urban fantasy

Book Review – Dead Mann Walking

Dead Mann Walking (Hessius Mann #1)Dead Mann Walking by Stefan Petrucha

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a true noir tale, only it happens to include zombies. Mann is the name of the detective and ever since he found out his wife was having an affair with his boss, his existence has been a major disappointment to him. First, his wife is murdered, then he’s arrested, convicted, and executed for it, then he gets brought back to a pseudo-life as a zombie. And zombies in this world have few rights and are nearly everyone’s favorite punching bag.

Then along comes a guy with seemingly more money than brains of his own, to hire him to find another zombie. If he wasn’t constantly forgetting what he wants to do, perhaps he would have passed on the assignment. Especially since it brings him into unsavory contact with ferals – zombies who have completely lost their minds -, liveblood perverts, a nascent zombie rights movement, and worst of all, his old colleagues on the homicide squad, including his old boss, who still thinks he killed his wife.

The story moves along at a good clip and provides plenty of noir style insight into the foibles of men, both live and undead. For a zombie, Mann is pretty good at figuring things out and retains a tenacious insistence on the truth that would bring any detective from Sam Spade to Mike Hammer to those places he would be better off out of. Mann is wryly amusing at nearly all times and is mostly aware of his own shortcomings. The other characters in this crazy quilt of an adventure are all drawn well and possessed of their own outlandish personalities.

Some of the plot was guessable, if you’re a fan of noir, but there were still plenty of twists and surprises – enough to keep the reader guessing. Hessius Mann may be beat-up, looked down upon, dead and held together with crazy glue and sewing thread, but he’s still a detective.

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Review of HUNTED (Iron Druid Chronicles #6) by Kevin Hearne

Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #6)Hunted by Kevin Hearne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

By this point in the series, anyone reading about Atticus will know what to expect – he (and whoever chooses to be with him) will find themselves constantly in danger of losing life and/or limb. It’s the usual fast pace and humour taking turns with insight. What keeps things going is the fun of watching Atticus figure a way out of a current dilemma only to set things in motion for a future one.

In this book, he’s just finished devoting 12 years to training his druidic apprentice Granuaile and is ready to bind her to Gaia’s service. But first he has to deal with elves, dark elves, Olympian gods, vampires, and a backstabber among the Tuatha de Danaan. Those 12 years are probably the quietest he and the new druid, who is also his lover, are likely to have for a while, as they tumble from one perilous moment to another, trying to stay alive long enough to figure out what the hell is going on.

Though I rated this book four stars as I have the others, this was probably my least favourite of the series so far. In all of the past novels and short stories, the action is told from Atticus’s point of view. In Hunted, he gives a few pages to Granuaile and the result is less than satisfactory in my opinion.

When seen from Atticus’s point of view, the new druid is both fierce and funny with a perspective that is at once both similar enough to his to be compatible and different enough that he finds himself rethinking some of his notions. But Hearne seems to have trouble creating that unique view when Granuaile is the narrator – she loses her edge and the word choices make her sound like Atticus rather than herself.

Since she isn’t given many pages in which to narrate, this isn’t a serious fault. Because of what happens with Atticus, I understand why Hearne felt he had to give Granuaile the narrative, but it came off clumsy and not quite believable.

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