Cover of Imaginary Numbers

Imaginary Numbers

core novel 2020 InCryptid

Record

First published2020
Original language EN
Work typenovel
Canon statuscore
Reader rating4.23 (3,953 ratings, collected 2026-09-14)
First-edition ISBN9780756413781

Synopsis

Sarah Zellaby, adopted cousin to the Price family and a telepathic cuckoo, returns to the wider world after years of recovery in Ohio and must confront her own nature as a member of a predatory species. Reuniting with her cousin Artie, to whom she is close, Sarah finds that her return draws the attention of other cuckoos whose intentions toward her and the Price family are far from friendly. As tension between the cuckoo species and the Prices builds, Sarah is forced to weigh her own survival and sense of self against the safety of the family that raised her, setting the stage for a wider confrontation between her birth kind and her adopted one.

Where it sits

  • Universe: InCryptid
  • Series: InCryptid core; position 9 of 15 in the series' recorded order
  • Author: Seanan McGuire

Notes

  • From the series record (InCryptid): Multi-generation cryptozoologist family (the Prices/Hayleighs) vs. the Covenant of St. George; DAW. A 16th novel is anticipated by some third-party listings but is not announced on the author's own bibliography page, and is not registered (Article 2). McGuire has also published 50+ further InCryptid short stories/novellas (anthologies, bonus content, Patreon); deliberately deferred as Expanded Canon out of scope, per the same scale-driven deferral this project already applied to Oz's Famous Forty continuation books.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.

Sources

← InCryptid dossier · All universes

Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.