Sharp Words

7 out of 10

Just like the last author I reviewed (T A Moore), I first heard of C E Murphy through National Novel Writing Month. Although she’s originally from Alaska, she now lives in Ireland, and so cropped up on my list of ‘local’ participants. It took me a few years to get round to reading any of her novels though, and I have to sheepishly admit that I actually bought them for a friend and then borrowed them! Still, it’s the thought that counts, right?

There are three novels so far in The Walker Papers series, and C E Murphy is contracted for at least another two that I know of. She’s a prolific writer, with two other novel series on the go, as well as a new series of graphic novels and several short stories out there in anthology-land. Check her website for more details – she also writes a regularly updated blog covering her personal and professional life.

Urban Shaman introduces Joanne Walker, a mid-twenties Seattle police mechanic with Irish and Cherokee heritage (her real name – Siobhán Walkingstick – is accordingly mixed). The story starts with her on a plane flying back from her mother’s funeral in Ireland;  out of the window as they come into land in Seattle, she sees a man with a knife and a woman running from a pack of dogs. Something compels her to find these people, and she’s straight into a taxi and off into the unknown… With the help of the taxi driver, she finds the woman, but soon after they are attacked by Cernunnos (the Celtic Lord of the Hunt) and Joanne ends up with a sword through her chest.

Plunged into a near-death experience, she’s met by her spirit guide, Coyote, who tells her that she needs to heal her body. She does, tapping into the dormant shamanic powers she didn’t know she had, and comes back to life and straight into trouble. The trouble comes in lots of forms: her police precinct boss, ‘aging superhero’ Captain Morrison, busts her to beat cop in the hope that she’ll quit the force, but more importantly, Joanne finds herself tangled up in a new world of gods and spirits, of Cernunnos and Herne the Hunter, of powers over life and death, and of things she had always previously refused to believe in.

I admit it was a bit of an effort to get past the rather far-fetched start of the novel . Could someone really see that much detail from a plane? – at least the other characters in the story acknowledge that it’s unlikely! Once I did get into the story, however, I was rewarded with a very interesting central character and some equally appealing secondaries, with solid personality traits and substantial back stories. The Walker Papers are narrated by the main character (as is pretty standard for this genre of fiction) and Joanne is a fun character with a good collection of strengths and weaknesses; I enjoy the way she speaks and thinks.

And although I’ve seen the whole ‘loves her car tp the point of obsession’ and ‘is an excellent female mechanic in a man’s world’ things done before in urban fantasy, I really like the way these are tied together in how Joanne applies her knowledge of cars to healing human bodies. Fixing a broken nose is seen as popping out a dent, for example, and cooling down a child with heatstroke is like mending a radiator leak.

One of the main secondary characters is Joanne’s police boss, Captain Morrison, with whom she has an antagonistic relationship – there’s more to it, of course, and the relationship changes in realistically slow but important ways through the three books. The other main secondary is the taxi driver who picks her up at the airport: a seventy-something, ex-linebacker widower named Gary Muldoon, who is to become Joanne’s sidekick and back-up. He’s an unusual sort of character to find in an urban fantasy novel, and I really like the relationship that develops between him and Joanne. There are other characters who are constants throughout the novels, but these are the two most important for Joanne’s character development.

The second novel in the series, Thunderbird Falls, takes place about six months after Urban Shaman. There’s a short story which fits in between, which I haven’t read, and I was confused for a while by all the banshee references in the second book, until I found out about the story. The brief confusion didn’t make a lot of difference to this novel’s plot though. Basically, Joanne gets involved with a coven of witches who are trying to bring a spirit through to this world, at the same time as she starts taking out-of-body shamanic lessons – which include questing for spirit animals (there are some particularly nice scenes and ideas around this aspect). She finds herself drawn into the middle of the coven’s magic, with dangerous and tragic consequences – particularly for Coyote, her spirit guide.

Coyote Dreams picks up just a few weeks after the previous novel. Coyote is still missing, and for some reason, people close to Joanne are falling into magical comas. Joanne wants to find Coyote, and also needs to find and stop the source of the sleeping sickness before anyone else is struck down. This novel draws heavily on Joanne’s history, particularly what happened to her as a teenager – things that had been mentioned in the previous books, but which now come together to explain an awful lot about her. She has to battle her own psyche as much as outside influences in this novel, plus the bad guy and its reasons for doing things aren’t necessarily what they seem.

Something I particularly like about this series is the way Murphy goes into a lot of depth about Joanne’s shamanic experiences. Often in urban fantasy, the protagonist’s powers are skimmed over; they’re vital to the story, but what exactly takes place isn’t explained or described very much. Joanne Walker’s powers are firmly rooted in Native American traditions, however, and her spirit travels and the garden of her soul are fully imagined and described. I also really like the way the books intertwine Native American and Celtic legends and traditions, acknowledging that both ways of seeing the world are valid and can have a lot in common.

On the whole, I think this series is a lot less ‘fluffy’ than some of the urban fantasy novels out there, with some solid characterisation and plotting. I’m looking forward to the next one – I want to know how C E Murphy writes Joanne out of the hole she’s left her in at the end of Coyote Dreams!