a new angle (or from a new character's eyes), so that in the end everything is an essential tassel to the book's mosaic, the same way as the Lunar gods need to come together to become the Moon that shines over the City itself. But this is just one of the reasons why this book restored my faith in the series...

OF GODS AND CONCEPTS

After two installments where the protagonists came in pair (with different grades of success - Roger and Dodger could sustain a whole book and then some, while Harry and Melanie were definitely less vivid and interesting), Tidal Creatures is a change of pace in that it introduces (or reintroduces, in some cases) a whole group of characters, who vary from gods incarnate/their human hosts, to alchemical constructs, to normal people who may or may not have an affiliation with magic (plus antagonists in the form of evil - or slightly less evil - alchemists, of course). Oh...and a dog (don't worry, he doesn't die - though there are other casualties...).
McGuire clearly put a lot of thought into shaping the symbiosis between the Lunar gods and their human counterparts, and the different grades of balance (or lack thereof) in what is, for all purposes, a partnership every host entered willingly, but not without consequences. It's like having two characters in place of one, sometimes even at the same time (though of course only one of them is at the forefront), and it's fascinating. There's also a unique coming-of-age arc involving one character who must learn the truth about herself the hard way, and finally...there are Roger and Dodger - Language and Math personified - in all their glory. After their brief cameo in Seasonal Fears, they get a lot more space here, and McGuire explores their god-like essence and the way they (can) rewrite reality, along with their effort not to rearrange the world (and the people in it) around their desires - not to mention, their tether to humanity on one end, godhood and the Impossible City on the other. It's a testament to the other characters though that Roger and Dodger don't steal the scene, and I bet you'll find some new favourites here, like I did 🙂.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Tidal Creatures departs from your average Seanan McGuire's novel in that it (partly) focuses on a murder and an investigation; but don't enter it expecting a classic murder mystery, if in a supernatural setting. This part of the plot is exciting, but mostly for different reasons than the actual whodunnit (I'll go as far as to say that it isn't that hard to hone in on the culprit - I'm not going to elaborate in order to avoid spoilers): during the sleuthing, we finally get a glimpse of the Impossible City we've been teased with since Book 1, and we delve into its mythology and its connection with both the Lunar gods and the Doctrine siblings (that is, Roger and Dodger). As it's custom with McGuire's best books, Tidal Creatures's strength lies in its complex, yet easy-to-love characters (with whom the author clearly empathises even when she puts them through the grinder) and imaginative worldbuilding (speaking of which, leave it to McGuire to weave aspects of lore into a new, original myth). With two more installments on the way and the road to the Impossible City firmly paved at last, the future for this series sounds glorious, and I can't wait to get there.

Note: I couldn't help but notice a small continuity error in the chapter titled Mare Ingenii: a character who's going under an alias is introduced by her real name, only for her alias to be used (correctly) a few pages later. I'm curious to see if this tiny hiccup will make it to the published version or not... Later edit: It was amended!

Seanan McGuire is an autobuy for me, both in audio and hardcover. I was so excited to continue the Alchemical Journeys series with book three Tidal Creatures. It was worth the wait! McGuire gave us an unputdownable story as we head to the Impossible City.

After the events of Middlegame and Seasonal Fears, I was eager to dive into Tidal Creatures. We find ourselves at Berkley College where we meet incarnates of the Moon Gods who dwell within a human host and take turns navigating the skies at night over the Impossible City. When one of them ends up dead, it will be up to Moon goddesses, Change’e and Artemis to find answers, but along the way they will find help & friendship.

We also meet Kelpie, who after escaping the lab learns she is not human but a personification of Artemis’s Hind. She stumbles across the son of Isabella, a hechicera who aids here and takes her to one of the coven’s meetings to introduce her to someone else who isn’t quite human. All of this takes them to the home of Rodger and Dodger, the living embodiments of the Doctrine of Ethos.

I loved how McGuire weaved in the gods, the Impossible City, and the alchemist who want to control it all. At its core, we have a murder-mystery. We learn from Diana, yes that Diana, that other moon gods have been murdered. Along the way, we will work to stop the alchemists, battle constructs and enter the city itself.

I found myself swept up in the tale and the stories of moon goddesses, Aske, Change’e, Artemis, and Diana, as well as the moon god Mani. I loved entering the home of Rodger and Dodger, whose home and its ability to adapt impressed me. We witness death, battle, and form friendships, all while McGuire has us pondering the universe.

If you love mythology, you will want to delve into the Alchemical Journeys series. Rich characters and a world filled with danger and possibilities. I encourage you to read the message at the beginning of the book from the author. Yes, dear author, the journey was worth it.

WOW. Just when I thought that the first two had killed it and were it for me, McGuire hits us with another one. I loved this one equally if not even more than the first two. This is book #3 in the Alchemical Journeys series and I just want more and more of it. I know some mention that the pace of this book just isn’t it but I didn’t see it that way, I thought that this book was paced just right and I wasn’t caught in a slow movement or going along too fast. I sat down and read this book in a beautiful quiet weekend and enjoyed each second (or page) of this read.

Thank you @netgalley ,@torpublishing and author for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

Tidal Creatures is a whopper of a bite. With the amount of world building, you just have to take a moment to appreciate the journey. A world that is so richly descriptive with the A Deborah Baker books and the intersections of these worlds. After Seasonal Fears we knew more about alchemy, but Tidal Creatures takes it even further. Each of these books in the series manages to be both so unique and carefully tied together. I enjoyed being introduced to new characters - which make this feel a bit more dystopian - and returning back to some of our favorites.

this is the follow up to Middle Game and Seasonal Fears, Its set in a universe where Someone is killing off moon gods, and it's up to the remaining human incarnations of the lunar deities to find out who. I enjoyed it! It didn’t stray too far from what we know of this story but added new elements to make it interesting.

Once again Seanan McGuire does it again.

I love the way each of the books in this series work off of what happened in the prior books, but expands further into McGuire's incredibly developed world. When I first read Middlegame I said in my review, "McGuire's world building was fantastic, but my favorite part was that it was very evident that she has developed WAY more than she let us see," and I'm so happy to report that not only was I right about that, but that there is so much more than I expected. This is the type of series that I could see easily being 20 books, because there is so much space to work with.

For what it's worth, I didn't love the primary narrator in Seasonal Fears, but Tidal Creatures goes right back to being a damn near perfect novel.

The only downside to getting an ARC for Tidal Creatures is that I didn’t get a chance to hear Amber Benson's fabulous narration!

Tidal Creatures is superb. I loved the story of Kelpie and the Lunars. Kelpie had such an innocence and I enjoyed watching characters like Erin turn into a protective mother hen. (Erin?! 😂 girl is a marshmallow in the middle).

Tidal Creatures had a lot more of Roger and Dodger(first book=Middlegame) but I also loved the mythology of all the various pantheons and how they fit this incredibly logical, alchemical world.

I think one of my favorite things about this series is that even though these stories cross through each other they are very very different. I can’t recommend this series enough to fans of urban fantasy and folklore!

I absolutely love the feeling Seanan McGuire's writing gives me. This is book 3 and while I didn't enjoy quite as much as book 1 or 2, I loved the misfits banding together aspect. It's fascinating and complex, the world-building is on another level

I had such a fantastic time reading this book! I love her writing so much, and this world is so strange and weird and I was excited to go on this latest adventure! The first two books were almost stand alone plots, all connected to this world, and I loved how this book tied in!

I don't fully remember Seasonal Fears, so I'm not sure if the alchemists played much of a role, but in this book, it defines what the series conflict is, I'm pretty sure, the race to the Impossible City, and who is going to be in control. We did get that in Middlegame, but then, we didn't really know what was going on, and now we do.

I really enjoyed the perspectives that we got in this book, with Judy, an incarnate of Chang'e, one goddess of the moon, Kelpie, a lab tech for the alchemists that learns some brutal truths, and how their stories came together, with the alchemists wanting to get to the Impossible City through the Lunars. It was so fantastic!

Things are coming together in this book. I'm not sure how long the series is going to be, besides at least 4 books because it can't end here, but the conflict between the alchemists, and basically everybody else who isn't an alchemist, espcailly the ones that know about them, well, I want to see the alchemists wiped out because of just how horrid they are.

This was an amazing book and I can't wait to read more by Seanan McGuire!

A welcome return to form! Readers who loved Middlegame but felt left out with Seasonal Fears will be relieved to find that McGuire captures some of that alchemical magic once more and introduces several new characters and concepts that further build onto the wildly creative world she has created.

In Tidal Creatures (Alchemical Journeys Book 3), Seanan McGuire has continued creating a series that is brilliantly layered and full of incredible depth. As much as I loved the first two books in the series, I found myself loving Tidal Creatures as much as the previous two as it delves into the folklore and gods worshiped around the world and how they manifest.
What makes this novel so intriguing and complex is the intricate folklore that Seanan McGuire delves into, tying this novel into the series with a fluidity and ease, exploring the nature of godhood, the universe and magic. I loved the multiple incarnations of the moon gods and how they tie into the rest of Seanan McGuire’s alchemical universe. The story flows from through different points of views, exploring both the moon gods but also those tied to them including the alchemical college as they attempt to take control of creation.It also gives insight into what it means to be human and a monster, exploring love and loss.
Seanan McGuire has brought her usual brilliance to the third book in the series. While all of her books are incredible, this rises above along with the other books in the series to explore profound ideas and the construct of the universe. The story is brilliantly layered and thoughtful with concepts I will need a second read through just to begin to grasp. The characters are vivid and delightful. I especially loved that we got much more of Roger and Dodger than in the 2nd book. If you liked Middle Game and Seasonal Fears, this is the book you want to read next. And if you haven’t read the series, what are you waiting for? This is the apex of Seanan McGuire’s storytelling, beautiful, creative and breathtaking to read.

Tidal Creatures by Seanan McGuire
adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I received an advance reader copy thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group. The opinions expressed are entirely my own.

Tidal Creatures is the third book in the Alchemical Journeys series by Seanan Mcguire. This time out the focus is on moon gods and goddesses. Chang’e, second in command of Berkeley’s moon divinities, discovers that one of their own has been killed and it seems it’s not the first time in the recent past. Chang’e and her human host Judy decide to investigate these deaths.

Meanwhile, Kelpie, a lab assistant for the local alchemical lab learns that everything she thought she knew about herself and her lab is a lie. She runs for her life and has to navigate her confusing new reality and try to stay alive.

Of course, these two storylines are bound to intersect and things get very complicated before it’s done.

I loved this one so much! I don’t think it’s quite as good as Middlegame, but since that’s one of my favorite ever, it’s a hard bar to top. I did enjoy it much more than Seasonal Fears, which I found very predictable and anticlimactic.

In additional to the mystery of who is killing the moons, it incorporated Roger and Dodger (and Erin) in a way that advanced their character arcs as well as the plot of this volume. While this was is very much the story of the Moons, the characters from Middlegame were incorporated into the plot in a way that didn’t feel like a cameo/unnecessary inclusion. I also loved that we got some insight that their journey is not done, just paused for now.

Judy is a linguistics grad student, who just so happens to also be one of many incarnations of the moon goddess Chang’e. All of the moon gods known to humanity have these living avatars out in the world, and the many incarnations take turns shining over the glorious Impossible City at night. But some of these incarnations have been disappearing – a fact Judy/Chang’e doesn’t know until an avatar of the goddess Aske turns up dead, still bleeding moonlight from her divine form. Judy and her fellow incarnations must try to figure out who has been killing pieces of the Moon.

This is a solid entry in the series and, in my opinion, much better than book two. I still feel like I don’t totally understand what’s happening when they get really into the conceptual stuff, or at least I couldn’t explain the ins and outs of it to you, but I get it well enough in the moment to suspend disbelief and keep going with the story. This book was not nearly as confusing to me as the last one. This book also had a lot more from the characters we got to know in the first book, which I really enjoyed. I missed Roger and Dodger.

Representation: POC characters, LGBTQ+ characters

Definitely don’t start with this book three. You’ll be lost. This series and the related Up and Under series by her under a different name reminded me of hearing her say once at a convention that she went out of her way to get a specific folklore index book. Can’t remember what title she mentioned but the folklore and murder vibe of this book very much fits the author. It’s been a very enjoyable series.

Thank you NetGalley, Tor Publishing, and especially the magnificent Seanan McGuire for the eGalley copy of Tidal Creatures.

Yet again Seanan McGuire knocks it out of the park. As she so regularly does with her Wayward Children series, in this third entry in the Alchemical Journey's series, we have the opportunity to visit some of our favorites from Middle Game (book 1) and missed dearly in Seasonal Fears (book 2).

The mechanics of the world begin to really come into their own in this entry in a way only teased at in the first two. Unfortunately, the pacing suffers a bit in the process of honoring a bloated cast of (of essential) characters. It's well worth a read; I thoroughly enjoyed it and have zero regrets, but as a piece of writing it doesn't quite reach the same bar as most of Seanan's works.

The premise revolving around the embodiments of moon gods was a lot of fun - it was cool to be reading about the gods themselves and the people who carried them. There were some interesting ideas around how this affected the lives of those people that I wish were a little more fleshed out.

There were also so, so very many characters. With all of the side characters and the people carrying the moon gods being essentially two characters each, it was a bit difficult to keep everyone straight and some were much less developed than others. One of my favorite characters in particular was left a little bit on the back burner towards the end.

The plot itself dragged a little at the beginning while also wrapping up pretty fast at the end, leaving some questions. But honestly, the way Seanan McGuire writes these books makes it very easy to look past the shortcomings. 4/5.

If I could give this more than 5 stars I absolutely would!
I am constantly amazed at how Seanan McGuire makes the most nonsensical things make complete sense in this series!
While this isn't really full of action it still managed to suck me in from the first page. I loved how each book in this series builds on the world we first read in Middlegame. We not only learn a ton of new things, but we get to visit some of our favorite characters from previous books. Roger and Doger (sigh) I just love those two.
I loved the characters, the world, and really everything else about Tidal Creatures. I was immersed in the story and when it was over I just wanted it to keep going! I can't wait to see how the next story is going to unfold!

3.5 stars

This will certainly need a reread from me at some point after the book is fully published. It took me over two weeks to read, simply because things in my personal life blew up around the same time, and that certainly did a disservice to the reading experience.

Overall, I wanted to like this more than I did. I'd place this above [book:Seasonal Fears|58724596] in terms of ranking, but still nothing compares to [book:Middlegame|35965482]. Some characters felt more prominent than they should have been, while others that should have been on page more were hardly there at all. It felt like some information kept being repeated over and over again when characters were being told things that we as the reader already knew multiple times over.

I really liked the expanded worldbuilding of the alchemical world, and how Roger and Dodger are both so important in it, but also just another piece of a much larger puzzle. I thought the manifestations of the Moon through different mythological gods and goddesses was a great concept, even if it ended up slightly muddled as more and more characters were introduced.

I'm looking forward to whatever the fourth book will inevitably be, because I'm sure there will be one, I just hope it works some towards developing a bit more of a metaplot than books 2 and 3 have.

The first 25% of Tidal Creatures is a bit too enamored with being metaphysically clever, but if you can get past that bit, you have a book that combines the alchemical experiments of Middlegame and the manifestations of nature in Seasonal Fears into a fun and creative new entry in the series.

Tidal Creatures starts off following two narratives, one about Kelpie, a human(??) girl who works in alchemy lab and happens to have hooves, a tail, and orange skin; and one about the human manifestations of moon deities as they try to solve the murder of one of their fellow manifestations. I really enjoyed heading back into the world of alchemical constructs and cuckoos; while it took me a little longer to get on board with the moon, by the time the two narratives meet, I was fully hooked and invested in the plot.

While not as strong as Middlegame, I found Tidal Creatures to be much better than Seasonal Fears - I don’t think you need to read Seasonal Fears to read this, but I would highly recommend reading Middlegame first, as the main characters from Middlegame are heavily involved here (and many of the plot points of MG are spoiled as well).

There are a few Seanan writing quirks that will always annoy me a bit (she is very into having her POC characters talk about the problem with white people, and mini-monologues of characters talking about how they know something is bad, and they’re learning, and they’re doing their best), but I’m always impressed by her creativity in creating new worlds.

"Every night, a Moon shines down on the Impossible City...

New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire takes us back to the world of the award-winning Alchemical Journeys series in this action-packed follow-up to Middlegame and Seasonal Fears.

All across the world, people look up at the moon and dream of gods. Gods of knowledge and wisdom, gods of tides and longevity. Over time, some of these moon gods incarnated into the human world alongside the other manifest natural concepts. Their job is to cross the sky above the Impossible City - the heart of all creation - to keep it connected to reality.

And someone is killing them.

There are so many of them that it's easy for a few disappearances to slip through the cracks. But they aren't limitless.

In the name of the moon, the lunar divinities must uncover the roots of the plot and thwart the true goal of those behind these attacks - control of the Impossible City itself."

I know I joke about Seanan McGuire's output, but she seriously is rivaling Stephen King and probably even James Patterson... But this literally is her fifth book of the year and not her only release in June...