Irene's Reviews > Tidal Creatures

Leaps and bounds better than Seasonal Fears but still not McGuire's best. Once again, there's a pacing issue. Exposition should ideally end before the midpoint of the book. The characters we're following are meant to be college-aged but feel younger than that and the reader is once again subjected to endless didactic authorial intrusion to make points about economic inequality, consent, fatness, the dark side of growing up white and privileged and its nuances, and a bunch of other topics that make me feel she's aiming this book at teenagers who she thinks are stupid. McGuire's children books put the characters in situations and let the readers draw their own conclusions without ever talking down to them. I have no idea why she feels it's necessary to spell it out in this series, but it's tiresome.

That aside, the story was entertaining, if a little drawn-out, and bad things happening were not conveniently circumvented like in the last book.