mix of celtic folklore & australia in new urban fantasy secret ones by nicole murphy

Finally, finally, an urban fantasy novel with something new to say. Secret Ones by Nicole Murphy is an interesting mix of Celtic folklore and imagination; and set in Australia, it has a different background to add to to it. 

Murphy is an Australian author who's worked as a teacher and journalist, as well as being instrumental in a number of “fandom” projects; she's also been a speculative fiction editor.
So one would assume she would know something about writing a good piece of urban, or speculative, fiction. Thankfully she does.
The “Secret Ones” of the title are the “gadda”, a people who while they look human; aren't. They can wield magic by borrowing energy from nature and using various spells.
Murphy's “gadda” are somewhat akin to the Celtic traditions of elves, there's an Irish connection – that seems to be where they come from – and general references to Celtic cultural practice as well.
Still, the concept is relatively fresh – although Laurell K Hamilton did it first with the Sidhe – elves or fey – living in modern America in her Merry Gentry series of books.
The addition of Australia is nice; better than yet another urban fantasy set in America. And the characters that Murphy has created are well-rounded and believable.
Maggie Shaunessy is an Australian-born gadda who has a history of protecting humans and working with humans – something that is looked down upon by another group of gadda who would prefer to stay “Pure” and have nothing to do with humans at all.
Maggie's family – at least her mother and grandfather – live in Australia and interact daily with humans, running a university and a medical clinic and trying to help them. Maggie's father is in Ireland, he's more traditional and possibly one of the Purists.
Added to the mix is a newcomer – and a love interest for Maggie, of course – Lucas Valeroso, a physicist who's from the wrong side of the tracks entirely, and totally unaware that he might not be entirely human.
Murphy mixes up black magic, stolen books, political machinations, historical feuds and romance with a vaguely recognisable Celtic mythology, to create an urban fantasy story that is relatively fresh for the reader.
Some of the descriptions and Maggie's musings are a bit clunky, but the dialogue is good, as is the pacing. There's not much of a twist to the plot, the reader is fairly certain where it's all leading by about halfway through, but it's a fun read nonetheless.
Secret Ones is the first book in what's shaping up to be at least a trilogy, if not a series; it will be interesting to see how it develops.

Secret Ones by Nicole Murphy is published by Harper Voyager and is available from good book stores and online.

the world of the downside ghosts returns in stacia kane's unholy magic & city of ghosts

American author Stacia Kane continues her Downside Ghosts series with the second and third in the series, Unholy Magic and City of Ghosts. 

Readers are returned to the post-apocalyptic world of Chess Putnum, a church 'witch', able to see the ghosts that returned to plague the world and bring about the end of life as we know it. 

In Unholy Ghosts, the first book, readers were introduced to a new fantasy world where ghosts and magic are real; the Church of Real Truth runs the country and people try to get by as well as they can.

Read my review of Unholy Ghosts: Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane is fresh urban fantasy with a gritty, sideways feel

As always, however, there's an underside, a “downside” to society, and it's in this fringe world that Chess exists. Oh, and while Chess is nominally the heroine of these tales, she's no squeaky clean princess with powers – Chess is from the wrong side of the tracks, she's a Downsider, and she's a junkie. 

Her drug habit has gotten Chess into trouble before, walking the knife's edge of respectability to keep her Church job, while dealing with her local drug lord on the one hand and sleeping with the opposition, on the other. 

And in the middle is a great, big, ugly enforcer who is smarter than he looks and cares more for Chess than she'd like to admit. 

In Unholy Magic, Chess finds herself working with a VIP who may, or may not, be faking a haunting – a criminal offence with the Church; at the same time someone – or something – is killing prostitutes in Downside and Bump, Chess' dealer, wants her to make sure it's not magically linked. 

On top of this, Chess' feelings for Terrible – Bump's enforcer – are all confused, while her “just having sex, we're not in a relationship” with Lex – Bump's opposition – seems to be getting a little too heavy. 

Then there's the false medium that Chess helped put away – but some thing's not quite right there either – and the City of Ghosts is even more unsettled than it should be, despite the fact that it's almost the anniversary of the Rising – the time when the ghosts returned to the world to wreak their vengeance. 

Kane's world is thoroughly detailed and comprehensive – there are enough resonances with our current world to ensure the readers have something to hold on to; a sign of a quality piece of urban fantasy writing. 

As City of Ghosts opens, Chess is attending the execution of an unlicensed medium involved in the illegal use of magic; she's still recovering from her run in with the ghost whorehouse and bringing Terrible back to life with an ill-considered and possibly illegal rune – and he still won't talk to her. 

Before she's completely recovered from her last nasty experience, another one opens up inside the Church, and once again Chess is thrown into the thick of things. 

Her previous “successes” have made the Church think she's great at her job, so great that they second her to the Black Squad – the Church's secret service – and force her to not only be bound by an unbreakable and painful spell, but even worse, stick her with a partner – the head of the damned Church's daughter no less. 

On top of all this, to add insult to injury, Terrible finally found out about Lex and now he hates Chess, but he's the only person who's going to be able to help her out of the mess she's now involved in. Oh, and the Lamaru – the original anti-Church baddies from the first book – are back. Only this time they've got something even bigger in mind; they want to release the ghost from the Eternal City. 

Kane manages to keep the action pounding along in both Unholy Magic and City of Ghosts, not losing anything to developing the characters. Readers discover more about Terrible, he's not quite as bad as he wants people to think, and Lex turns out to be someone much more important than Chess thought he was. 

Chess' problems with men pale almost into insignificance when held up against her drug addictions; readers also discover just how badly hooked she really is, but are given some more insight into way Chess needs to self-medicate so badly. 

In some ways Chess' addictions balance out her skills in magic, and control them at the same time. And the addictions also help her hold it together, oddly enough. Like many children of foster homes and broken families, at the centre of Chess is a great, gaping hole of loneliness and self-loathing just waiting to implode and drag her down. The drugs allow Chess to ignore that danger, walling it up behind chemically created emotions that are much easier for her to deal with. 

The insight into Chess, her inability to enjoy intimacy, her need to replace caring with sex, also explains her mixed up feelings for Terrible. Kane's skill in blending these sharp observations about drug abuse and emotional trauma with an action-packed thriller and supernatural trappings is what makes these books so readable. 

Chess is the perfect anti-heroine; the antidote to the soppy, love obsessed teens dominating the urban fantasy genre at the moment. There's not a vampire or werewolf in sight – thank god – and the gritty truth of Chess' life adds depth to what could be dismissed as “just another fantasy novel”. 

There are more books in the Downside Ghosts series to come; I can't wait.

Unholy Magic and City of Ghosts by Stacia Kane are published by Harper Voyager and are available from good book stores and online.

unholy ghosts by stacia kane is fresh urban fantasy with a gritty, sideways feel

I loved, loved, loved this book. Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane is one of the few new urban fantasy novels I've read in a while. There's not a single vampire or werewolf to be seen and the characters are as conflicted, unfulfilled and damaged as any normal person.

Well, perhaps not exactly 'normal', but they're certainly not the 'holier-than-thou', angst-ridden teens or hormonally challenged desperately single women to be found in most of this genre's current crop of new authors.
In Kane's world, ghosts are real; and they're not very friendly. In fact, they're downright nasty. A couple of decades previously the dead had risen and only one organisation – the Church of the Real Truth – had managed to keep society together. Now America is a land where everyone knows what happens after you're dead, you turn into a spirit and go to the underworld, which isn't Hell and Jesus can't save you.
Instead you get people like Chess Putnam; she's a witch and she works for the Church. Yep, a complete reversal.
Since ghosts are real and can cause real damage, the Church will pay you a lot of money if a true haunting can be proven to have happened. It's Chess' job to sort the real from the fake and then banish the real ghost back to where they belong.
So far, so urban fantasy. But what makes Unholy Ghosts more interesting is that Chess isn't some boring, sweet, lovelorn sexy girl; she's a tattooed rocker with a taste for gangsters and a massive debt to her dealer hanging over her head.
Bump, the local gang leader, needs Chess to sort out a haunting of sorts. Work out if it's ghosts or the opposition, and Chess will clear her debt and be kept happy, so to speak.
Unfortunately Chess doesn't have a choice but to help out – she hasn't got the cash and the Church doesn't know about her personal vice. Before she knows it, Chess is caught up in nasty blood rituals, gang rivalries and an dangerous attraction to two, opposing gangsters.
Unholy Ghosts is the first in Kane's The Downside Ghosts series, which is great. I can't wait to read more of this gritty, sideways world that she's created. The character of Chess is reminiscent of Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, in that she's more 'real' than the usual fantasy female.
Chess isn't perfect, she carries her own demons, she's attracted to the wrong men and she's not averse to bending the rules – all things that make her a much more interesting character to read about.
Another of my favourite authors – also a pioneer in this genre like Hamilton – Charlaine Harris, has a quote on Kane's book: 'Gripping... Vivid characters and wonderful sense of pace'. And it's true.
Chess spins from one disaster to another, barely managing to keep it together, but somehow not giving up, nor becoming irritating. She's strong without being unapproachable and yet, still human in her reactions to the people around her.
Kane is a genuine find in the over-populated urban fantasy genre – she can only get better on presumes; thankfully there are more books written and more to come.

Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane is published by Harper Voyager and is available from good books stores and online.

dragon haven, the second book in robin hobb's the rain wilds chronicles is as wonderful as expected

Robin Hobb is one of my all-time favourite fantasy authors. The world she has created in her long-running series The Farseer Trilogy, The Liveship Traders, The Tawny Man and The Soldier Son, has returned in the latest series The Rain Wild Chronicles. Dragon Haven is the second book in the series so far, and, as always, it does not disappoint.

The dragons that hatched from the dismal clutch of sea serpent cocoons in the first book, The Dragon Keeper, have found themselves forced to travel up the dangerous Rain Wild river in the company of a group of young Rain Wilders – humans who have lived too long in the inhospitable jungle and have begun to change into something else.
The Rain Wilders are themselves outcasts, having been keep alive as babies when tradition dictated that any child born already bearing the growths and scaled skin of the Rain Wilds be exposed to the elements.
Luckily for the dragons – damaged, demented and dumb in some cases – these youngsters are around to help feed them, protect them and clean them, whether the dragons are grateful or not.
Alongside the dragons and their keepers travels the barge Tarman, a ship that is definitely more than he should be, his captain Leftrin and the Bingtown trader Alise – who is a misfit herself.
Alise is accompanied by her husband's secretary, Sedric, who's managed to get himself involved in the shady practice of dealing in dragon parts, only to find that something is making him terribly sick.
As the dragons make their way up the river, the motley crew of Rain Wilders, sailors and Bingtowners discover that being exiled may be just what they all needed.
This novel sees friendships made and broken, lives lost and lovers found. It's also a stepping stone in the on-going explanation as to what happened to the dragons. Why did they not cocoon themselves hundreds of years ago when they should have? What happened to the magical cities of the Elderlings, once the dragons' keepers? And why are the new dragon keepers becoming more and more like their charges everyday?
Hobb answers some of these questions, but it is obvious that she is leading the reader on to the next book in the series. There is a denoument of sorts; the dragons finally reach a place they recognise but it may, or may not, be the mythical city of Kelsingra - the place the dragons are searching for.
Twisting through the main story of the dragons and their keepers is that of Bird Keepers Detozi and Erek. These two Keepers of the Birds - which are used to send messages - keep the story tied to the outside world, so to speak, of Bingtown and Trehaug. The pairs' messages open each chapter and over the course of the two novels so far have developed from friends into something more.

Robin Hobb's fantasy is literature
It is details like the Keepers of the Birds - a whole second plotline and story running in tandem with the main action - that makes Hobb's novels so good. These are the details that ensure her fans keep coming back again and again, and are why she is a best-selling novelist.
A basic run-down of Hobb's plot isn't enough to explain why these books are so very special in the over-populated world of fantasy literature. It's not just the storylines, but the characters and their stories, the creatures and their foibles, the grandeur of dragons!
Hobb has that rare ability in a fantasy author to create a connection between the reader and an unreal world. She manages to make one care about what happens to not only the human characters of her books, but also the non-human; the dragons, the liveships and the sea serpents.
The detailed descriptions of each fantastical animal and plant, the odd society mores and the relationships of characters to the inimical jungle as enormous depth to Robb's novels.
Hobb has been described as a modern Tolkien, which is somewhat true, only her works have more warmth and emotion, and less highbrow posturing.
Am I preaching to the converted yet? I read all 570 pages of Dragon Haven in one sitting, through the night, and when I finished I wished I had the next book to read right away.
For lovers of adventure, romance and fiction – even if you aren't usually a reader of fantasy – Robin Hobb's books are a must read. If you're going to read one fantasy series in your life, try one of hers.

Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb is published by Harper Voyager, an imprint of HarperCollins, and is available in good book stores and online. 

Read my review of The Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb.