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    Indexing: Reflections
    Indexing: Reflections
    Indexing: Reflections
    Audiobook12 hours

    Indexing: Reflections

    Written by Seanan McGuire

    Narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    “For her to love me, she had to be willing to kill me. Anything else would show that her heart was untrue.”

    The struggle against not-so-charming storybook narratives isn’t the only complicating factor in Henrietta “Henry” Marchen’s life. As part of the ATI Management Bureau team protecting the world from fairy tales gone awry, she’s juggling her unwanted new status as a Snow White, dealing with a potentially dangerous Pied Piper, and wrangling a most troublesome wicked stepsister—along with a budding relationship with Jeff, her teammate.

    But when a twisted, vicious Cinderella breaks out of prison and wreaks havoc, things go from disenchanted to deadly. And once Henry realizes someone is trying to use her to destroy the world, her story becomes far from over—and this one might not have a happily ever after.

    Indexing: Reflections is New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire’s continuing new urban fantasy, where everything you thought you knew about fairy tales gets turned on its head.

    This book was initially released in episodes as a Kindle Serial. All episodes are now available for immediate download as a complete book.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJan 12, 2016
    ISBN9781511309769
    Indexing: Reflections
    Author

    Seanan McGuire

    Seanan McGuire is the author of Every Heart a Doorway, the October Daye urban fantasy series, the InCryptid series, and several other works, both standalone and in trilogies. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. She was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot.

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    Reviews for Indexing

    4/5

    160 ratings24 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 4/5
      Listened for Review (Brilliance)Overall Rating: 3.50Story Rating: 3.25Character Rating: 3.75Audio Rating: 4.00 (not part of the overall rating)First Thought when Finished: I'm really in love with the story of Indexing by Seanan McGuire but each new section had some repetition that was hard to get over.Read It File It: Indexing was a very cool set of stories that really had some interesting fairy tale tweaks (think Snow White, Evil Step Sister, and the Pied Piper all being agents). Harri and the gang were fab at their jobs and their cases were very unique (and twisty). My favorite character had to be Sloan because she was just so ballsy and direct. The only thing that was a distraction was the recapping of character traits in each new section (this was originally a serial).Audio Thoughts: Narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal/Running Time 12 hrs 5 minMary really did a great job with all the voices in this fairy tale cast. The only voice I had problem with was Andy but even that grew on me. I really liked her pacing too. Overall I recommend her as a narrator.Final Thought: I would read more with these characters if they caught another great case!Explaining my Rating: The story was amazing but the repetition made me groan out loud sometimes. I heard 6 times how white Harri's face was, how Sloan dressed, how Jeff liked to clean, how Andy had a husband, and how the building they worked in looked like any other office building. I am sure when this was being released in serial form, it wasn't as noticeable due to the time between releases. However, listening to it in one fell swoop made it distracting. So here is what you should know: the story (original part) is a strong 4 or 4.25. It really was different, engaging, and fun!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Indexing was first released as a Kindle Serial and was a bi-weekly mini-party every Tuesday considering how eagerly I awaited the latest installment. The first episode is epic and I can’t even begin to express my love for it. The introduction to this fairy-tale world was perfection. It got a full 5 stars from me and set the bar extremely high for the subsequent stories. This fairy tale world was extremely similar in scope to the graphic novel series ‘Fables’ but in comparison I found the characters were more vibrant and witty and infinitely entertaining. Each Kindle serial, for the most part, managed as a stand-alone and didn’t leave you too exasperated with having to wait another two weeks for more. I say ‘for the most part’ because something happened around episode 8 (out of a total of 12) that took the series into a total nosedive, but I’ll get into that more in a minute.The ATI (Aarne-Thompson Index) Management Bureau is a covert government agency that monitors fairy tale manifestations and prevents them from getting out of control. According to Wiki, “The Aarne–Thompson tale type index is a multivolume listing designed to help folklorists identify recurring plot patterns in the narrative structures of traditional folktales, so that folklorists can organize, classify, and analyze the folktales they research.” This index system is used as the basis for classifying manifestations that happen in the real world, where children are born predisposed to being a Sleeping Beauty or a Snow White or even a Pied Piper. If unleashed, their fairy tale influence could wreak havoc on the world. All manner of fairy tales are covered: Peter Pans and Cinderellas, Donkeyskins and Beautiful Vassilisas, a Mother Goose, Wicked Stepsisters, Billy Goats Gruff, The Showmaker and the Elves, etc.So what worked well? Personally I loved the combination of fairy tales and urban fantasy that ultimately made up this story. It was imaginative and creative and really enjoyed the details that went into this. Each individual was given a bit of back story although I believe this could have been further expounded on to showcase their growth. While I didn’t end up preferring one character over another, they all as a whole really added life and charm to this story.In the end though, I was left ultimately disappointed. When thinking back on the story as a whole, I think it was easy to overlook the choppy feel of the writing since we’re only given bits and pieces at a time. If read as a whole I think it would have been far more obvious and apparent that the story lacked a fully fleshed out plot and was really rather feeble. It didn’t feel as if it was planned as a full novel and was instead planned out as each episode was written. Ultimately, the ending felt strange and disconnected from where it seemed like the story was going and left me with far more unanswered questions than I like.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This is an amazing series. It basically gives you all the fairy tale you grew up on with a bit of an edge.
    • 4/5
      In this urban fantasy, fairy tales can kill. A person can get caught up in their story and then the narrative will carry that person to the forgone conclusion. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Sleeping Beauty, a Wicked Stepsister, or a Pied Piper, eventually the story will be too strong for you to ignore and then you will no longer have a choice.Henrietta (Henry) Marchen runs an indexing team for the ATI Management Bureau. They are tasked with tracking down these narratives that just went active, indexing them (which is figuring out what class of fairy tale and how strong they are), and diffusing them before the story creates a body count. Sometimes the only way to diffuse a narrative is to take out the human at the center of the story, because they are no longer in control of their actions. Henry has to make some tough calls during this tale. Her little team is like family; they all have their hangups and they all care about each other.In truth, I did find some aspects of this book difficult to keep track of. Once I figured out what was going on with the narrative, it got a little easier. Sometimes the long wordy explanations (which might have been a spoof on actual government procedure documents) was cumbersome and didn’t really help explain anything. Plus, they were a bit boring. Rather, the conversations between characters did the best to explain how a fairy tale can take over a small piece of reality and what, if anything, the ATI folks could do about it.Other than that, there was some great stuff going on in this book. I liked thinking of modern Sleeping Beautys or Snow Whites trying to make their way working in an office or a daycare center. It often gave me a chuckle. My favorite side character was Sloan Winters. She was awesome! She got to say all sorts of cranky things I wish I could say at the office, and her team understood because that’s how her fairy tale built her. McGuire also pays a nod to the transgender community with a character and I thought that was well done.There’s also this murder mystery going on. At first, it looks like random narrative attacks and there’s a few bodies piling up. However, the indexing team does love to analyze stuff so pretty soon it looks like there’s some sort of pattern and perhaps someone or something is controlling the narrative outbreaks. The murder mystery part took some time to get going, but once it did, it really added to the story.Over all, I did enjoy this book, though I find McGuire’s other urban fantasy series, the Toby Daye series, much easier to get into. That series teaches you the rules as you go along, whereas this series tends to have big chunks of convoluted rules dumped on you, sometimes repeatedly. Still, I think it’s worth the time and effort.I had access to a free copy of this book through the Kindle Unlimited program.The Narration: Mary Robinette Kowal did a good job, as usual. I really liked her voice for Sloan, who is always snappish. She did a great job shifting from a character’s every day voice to their ‘possessed’ fairy tale voice.
    • 4/5
      Where “once upon a time” doesn’t lead to “happily ever after”Fairy tales are real! And that’s not a good thing. Do we really want whole towns falling asleep for 100 years because a Sleeping Beauty’s story has gone active? In this book fairy tales are like a constantly mutating force of nature that’s trying to manifest in our “real” world, so of course there's a secret government agency, the ATI Management Bureau, whose agents spend their time running between potential story disasters in the struggle to keep us all safe. Most of the members of the team we follow have had their own lives almost derailed by fairy tales--there’s a Snow White (who’s haunted by the smell of apples and pursued by determined woodland creatures), a cobbler elf (who’s constantly trying to make, fix or organize things), an evil stepsister (who has to suppress her natural urge to kill other team members) and a Pied Piper (who’s new on the job and is having a hard time adjusting to her changed reality.) The book has an urban fantasy tone that’s light on romance, somewhat dark, often funny, and very imaginative. Seanan McGuire knows a lot about fairy tales, myths, and nursery rhymes, which she uses to great effect. As a bibliophile I can’t resist a good “stories are real!” motif (another example being Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series.) Indexing began its life as a Kindle Serial, with chapters released every few weeks, but I listened to the audio version, narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal, who is fantastic at giving each character a distinctive voice--a great boon since I was “reading” while driving.
    • 3/5
      This was a online only serial story done by Amazon. I have now decided that waiting two weeks for each section of the story to come to me drove me nuts. I stepped away from reading this until the entire book was done. This is a urban fantasy with lots of fairy tales in it. A group of people are fighting to stop other people from becoming living fairy tales, because no one wants to sleep for 100 years and certainly you don't want most of a town to fall asleep with them and starve to death. The active agents are mostly people that had their "fairy tale" fate subverted or changed. The setting was interesting and the story enjoyable. I would like to see more in this setting at some point but the nice thing is there was a firm ending to the story. No cliffhanger ending to tease the reader. Not sure if this will come out in paper or not but the current price is more than reasonable.
    • 4/5
      Fairy tales want to become reality, and they're willing to bend the world to make their dreams come true. For Agent Henrietta Marchen and her team, making sure the Frog Princes, Billy Goats Gruff, and Sleeping Beauties of the world never activate is more than a mission, it's a life's work. Unfortunately, the story's about to change...Didn't know if I'd like the serial format, and it was occasionally torture waiting two weeks for the next installment, but definitely worth it. Here's hoping McGuire lets Henry & company run rampant through some more of Grimm's best work.
    • 3/5
      I liked it okay. It has a good start. Interesting after 2 pages in. But it did leave me confused. I guess I just need to read the next serial to comprehend the story. Just a quick question though, Henry, she's from Sleeping Beauty right? so why did she said "My inner Snow White blah blah"? :/
    • 4/5
      A clever idea skillfully executed.
    • 1/5
      On the bright side, I think I finally figured out why I hate Seanan McGuire's writing. She's super descriptive, but in a really abrupt and repetitive way. There's no nuance in the writing, so it feels like she's always telling you "this is the way things are, snowflake. Deal with it," even though you may not agree with the interpretation. It's really abrasive.

      Not helping her case was the serialized nature of this book, where every story had to have a reintroduction of the characters in the same "Yeah I'm totally a bitch in a noir story, aren't I cool?" tone, with the same wording every time. Everything always has the most depressing/horrific outcome (except when you need an Emotional Moment). Somebody asks an important question, and everybody stops to fucking quip about it before discussing how to not die, because otherwise you'd think people cared about their jobs or their colleagues.

      Character details were inconsistent from chapter to chapter. McGuire couldn't decide if her Snow White was completely melanin-deficient or not, characters' hair changed, she couldn't decide whether Jeff's shoes were any good, people flip-flopped on how they felt with invading personal bubbles, and plot threads (Sloane!) were dropped with no further mention.

      Also I hate unacknowledged Disney-ification of fairy tales, and Snow White seemed to be all about that.

      This was my third try at Seanan McGuire, and since it wasn't the charm, I think I'm going to have to not read any more of her books. I just get angrier and angrier every time I read a new one.

      (Sloane was the only good character, but she wasn't the main POV so who the fuck cares)
    • 5/5
      You will never think of "fairy tales" as for children again!
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. I wish I had more than 5 stars to give it. Read it! It's only $2 in the Kindle store right now. And no, I'm not affiliated with anything.

    • 3/5
      A new book by Seanan McGuire (or Mira Grant, depending on the genre) is always something I look forward to since I discovered this prolific and imaginative author, and this one was no exception. It was originally published as a serial on Kindle, then released as a single book - much better from my point of view, because I don't take well to waiting between installments.

      The original concept is intriguing: what we know as fairy tales are just different aspects of reality that keep trying to intrude in our primary world, more often than not wreaking some kind of havoc, and a secret government agency works to keep the balance. What's interesting is that most of these agents are fairy tale material themselves, somewhat "frozen" before their narrative can develop its dangerous potential.

      As I've come to expect from McGuire's books, the story (or rather, stories) develops on the fine line between drama and humor - the latter often tinged with dark overtones. Unfortunately the serialized aspect of this work seems to prevent a deeper insight into what makes the main characters tick, and they look a little less defined than what I've come to expect after enjoying her October Daye or Incryptid series.

      The book is however a quick and entertaining read, and the character of Sloane - the archetype for the Wicked Stepsister - became soon my favorite, since I can't resist a nasty-tempered, often foul-mouthed kickass heroine. My only regret is that McGuire has declared there will be no further issues - at least for now - in this series, and this is a pity because I know that her world-building gets better over time and "practice", and here I've seen a huge potential that needs to be tapped and explored more fully.

      Hopefully the future will bring some better news...
    • 3/5
      This book provides basic information on using an indexing head on a mill.
    • 5/5
      Completely awesome postmodern urban fantasy!
    • 5/5
      From the books blurb: For most people, the story of their lives is just that: the accumulation of time, encounters, and actions into a cohesive whole. But for an unfortunate few, that day-to-day existence is affected—perhaps infected is a better word—by memetic incursion: where fairy tale narratives become reality, often with disastrous results.I love the idea of fairy tales as infectious outbreak vectors as having a life and force of their own, and the idea of having a crisis team ready to try and prevent the next break out, sort of a cross between the CDC and the FBI’s BAU. I also enjoyed having that team made up of people who had either had their own fairy tales interrupted or were saved from them but who were still shaped and influenced by them. Overall I enjoyed the story and the underlying mystery, though at times it felt like it dragged on a bit too long and that perhaps the characters should have seen some obvious clues…but then it’s easy to see how the story is unfolding from the outside…I enjoyed the different ways the fairy tales found to try and encroach into the “real” world, and how they were shown to adapt with the times and I really loved how the book took the fairy tales back to their darker roots, pointing out how old so many of them are at their heart, and how different they are from the Disneyfied version we grew up with, even as they seemed to be influenced by Disney themselves. I liked most of the characters though the most developed and engaging were Henry and Sloan, I did enjoy their relationship and watching it develop. Most of the other characters were fine if a bit bland for lack of a better word I guess. Overall I enjoyed this book and the world it created, it was a bit uneven which could be due to its original serialized format, and I am looking forward to the next in the series.
    • 5/5
      Completely awesome postmodern urban fantasy!
    • 4/5
      It would probably have been better if I had read book 1 in the series first. As it stands it's a good read with characters who really appealed and who were interesting and clever. It's a series set in a world where people fall into stories and become archetypes, whether accidentally or deliberately, there's a government department who deal with them and who try to stop the stories from getting murderous. In the previous book a dispatcher for this company decided to edit the stories and to change them but she was caught and brought to the jail. However she gets away and our heroes have to deal with the aftermath and try to prevent her from doing more harm to more people.It's an interesting take on story and it's power.
    • 3/5
      Enjoyed this one a little more then the first book of the series 3.75 stars, Sloane is really starting to grow on me but the main character just seems to bland. Aside from character issues, the world building is incredible set in a modern like world with government agency to protect citizenry against living fairy tales. This book gives a small glimpse of the people fighting fairy tales in the past.
    • 4/5
      Not happily ever after yet

      This is an excellent “second book in a series.” The characters continue to develop. It’s not just a set up for a next book or half of a story with a cliffhanger.

      I look forward to the next one.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this sequal to Indexing, but not as much as the first book. The mishaps of our favorite team from the first book are at it again, tracking down Mother Goose and her need to destroy Snow and her band of law enforcement! Will she destroy the team or at least break them up? A villain, a pidepipper, a shoe making elf, and Snow White: are they as vulnerable as they seem or will Bluebeard save them all?
    • 4/5
      It's over. :(

      Reading a serial is a peculiar thing. It's meant to be separate episodes, and we read them weeks apart, so things get forgotten, and things seem choppy. But this book, in particular, seems choppy looking back on it. As others have said, I wonder if I read it all in one piece if it would hang together better in my mind.

      The final episode seemed like one head-long rush to the finish line. Another thing I wonder if reading the entire book at one time would fix.

      BUT. This book had so much Sloane. Just so much Sloane. So much wonderful backstory about Sloane, so much wonderful current story about Sloane. And so much Henry being Henry, sacrificing so much to help others. And so much about the others, all the girls in the woods.

    • 3/5
      Second volume in McGuire’s series about Henry, the not-quite-Snow White who leads a team that helps keep the magic of stories from destroying the world, or at least killing people in interesting ways. POV shifts help limit McGuire’s frustrating tendency to repeat phrases and tropes as if she were an oral storyteller, though I find myself less interested in the worldbuilding here, perhaps because there’s so much emphasis on how those with the power of story can shape the world and so it seems less fixed and rule-bound.
    • 4/5
      Well done continuation of this urban fantasy series where fairy tales come to life and disrupt our everyday lives. I really enjoy this series; it's very creative and I love how deep McGuire digs into the history of fairy tales.I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was very well done. The narrator did a great job with characters voices and with portraying emotion. My only complaint is that Sloan’s voice gets a bit grating at times.A large part of the this story (maybe half) is told from Sloan’s POV. We learn a ton about what drives Sloan, her history, and how she got to be part of the Bureau. I really enjoyed this and loved learning more about Sloan.The story also spends a lot of time with Henry as we delve deep, very deep, into the Snow White mythos. I enjoyed this alot and it really made me want to go and dig deeper into this story myself. This isn’t your Disney fairy tale princess (although Snow White does echo aspects of that variation as well) but is the tale that always ends in blood on the snow.All of the wonderful characters from the first book were back and some new ones were added. I loved the addition of Bluebeard’s Wife; she was awesome. There was a great mystery here and things were wrapped up nicely. I would love to see future books in this series; it’s the kind of series that could keep going for a long time.Overall a wonderful addition to the Indexing series. I love the world, the characters, the mystery, and all the fairy tale madness in these stories. I really enjoy McGuire’s exploration into the history of fairy tales and enjoy how she makes that a driver in the modern world. I would highly recommend to urban fantasy fans who love fairy tales.