The Proper Thing and Other Stories
by Seanan McGuire
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted December 31, 2025
No listing at Bookshop. Available for Kindle from Amazon, along with print copies from third-party sellers. A purchase through our links may earn us a commission. You can also get either e-book or hardcover direct from Subterranean Press, although I don't know how long that will be true for the hardcover, since it was a limited, signed and numbered edition.
This is the third story collection Seanan has published through Subterranean Press. It includes 24 stories, none connected to each other or to any of her ongoing series, but many explore the same type of themes found in most of her work. People on the outside of society for one reason or another, some that find kinship with others, a few that must face their challenges alone. More than half of them were originally offered to her Patreon subscribers, the others commissioned for various anthologies.
I don't want to go into too much detail about any of the stories, and there is one I won't mention at all. Brief synopses are sufficient to give you an idea of the wide range of topics. There are ghost stories, including one at Halloween, another not quite ghost, but set closer to Christmas. Others concerning various types of pandemics, which I cannot recall in anything else by Seanan, but she has done several under one of her pseudonyms, Mira Grant. There is also magic, computer simulated worlds, and one super-hero story. She provides an introduction to each story, and there is a copyright index at the end of the book showing where each originally appeared. The first story is from a 2020 anthology appropriately titled Apocalyptic. "Coafield's Catalog of Available Apocalypse Events" could either be where writers can find inspiration for stories, or else they actually offer items for use in planning an apocalypse. From A (Anti-Biotic Resistance) to Z (Zombies), and all things inbetween, including cloned Dinosaurs, Earthquakes and Fires, Locusts and Meteors, to Nuclear War, the Occult, and Pandemics. If you want to end the world, they have what you need.
Next up is "Now Rest, My Dear," one from her Patreon in 2018. It is a pleasant ghost story of a poor girl who has to stay at the library every day her mother works, since they can't afford any other daycare options. She gets help from someone no one else can see. Now going out of order I will mention the other ghost stories; "Heart of Straw" is about a group of pre-teens wondering if it might be, or should be their last year for trick or treating. It turns out they don't have to make the decision themselves; Most stories about ghosts are similar to those of vampires, they are stuck at the age they were at their death, but "Phantoms of the Midway" has a girl ghost aging over the years, thanks to a bit of magic from her mother, and up to a certain point the girl does not realize she is dead. Then she meets and falls in love with another ghost. The one that is more fairy tale adaptation than ghost story is "Fresh as the New-Fallen Snow." Raisa is the new babysitter for a family with three children, even though the oldest should be beyond the need of a sitter, but the parents are very strict and controlling. In exchange for the children behaving themselves, Raisa offers a story from her native Russia about Snegurochka, aka the Snow Maiden, who looks for children living in homes without love. She thaws those children into water, which she can reshape later when she can take them to a safer place. Another, vastly different retelling of a fairy tale is "Rise Up, Rise Up, You Children of the Moon," wherein someone similar to Snow White leads a revolution against a regime that has outlawed her kind. It is also almost a ghost story, since she can pass through solid objects, like the walls around the capital.
Now for the pandemic stories, or for the first one I suppose it is only pandemic-adjacent. "The Levee Was Dry" concerns a virus(?) that causes people to no longer be able to hear music, at least not new music, but they can still listen to things they were already familiar with. Anything else is just static. "Vegetables and Vaccines" is about a train full of scientists who were able to escape Atlanta before mobs destroyed the CDC offices. In her introduction, Seanan says people told her it reminded them of the movie Snowpiercer, which she claims she had not seen before. "Ratting" is what the infected call the process of contaminating whatever they can, as long as it might infect those who have been withholding needed care from them. "So Sharp, So Bright, So Final" concerns a new, more virulent strain of rabies, with a woman facing the possibility of having to abandon her father and brother, both of whom are infected.
Skipping back to the fourth story, "In the Land of Rainbows and Ash" is a portal fantasy not connected to the Wayward Children series. It is darker, or at least as dark as any of that series, one in which the child is not able to return, but not because they didn't want to. Another that in a sense is a portal story, "Mother, Mother, Will You Play With Me?" has a child confined to a room, the contents and configuration of which change as they age, and as they tackle different puzzles and scenarios in virtual reality. I am not sure if either Mother or the child are human, or if both are a form of AI consciousness. "Under the Sea of Stars" has an explorer discovering an underwater kingdom, inspired by a real-life phenomenon, that of the Bolton Strid, a perilous stretch of the River Wharfe in Yorkshire, England.
Again out of order, four stories that are only vaguely related, but they all deal with government or business, which these days are too closely linked. In "Belief," a young girl whose parents died in an accident lives with her grandparents in a remote, rural area. Her contact with the outside world comes through the mail. She considers mail carriers, and the Post Office in general, are magical things. But what happens when funding is cut, the mail no longer delivered, instead rural residents have to travel to town to pick up their mail? Why would they take away the magic? The next two stories are also too close to reality to be comfortable. "Come Marching In" sees legislation addressing gun violence by criminalizing "mental illness," anyone who might be neuro-divergent, anyone who has ever visited a psychiatrist or psychologist, anyone who had been prescribed certain medications. "On the Side" concerns a repressive government obsessed with racial purity, where it is not enough to regulate, prosecute, or deport certain ethnic populations, they go so far as to police foods that are tied to the proscribed groups. Then there is "File and Forget," about a world controlled by corporations, companies that war against each other, wherein the only check on that power is lower echelon clerical workers who do almost all the work.
Other stories focus on women who take matters into their own hands in order to help themselves, manipulate things to their own advantage. In "Foundational Education," Eloise is a poor, but academically gifted young woman, for whom financial assistance had made attendance at a private high school possible, but it was not enough to get her into a private university, so she settles for a state college. Even there she is belittled by others from richer families whose grades were not good enough to get them offers from better schools. She might have been able to concentrate on her studies and make do, but decides to dabble in black magic to remove those who would hinder her. "Love in the Last Days of a Doomed World" is not a story about Krypton, even though that planet is mentioned quite a few times. The protagonist's brother was obsessed with Superman comics. I'm not even sure if it is about Earth having to deal with the approach of a comet, or if that is just in her imagination, since she feels her world is threatened due to persecution against same-sex relationships. She is a brilliant physicist who spends her time studying the possibility of time travel, even accomplishes it in order to visit herself at earlier points in her life to plant clues and speed up the process. Her agenda is to use time travel to give her and her lover as much time together as possible. "What Everyone Knows" sees a giant kaiju attack Seattle, devastating the city, killing millions. A paleontologist correctly guesses the reason the kaiju came ashore: to make a safe place for her eggs to hatch. She finds one egg that is viable, and after the hatching she nurtures the baby kaiju, at least up to the point it is too big to be kept a secret anymore.
Viewed from a certain perspective, several of the stories could be said to have a hero, but Alice in "Pedestal" is a super-hero. The group she is associated with are the Champions, who have come together to fight evil. She takes her assignments, does the job, but then wants anonymity. She has found a place in the suburbs, using delivery services for most of her needs, but occasionally has to go to a store for certain items. At a Safeway in search of ice cream and other treats, she is approached by a man who says he knows who she is. He takes her picture with his phone, and uploads it to his blog. The next thing she knows one of her nemeses smashes through the front windows and wants to fight. Alice is known as Reflection Girl, as in Alice Through the Looking Glass. She can utilize any reflection of herself to mount her defense. Since she is the freezer aisle, she has all of those glass doors to use. That story is unique, and in a certain way so is "Sweet as Sugar Candy." Several others deal with foods in one way or another, but this is also a horror story, in that the secret ingredient for the homemade marshmallow candies needs to stay a secret, or else the candy chef could be prosecuted.
That brings us to the last story, the title story, which is also the longest. It also deals with food and other specialty items. "The Proper Thing" is a cheese shop. A magical cheese shop. Not just because the cheeses have magical properties, but the shop is one of those types that can only be found by those who know its secrets. Even the shopgirls Masie and Alvy couldn't find it if they lost their keys, couldn't get in if they didn't have their keys even if they could find it. Another magical thing about it is neither Masie or Alvy are truly human, although they appear so. They have been transformed by magic from their original form, Maisie having been a fox, and she is under the impression Alvy was a crow, when she was actually a cow. Both of their lives are thrown into turmoil when the shop is robbed of all its cheese, and they have to call on the owner (fully human?) for help. The owner's secretary is with him, a former shopgirl who started life as a vulture.
Sorry to not go into more analysis of the stories rather than just synopsis, but if you've read any of Seanan's work you should know you will be entertained by a talented storyteller. Obviously, there are several villains lurking about, and not all the protagonists are exemplary people. Just like real life. People make do with what they have, whatever talents they possess, and they can be selfish. If they are lucky they might find an ally or two along the way. This is yet another example of why it is likely I will never be able to read everything Seanan writes, especially since I started late. As mentioned above, more than half these stories first appeared on her Patreon, plus she has some in anthologies which have not yet been collected. Others are available to download free from her website, which is different than her Patreon, including side stories for October Daye and InCryptid characters, and even for those not available for download she tells you what anthology they have appeared in. At the current time she has five more books due in 2026, and that is just up to September. The first of them is the next Wayward Children story, which I have on library hold. There is no telling how many others beyond that, including shorter stories. The only thing I can do is try to catch up, while also knowing I won't be able to. I doubt I could do it even if I read only her work and no one else. But I know it will be worth the effort to try.
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