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A review by raven_morgan
Ghost Train to New Orleans by Mur Lafferty
4.0
"The Ghost Train to New Orleans" is the second book in Mur Lafferty's "Shambling Guides" urban fantasy series.
In the first book in the series, "The Shambling Guide to New York", Zoe Norris, an editor of travel guides, found herself jobless and desperate. She talked her way into a job editing travel guides at Underground Publishing, and was plunged into a strange new world filled with coterie (zombies, vampires, gods and pretty much every magical creature you can think of) and zoetists, humans with the power to create life. And some awesome golems (I'm sorry, I will probably never be over the awesomeness of the golems in the first book).
The last book in "The Shambling Guides" showed me, as a reader burned out on urban fantasy, that the genre could be fun again. The second book in the series is perhaps more sober, but there are still gleams of that fun that shine through.
This is a more accomplished book than the first one in the series, and it feels as though Lafferty has really gotten her feet with her world. I love that some of the things that didn't make sense with Zoe in the first book are beginning to be explained, and Zoe herself is more confident as a character.
I also love the complete lack of love triangles and characters who do stupid things for love (or declaring eternal love after knowing someone for a day).
There's a real poignancy to how Lafferty has woven the real world into this book - Hurricane Katrina devastated the coterie world just as it did the human (not to mention the poor, broken City itself).
I hope that there are going to be more books in this series. I'd love to see more cities through the eyes of the Shambling Guides.
eARC provided by Netgalley.
In the first book in the series, "The Shambling Guide to New York", Zoe Norris, an editor of travel guides, found herself jobless and desperate. She talked her way into a job editing travel guides at Underground Publishing, and was plunged into a strange new world filled with coterie (zombies, vampires, gods and pretty much every magical creature you can think of) and zoetists, humans with the power to create life. And some awesome golems (I'm sorry, I will probably never be over the awesomeness of the golems in the first book).
The last book in "The Shambling Guides" showed me, as a reader burned out on urban fantasy, that the genre could be fun again. The second book in the series is perhaps more sober, but there are still gleams of that fun that shine through.
This is a more accomplished book than the first one in the series, and it feels as though Lafferty has really gotten her feet with her world. I love that some of the things that didn't make sense with Zoe in the first book are beginning to be explained, and Zoe herself is more confident as a character.
I also love the complete lack of love triangles and characters who do stupid things for love (or declaring eternal love after knowing someone for a day).
There's a real poignancy to how Lafferty has woven the real world into this book - Hurricane Katrina devastated the coterie world just as it did the human (not to mention the poor, broken City itself).
I hope that there are going to be more books in this series. I'd love to see more cities through the eyes of the Shambling Guides.
eARC provided by Netgalley.