Book Review: RAVEN CALLS by C.E. Murphy

[druidspell]

Having finally gotten my shipment of books from Barnes & Noble, yesterday I surrendered my entire day to reading one of those books: RAVEN CALLS by C.E. Murphy.

RAVEN CALLS is the seventh book of The Walker Papers, a series detailing the trials and adventures of Joanne Walker, a half-Cherokee half-Irish newly-minted shaman, her spirit guide Coyote, and her best friend/role model Gary Muldoon, a 74-years-young cab driver who accompanied her on her first adventure because she was the most interesting thing that had happened to him since his wife died.

Full disclosure, The Walker Papers is one of my favorite series. I've given these books as Giftmas/birthday presents to more than one friend. One of the things I love best about these books is that Joanne shows character growth and progress that is consistent and reasonable throughout every book, and yet the books don't read like extended therapy sessions where she rehashes her issues each time. I chose to describe the series as "the adventures of" Joanne Walker very deliberately: each book sets up either a mystery to be solved or a problem to be dealt with, and then Joanne solves the mystery or deals with the problem without any of the detours into sex, angst, or lengthy introspection that plague a lot of other urban fantasy first-person heroines (Anita Blake, I'm staring hard at you). This frequently involves travel, either through Seattle or, more frequently in later books, foreign locales. (Seattle, as the backdrop of most of the series, is almost a character in and of itself, especially when viewed with the Sight.) Another thing I love is that Joanne reacts in a very believable way to discovering her new skill sets and the difficulties of integrating them into her life as a formerly devout skeptic and cynic who gave a lot of people a lot of shit for their belief in the paranormal. (I've used these books as a sort of spiritual meditation before, because Ms. Murphy handles those issues that well.) Finally, the best thing about the series as a whole and Joanne in particular is that, unlike most Strong Female Characters (TM), Jo has real bonds of friendship that don't disappear when her friends aren't getting page time (example: Billy Holliday, one of Joanie's best friends, isn't involved in the action of this book at all, but just like our friendships in real life, he's in Joanne's thoughts while she does what needs to be done).

Now to talk about the book itself.

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

At the conclusion of the last book, SPIRIT DANCES, Joanne had: defeated a werewolf plaguing Seattle; learned to shapeshift; experienced a metaphorical rebirth after being hit by a semi while shapeshifted; had an exponential increase in power as a result of that rebirth; made out with her boss and crush, Morrison, whom she has had some incredible tension (sexual and otherwise) with in the past; quit her job as a police detective; and booked a flight to Dublin, Ireland, to deal with the fact that, oh yeah, she got bitten by a werewolf. The book opens as she prepares to fly out of Seattle Tacoma Airport on March 18. Due to travel time and time zones, she arrives in Dublin on March 19 and begins one of the most frenetic and emotionally charged 3 days I've ever vicariously lived through. Through deus ex Morrison, she is joined in Ireland by Gary Muldoon, and then is visited by my favorite minor recurring character, Cernunnos, and some new faces out if Irish mythology and legend as well.

The goal of the trip is for Joanne to travel to Ireland to heal her werewolf bite, because it provides the Big Bad, the Master, a link to her mind and magics. However, she finds his influence has spread a lot further than she realized and has to call on her family to help out, including an ancestress who will be very familiar to anyone passingly familiar with the history of Ireland. On her way to a confrontation with the Master, she encounters aos sí, gods and goddesses, the Wild Hunt, myths and legends, a Red Cap, banshees, my favorite new character in the form of her young cousin Catriona, and her mother, Sheila, who died before the series started in a battle against the same evil Joanne fights now.

The book does fall prey to some of the pitfalls of urban fantasy adventures, namely that all of the action is crammed into a period of three days, coming on the heels of a book where the action took place over the course of a single weekend. Joanne makes frequent mention of the fact that she's doing all of this magic and fighting when her last meal was more than three days before, which is something that rang incredibly out of tune for me (especially given the amount of hiking that takes place in this book). The only times Jo sleeps are when she's on the plane at the beginning of the book and when she's knocked unconscious in physical fights. I know that sleep deprivation and hunger are useful for achieving transcendent shamanic states, but it was something that bothered me given how much physical action takes place in the book.

More than anything else, this is a book about connections: between people, between cultures, between past, present, and future, and between family. It's about reconciliation and acceptance, and righting the wrongs in the world that are in your power to correct.

On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, I give it a 4--there were some shaky patches, and a few details that threw me out of the story, but overall a very solid, enjoyable read that nicely sets the stage for the impending end of the series.

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