Book & Audio Review: Urban Shaman by C. E. Murphy

Urban Shaman
Author: C. E. Murphy
Narrator: Christine Carroll
Series: The Walker Papers (Book 1)
Publication: Luna; First Time Paperback edition (May 27, 2009); Harlequin Books (March 1, 2006)
Length: 302 p.; 10 hours and 10 minutes

Description: 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.

My Thoughts: This was a great urban fantasy story that introduces a series. Joanne Walker is half-Irish half-Cherokee. She is a mechanic who works for the police department and happens to have gone through the police academy successfully. 

On a trip home from being with her dying mother, the woman who abandoned her to her father when she was young, she spots a crime happening from the airplane as it approaches landing. When she hires a cab driver to help her find the location and save the woman she saw running from a pack of dogs, she doesn't expect to enter into a whole world pf paranormal creatures or to learn that she is a shaman.

She and her sidekick Gary, the 72-year-old cabdriver, are soon deep into the supernatural as Joanne has to deal with Herne, Cernunnos, and the Wild Hunt. Joanne has never been a believer in much of anything. So having to believe in the supernatural is quite a stretch for her. 

Spiritwalking and meeting her spirit guide Coyote do help her find out what is happening, but raises more questions than it answers. Joanne has only a couple of days to heal the world or it and she will be lost.

I really liked Joanne and Gary. Joanne isn't the typical kick-ass urban fantasy heroine. She gets hurt a lot - luckily the ability to heal is one of her new talents. She has her own troubled past which is gradually revealed. She is also not at all certain that she wants to be a serving police officer. She really like being a mechanic instead. But she isn't going to ignore the responsibilities that come with her new powers.

Great story with lots of action and excitement. Excellently narrated by Christine Carroll.

Favorite Quote:

Once upon a time, a nice young half-Cherokee half-Irish girl went to college and got the ultimate would-you-like-fries-with-that degree: English. I had no illusions that I'd get a job in my field when I graduated from college, but I'd never planned to. I already had a day job. I'd started learning how to fix cars when I was barely old enough to walk, and I never really wanted to do anything else.

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.