Urban Shaman is a first book, and is published on the Luna imprint.
(Luna is Harlequin's Fantasy house). I happened to have looked at the
reviews for a collection of novellas that Murphy was in, and they were
almost uniformly positive re. her story, and several referenced her novel,
so when I saw it at Borders I took a look at it.

From the back cover: Joanne Walker has three days to learn to use her
shamanic powers and save the world from the unleashed Wild Hunt. No worries.
No pressure. Never mind the lack of sleep, the perplexing new talent for
healing herself from fatal wounds, or the cryptic, talking coyote who
appears in her dreams. And if all that's not bad enough, in the three years
Joanne's been a cop, she's never seen a dead body--but she's just come
across her second in three days. It's been a bitch of a week. And it isn't
over yet.


Helpful Background: The Wild Hunt is featured in most cultures; in Nordic
mythos it is led by Odin, as he gathers the dead. In England it was Herne
the Hunter -- he was a hunter in the employ of Richard the 2, who was hung
either by his own hand or by his liege when his ability was lost -- and he
is portrayed as wearing stags horns, thus sometimes referred to as the
Horned Man. In Greek mythos it was Helcate. Regardless, seeing The Hunt
was considered a foreshadowing of doom. In some stories they merely collect
the dead and dying, in others they slay randomly. There are also a few
stories in which the Hunt is led by a child on a pale horse, and it is that
child that constrains the hunt -- should the child be lost, the Hunt would
slay endlessly.

Herne the Hunter is sometimes conflated with the Celtic God Cernunnos, who
was also a Horned God, but is not the head of the Wild Hunt in Celtic
mythos.

Murphy combined these stories, tossed in Coyote, and stirred. Urban Shaman
reminded me a bit of Sacred Ground by M. Lackey (primarily the reluctant
shaman in the city); the Celtic mythos had me thinking of the Fionavar
Tapestry by G. Gavrial Kay, who had done a similar stirring of mythos.
Those are good things, as I liked those books :).


It was most definitely a first book, and could have used a better editor.
Too much action was compressed into too few days it seemed. Sleep
deprivation was over used. Joanne spent a remarkable amount of time falling
over, knocked out, or with a sword through her belly. Her deep dark secret
was revealed just in time, as it was the perfect antidote to the glamour
that had just been cast on her -- making it more of a plot device then a
characterization-enhancing one.

On the other hand, I really liked Joanne and Gary (the senior cabby with a
smart mouth and too much free time) and the banter between them. Several
of the secondary characters were quite interesting (though two that I liked
were killed off rather quickly.) Despite being on the Luna line, there were
only hints of potential romances. (Not that either are good choices -- it
is never a good idea to date your boss. And dating a God who has tried to
kill you, and who you beat in a duel? Really a BAD IDEA (tm)) I liked the
mix of stories from the Celtic and American Indian mythos (though as Joanne
herself pointed out, Coyote is NOT Cherokee), even as they were twisted a
bit in ways that didn't always work for me. The action scenes were great,
and there were plenty of them! Joanne is entertainingly snarky, always a
good thing in a heroine.

All in all, I really enjoyed the book, flaws and all. Given a few more
books under her belt, and a good editor, I think Murphy will develop into a
solid author, and in the meantime this was a sufficiently fun read that I
will be looking for the next one in the fall.

/ETA Addendum for kethry70 I was amused when Joanne entered an apartment and commented on a painting there -- a Nene Thomas of a woman surrounded by ravens -- you might recall that as the painting I had in my dining room.... :)

I purchased several books this weekend, and today I read the first of them (and the 2nd this year). I read Crystal Soldier by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. It is set in the Liaden Universe, and the pair of books are apparently the 'foundation story' of the universe. And if I'm following the last chapter of the book, the second will indeed have the creation of a Universe, by a mathematician, one Liad dea'Syl. The book is in the manner of a space opera, switching viewpoints on occasion between its two primary characters. Some of the plot was a bit outlandish, and despite being advertised as readable by one who has not read any of the other books (as I have not) a few things didn't make much sense without referring to the glossary. And it is quite obviously a duology -- while it ended in as good a place as any, it was still most definitely in the middle of the story. Still, it was a rolicking good read, and sufficiently intriguing that I plan to purchase the first one or two from the series to read.

I find myself wondering if I have read another book set in this universe though. The 'sentient tree' seemed awfully familiar to me, to the point of feeling like an echo at times. Of course, it may just be that it reminds of the sortof similar tree up against the sortof similar Enemy in a Telzy Amberdon short story.