Murphy, C.E.: Urban Shaman
Urban Shaman
Writer: C.E. Murphy
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 344
Sue me, I lied. This isn't the review for Karen E. Peterson's Write. 10 Days to Overcome Writer's Block. Period. But honestly, if you read my last review, you knew I wouldn't get back to it RIGHT away. The urban fantasy bug has bit me once again, and I must let it run its course. :)
So why Urban Shaman? Story time: as you probably all well know by now, the SHU Writing Popular Fiction program features a genre a term and the writers in that genre pick a book they feel represents their genre for the whole program to read for the next residency and discuss. For this June, the genre is fantasy. Urban Shaman wasn't the book chosen (interesting story about that, the fantasy writers picked a book that wasn't even on the LIST), but it was on the list, and I decided I wanted to give all the books on the list a go, just to see if any of them would've been a better fit for the program than the book selected, as well as just see the differing types of fantasy the list had to offer.
The list, in case you're curious, is the following:
Urban Shaman by C.E. Murphy
A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham
Acacia by David Anthony Durham
Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner
The book chosen by the fantasy writers of the program was:
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
With each book I read, I'll report whether or not I think the book would've made a good fit for the program, especially for readers who may not have read a lick of fantasy ever.
And in theory, the urban fantasy genre would have been a great way to ease them into it. When you think about it, urban fantasy is usually a smooth blend of mystery, horror, and oftentimes romance. But when I saw Murphy's name on the list, while I recognized it, I immediately thought that if urban fantasy must be represented, it should've been a different book by a different author. I'm partial to Carrie Vaughn's Kitty and the Midnight Hour, but we all know I'm biased. I would've been happy with Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking too.
After reading Urban Shaman, I still feel that way. I know one of the goals with residency reads is to present imperfect books so that readers can discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly, but it's a fine line when so many of the readers aren't familiar with the genre to begin with. Even the most perfect books have their flaws (real or imagined), and I feel if a book is going to be chosen, it should encourage outside readers to read more of the genre. Therefore, this book didn't work for me in that regard.
But then again, I've read enough urban fantasy by now to be biased.
Let's put the whole "residency read" issue aside now and actually talk about the book itself. You know, the good, the bad, and the ugly. :)
The premise: after witnessing a woman in danger, protagonist Joanne Walker sets out to find this woman and make things right. Naturally, Jo finds herself entangled in a world she didn't know existed, where gods and godlings roam the Earth, banshees exist, and people are shamans.
The kicker is, she's just learned she's one of them.
The idea of a protagonist as a shaman is a really cool one, I must admit. I was pretty willing to soak up whatever I could, especially given that I don't know much about shamans, their spirituality, or their magic for that matter. And while it's not an wholly original idea in urban fantasy of the wide sense (Charles de Lint, anyone?), in the pop-horror culture of urban fantasy that's so stinking popular right now, shamans are new and interesting. I enjoyed the hell out of Jo's encounters with Coyote, and it was pretty interesting to see her maneuver on that spiritual plane between sleep and awake, even being able to heal herself (using the analogy of cars to figure out how to fix her own body).
Cars? Yeah, she's a mechanic. Sound familiar? Murphy's book came out first, but unfortunately, not only did I read Briggs's book first, I felt Briggs did a better job at making me BELIEVE that her protagonist was a mechanic. We never once saw Jo fix a car. It almost felt like her skills as a mechanic were only there so she could make the parallel to her own body and have a position in the police department.
The police department? Yeah, somehow, she works there, even went through the Academy, but as far as I could tell, all she does is fix everyone's cars. Somehow she gets "demoted" from that position by a hateful boss after she takes family leave to visit her dying mother in Ireland. Demoted to what? A beat-cop. Not that that even matters, because she gets suspended for being a suspect in a murder case, but once her abilities reveal themselves, she's let back in and "promoted" to Detective.
Not that she's really a detective either. Sorry, for all the warm-fuzzy atmosphere and likability she shared with her fellow cops, I never once bought Jo as a police officer of any kind. It seemed that it was just a convenient occupation for her to be in this story, which is a shame, cause Murphy does a nice job with the supporting cast and the ties between characters.
And I will give Murphy this: the revelation of why Morrison, Joanne's hateful boss, hates Jo so much felt right on, even to the subtle, clearly denied attraction he feels for her. I liked that aspect, especially since I could sympathize with Morrison resenting her so much. Frankly, for good portion of the beginning of the book, I didn't like Joanne all that much either.
I know realize there is a fine-line between strong, aggressive, snarky heroines and just plain...bitches isn't he right word, so I'll just call the heroines that cross that line as unsympathetic and unlikeable. Joanne gets more likable later in the book because she becomes less cocky, less self-centered, but lemme tell you: what was supposed to pass for humor in the beginning (well, for most of the book) came off flat, whiny, and out of place. Joanne's voice didn't pull me along at a break-neck pace, which is what I look for in urban fantasy. I want to be whisked away. I want to tear through the novel at the speed of a bullet. No such luck here. And that's a shame.
Part of the problem once Joanne ceases to be unlikable is that the plot and bad guys' motivations just don't make any sense. The plot is an amateurish "one damn thing after another," with very little leading into each scene and therefore giving the book little direction. The villains' motivations I can't even touch with a ten-foot pole. One minute, Cernunnos is trying to kill her (succeeded the first time, but she healed herself), and the next, he's trying to seduce her into being his immortal partner and mothering the child that'll lead the Hunt.
No, it didn't make sense to me either. And Herne's motivations even less so. I felt like we were given the ingredients of his character and motivations, but no directions, so that we weren't sure if Herne was supposed to be a cake, a pie, or a brownie. Silly analogy, I know, but there was potential in that character that never gelled together, which is a shame, because I liked the resolution, even though I didn't like the events leading up to it.
I know, I know: I'm all negativity with this sucker. There IS good stuff, like the supporting cast. I loved Gary to pieces, and I loved the antagonism and the careful, tenuous pacing of what might be a future romance between Joanne and Morrison. The cops were great too, and while I sometimes got names confused because they were all similar and common (Billy, Bruce, you get the idea), character-wise, I knew who they were, which is cool.
Also interestingly done was the revelation that Joanne had been a pregnant teen. She'd fallen in love and when she got pregnant, her man ran off and she gave birth to twins. The girl died, and the boy was given up for adoption. That's really touching, especially since I thought Murphy was setting us up for some kind of abuse or rape story that would most likely piss me off. While I have a hard time believing that the Joanne who gave birth to and lost those twins could grow up to be such a cynical, closed-off person, I do like the potential there for growth, as well as for future stories in which she finds her son.
If Murphy doesn't explore that, then to hell with it all. Why introduce such a fantastic potential sub-plot/conflict if you aren't going to do jack about it? I don't know if she does or not, nor do I have any interest in finding out, because the book didn't engage me NEAR enough to want to read the rest of the trilogy. So if you have, and you feel like spoiling me? Go right on ahead. :)
I also liked Joanne's background of both Native American and Celtic origins. Obviously, the shaman stuff relates to her Native American origins, but I wish the conflict of the actual plot had more to do with that than grand, Celtic death Hunts and all that. I didn't have COMPLETE trouble buying Joanne as the bridge between the two mythologies and magics, but it didn't wow me either. Part of which is that I feel Joanne got her answers too easily (she finds a true-to-life painting of the Hunt on the internet and contacts the artist to get answers), and I also never got a solid sense of the limitations of her magic, other than she was still new, still green, and didn't know what the hell she was doing. It seemed there were no consequences save for the obvious one at the airport, but by the end, she's doing magic she's not even aware of, even accidentally avoiding the consequence explained at the airport. Maybe this wasn't all Joanne, but rather the Green Man once he was released, but it's never clear, and frankly, Joanne had it too easy.
My Rating
Wish I'd Borrowed It: It's not a bad book by any means, but it certainly didn't grab me and make me want to keep reading. Mild curiosity brought me to this title anyway, so I would've been happy reading it and giving it back to its owner, and since I have no need to keep reading this trilogy, I wouldn't have lost anything by not keeping it on hand.
That said, I wouldn't mind reading Murphy's other, later work. After all, Urban Shaman is her debut, and I'd like to see how she's grown as a writer and what she does differently with a book completely unrelated to this character, world, or plot.
Urban Shaman certainly gels as an overall book, and it doesn't feel sloppy by any means. It certainly has some interesting world-building aspects to offer. Readers who want to immerse themselves in the genre should check it out, especially as a point of comparison (hell, that's what I do).
Next up: Write. 10 Days to Overcome Writer's Block. Period. by Karen E. Peterson (eventually)
And...
Halfway to the Grave by Jeaniene Frost