From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

We pick up with Abigail and Jackaby after the events of the first novel -- Charlie is off in the country now that everyone in New Fiddleham knows he’s a

We pick up with Abigail and Jackaby after the events of the first novel -- Charlie is off in the country now that everyone in New Fiddleham knows he’s a werewolf, and the city is trying to put itself back together following the Red Cap incidents. But within a matter of days, Abigail and Jackaby are called upon by a rich woman whose cat has been behaving rather strangely since having kittens...as in, she’s turned into a fish. And the kitties have furry fins. The detecting duo take custody of the odd little creatures, but the next day, rich lady is found dead with a strange, almost vampiric, mark on her neck. And also those kittens? Aren’t really kittens. They’re chameleomorphs, creatures who take on the appearance of their food source (the old lady had been feeding the original cat fresh fish, hence her transformation, and since the kittens are eating the same diet, they’re well on their way to becoming fish too). The dangers are obvious -- since they take on the appearance of whatever they eat, they could turn into just about anything, with catastrophic results. Luckily, Jackaby’s house has that convenient upstairs swamp, where the kitties can feed on mosquitos and turn into harmless bugs. So one problem solved...for the time being. Also yet another friend of Jackaby’s surfaces -- a Hagrid-clone named Hank Hudson. Hudson is a trapper with a fondness for unusual creatures: he has some sort of bird named Rosie whose feather are knife-sharp and whose beak can cut through metal. He takes an immediate shine to the kitten-shaped chameleomorphs...even more so when he realizes what they are (and he’s sad about the prospect of them turning it “skeeters”).

Meanwhile, another corpse is found, with the same strange mark, near an archeological dig site. Since Abigail is a budding paleontologist, she’s keen to go investigate. When she eventually convinces her boss that it’s worth investigating (it’s also where Charlie ended up), they find themselves looking at what may well be the paleontological find of the century -- a massive, unheard of dinosaur. Except something doesn’t quite add up. The bones are found near a farm house (the wife who lives in said farm house is the second corpse), and not terribly deep. In fact, Jackaby estimates, based on the depth, that the bones are only a few thousand years old. Which means...here be dragons.

Yup, dragons are real in this world, although kind of like in Game of Thrones, they all died out a few centuries ago. Which makes it all the more strange when something starts attacking local livestock. And someone else seems to be stealing bones from the dig site. There are also a couple of feuding paleontologists and an over-eager newswoman floating around, but they’re not terribly interesting and don’t add a great deal to the plot, unfortunately. (view spoiler)[I feel like I’m supposed to be sad that Nellie got eaten, but I didn’t really get a chance to care about her, so she mostly just feels like a redshirt (hide spoiler)]

I feel like it’s not terribly difficult to put the pieces together here: (view spoiler)[the “dragon” is actually a chameleomorph. Hudson somehow managed to snatch one of the kittens, name it Peanut (because Norbert was already taken?), and feed it ground up dragon bones. Chaos ensues, as one would expect. But much like the character he’s clearly emulating, Hudson didn’t come up with the idea on his own -- he was pushed into it by a mysterious man...the same mysterious man Abigail saw on the street at the beginning of the book (I forget why this was significant). Someone talked him into stealing the creature, told him about grinding up the dragon bones and putting it into the creature’s food source. Luckily, since the creature isn’t really a dragon, Abigail and co are able to defeat it. See, dragons eat flint to allow them to breathe fire (it’s an igniter), and they apparently have to “let off” literal steam on occasion? Being a chameleomorph, this “dragon” doesn’t have any of those instincts, so when Abigail throws a flaming log down its throat, it explodes. But then in the end it turns out that the whole dragon...thing...was probably just a red herring to keep Jackaby and Abigail distracted (and out of town?) while the pale man (whoever he is) puts a bigger plan into action. Abigail speculates that even the Red Cap could have been a distraction as well. I’m not totally sure how I feel about that. I mean, sure, the dragon was fun and all, but if it was just a distraction then it feels a tiny bit like wheel-spinning. But then again...fun. I’m more inclined to forgive wheel spinning when the story and the characters are so entertaining. (And nobody spends an hour sitting in a field, feeling feelings). (hide spoiler)]

Meanwhile, back at the house, resident ghost Jenny has been acting...strange. Jackaby calls it “echoing” -- basically it means she’s acting more ghosty than usual? She’s also been having trouble picking things up, and Jackaby steals her gloves to teach her that she doesn’t need to have a connection to something to interact with it. There’s an overarching mystery here involving Jenny’s back story, and it’s the cliffhanger on which we are left. I’m really hoping this is more than a trilogy, because I have thoughts about where Jenny came from (anybody else think Jackaby is the fiance?). But mostly I just love this series and I think these characters are so fun. The Holmes-Watson oeuvre is experiencing a bit of a renaissance lately, and this is a new twist that I enjoy.