Thursday, July 24, 2014

Review of Ghost Train to New Orleans



Book #27. Ghost Train to New Orleans, by Mur Lafferty. Paperback. 

I have been a fan of Mur Lafferty for many years now, following her progress from being “just” a podcaster to a self-published author and podiobook producer, and now as an award-winning novelist. This is the second entry in her “Shambling Guides” series, following up on “The Shambling Guide to New York City,” reviewed here. 

The premise of the series is that the main character, Zoe Norris, is a human who works for a publishing company that specializes in travel guides for monsters. So if you think that your co-workers want to wat you alive, many of Zoe's co-workers actually, literally, want to eat her alive. 

Picking up shortly after the event of the prior novel, Zoe heads with some of her co-workers (including a Norse deity, a death goddess, and a soon-to-be zombie) to New Orleans to research their upcoming travel guide to that city. But Zoe is starting to realize that she is not as human as she thought. Her powers as a city-talker confuse and scare her, and know that they make her even more of a target to the monsters around her than she was as just a human.

There is a secret history and secret society, giving us a glimpse that this is a much deeper and darker world than we got from the first novel. This is the way to write a series like this, giving us contained stories that tell part of a larger tale.

This is an exciting book with a very fun, action-packed ending. The last few pages give us a tantalizing sneak preview of where we are going for Book #3 in the series – both in terms of geography and plot. I am very much looking forward to reading the next one whenever it comes out.

Source: Purchased from Barnes & Noble.

Info: On the Book Guys Show podcast, we talked to Mur on episode 082.

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