★★★★☆ This thing sort of looks like a Velveteen novel...

Velveteen vs the Multiverse

Seanan McGuire

Velveteen vs. The Multiverse is the second book of Seanan McGuire's Velveteen vs series. Nowadays (25-Sep-2022) these books are only dubiously available as books. The first two, Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots and Velveteen vs. The Multiverse are available as audiobooks from Audible, which counts. I have not been able to find Velveteen vs. The Seasons or Velveteen vs. Everything for sale anywhere in any form. Velveteen vs. The Seasons apparently was a real book at some point, published in hardcover by ISFiC Press in 2016, just before, apparently, they went belly-up. Audible doesn't have an audiobook of it. Although Amazon lists Velveteen vs. The Seasons, no copies are available for sale. Velveteen vs. Everything has, I believe, never been a book, -- it is just an umbrella title for all the Velveteen stories together.

The good news, however, is that "The stories remain free to read online", as McGuire says on her website. They are found on her LiveJournal. Or you can just use the handy link list I have assembled below for Velveteen vs. The Multiverse. (I have already assembled a link list for Junior Super-Patriots, and will soon do the same for The Seasons.) You're welcome!

1. Velveteen vs. Blacklight vs. Sin-Dee, Part I
2. Velveteen vs. Blacklight vs. Sin-Dee, Part II
3. Velveteen vs. The Holiday Special
4. Velveteen vs. The Secret Identity
5. Martinez and Martinez v. Velveteen
6. Velveteen vs. The Alternate Timeline, Part I
7. Velveteen vs. The Alternate Timeline, Part II
8. Velveteen vs. The Retroactive Continuity (just to be confusing, The Seasons also has a vs. The Retroactive Continuity chapter, but it is different from this one).
9. Velveteen Presents Victory Anna vs. All These Stupid Parallel Worlds
10. Velveteen vs. The Uncomfortable Conversation
11. Velveteen vs. Bacon
12. Velveteen vs. The Robot Armies of Dr. Walter Creelman, DDS
13. Velveteen vs. The Fright Night Sorority House Massacre Sleepover Camp
14. Velveteen vs. Vegas
15. Velveteen Presents Victory Anna vs. The Difficulties With Pan-Dimensional Courtship
16. Velveteen vs. Legal
17. Velveteen Presents Jackie Frost vs. Four Conversations and a Funeral
18. Velveteen vs. Jolly Roger
19. Velveteen vs. Everyone, Part I
20. Velveteen vs. Everyone, Part II
21. Sponsorship: Velveteen vs. The Epilogue
Afterword: Velveteen vs. The Aftermath

I don't guarantee that this list is complete, but if you find something that I'm missing, message me and I'll fix it!

The first thing you'll notice about this list is that there are a lot more than nine chapters (the number in Junior Super Patriots) -- there are, in fact, 18, comprising 21 LiveJournal posts, since three chapters are split into two parts. You also find, when you read it, that it is a more coherent story than Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots was. McGuire described her first Ghost Roads book, Sparrow Hill Road, as 'a “fix up,” a collection of short stories strung together by a thin narrative thread'. The second, The Girl in the Green Silk Gown. she described as Rose Marshall's "first novel". The relationship between Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots and Velveteen vs. The Multiverse is similar.

Whether Velveteen vs. The Multiverse is actually a novel is somewhat debatable. (It is not an important question -- Multiverse is an entertaining book, regardless of its novel-ness.) It does have a coherent plot. Without giving too much away, the problem Vel sets out to solve here is to extract former best friend Yelena from the clutches of the The Super Patriots, Inc. That, of course, balloons into a much bigger problem than she foresaw, which is how we get a book out of it.

You might also suppose, based on the title, that the Multiverse will play an important role. It does -- not so much as a coherent plot axis, but as a trick McGuire gets to pull out of her pocket whenever she feels inclined to branch off and tell a little storylet in a separate world. If anything, the Multiverse breaks up the coherence of the story and reduces the novelocity of the book. Do we care? Not a whole lot, no. Because she's Seanan, we want to her let down her hair and set her imagination free every so often, even at the expense of a coherent tale. So it's all good.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

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