Part of InCryptid, book 15
First published 2026
Eight years ago, Sarah Zellaby survived becoming a cuckoo queen. The process cost someone else everything. The man she loved lost his entire mind, and Sarah had to rebuild him from borrowed memories. She has carried that guilt ever since, telling herself there was no one with the standing to judge her. She was wrong. The Johrlac authorities arrive to prove it. Now Sarah is being taken to Johrlar, the home world of her species, to stand trial. On that planet, hiveminds govern the population and erasure is the standard punishment for crime. Sarah is looking at the deletion of everything she is. Her family, the Prices, are cryptozoologists who spend their lives protecting creatures that most of the world refuses to believe exist. They have crossed a lot of lines to keep each other safe. Crossing dimensional borders into a hostile, telepathic world is a new kind of problem. But they are going anyway. The fifteenth book in Seanan McGuire's New York Times bestselling, Hugo Award-nominated InCryptid series asks a hard question: what do you owe the people you have harmed, even when you harmed them trying to survive?
Genres: science-fiction, adventure, fantasy, thriller, family-drama
Vibes: dark, emotional, intense, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-rescue-mission, fish-out-of-water, found-family, moral-reckoning
Setting: Johrlar
432 pages · Paperback · Tor Books
Content warnings: death, mental-illness