★★★★☆ Alice being Alice

Passing Grades in Penance

Seanan McGuire

Passing Grades in Penance is Seanan McGuire's April 2023 Patreon reward. She introduces it as follows

(Image: Elsie, a tortoiseshell Maine Coon, staring at the camera with wide owl-eyes.)
And now we're back to the Alice and Thomas timeline for another visit to Alice's awkward college days. CW: Domestic violence, brief, and immediately squashed, but still present.
Alice is not enjoying her time in the halls of higher education.

This is a temporally awkward story, since in the bonus novella And Sweep up the Wood... that came with Spelunking Through Hell we learned how Alice and Thomas finally break through Alice's father Jonathan's attempt to keep them apart and begin the essential business of making babies that is needed to populate the rest of the Incryptid Series. Alice's college days are thus an unnecessary interlude on the way to someplace we already know.

But, on the other hand, we get Alice being Alice, and that is always fun. For instance, after a conversation with her father, this is the thought that passes through her head,

If he didn't want to be manipulated, he shouldn't be so easy to manipulate.

Alice dates a college boy -- the date is less than a complete success. Here is how she prepares for a date,

She was only minimally armed, with no more than a small pistol in her waistband, where she would have been able to quickly remove and conceal it upon getting back to her dorm, and a single knife in her bra. It was highly unusual for Alice Healy to be outside her dorm room with fewer than four ways to kill someone on her person.

We also have the pleasure of Dead Aunt Mary's company,

Bit by bit, she put Alice back together, and when she was done, she sank to the floor, resting her elbows against the knees, and closed her eyes.

"I'm too dead for this shit," she said.

The mice cheered.

...and of course the Aeslin Mice.

Passing Grades in Penance on Patreon

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