Third in the Walker Papers series of urban fantasies.

Joanne Walker discovered six months ago that she's a powerful shaman, and she's not happy about it. She's an officer in the Seattle Police Department and a former mechanic, and being a woo-woo shaman does not fit with her self image. She's contrary and stubborn and her de­ter­mi­na­tion not to accept her new state leads to big problems.

The people that she's close to are going into comas. In her blundering ignorance when she first came into her powers, she un­wit­ting­ly awakened …continue.

The third book in the Merchant Princes series.

Miriam Beckstein, is a tech journalist in Boston, who discovered in the first book that she was born in a parallel world, and that she and some of her relatives hold a rare gene that allows them to step between worlds. In her feudal home world, her relatives have become merchant princes, wielding enormous power over the local economy.

Miriam, thoroughly American, doesn't fit in well in that other world, and resents becoming a pawn in her family's dynastic games. Meanwhile, back on …continue.

We saw the movie last week and I remarked that I had never read any of the Chronicles of Narnia books, so Emma dug out her copies.

The book is old-fashioned and innocent. It reminds of some of the British books that I read in my childhood, such as the Famous Five.

By way of an enchanted wardrobe, four plucky human children fall into a parallel world, where they are acclaimed as saviors, fulfilling a prophecy. They quickly fall afoul …continue.

The Nightside: the dark, mysterious, sleazy place under the city of London, where you can find anything or lose yourself. Monsters lurk there, demons slum there, John Taylor grew up there. Taylor has a gift. He can find anything in Nightside.

Taylor exiled himself five years ago. Now he's making a precarious living as a private eye in London. A distraught busi­ness­woman hires him to find her teenage daughter, who was last seen heading for Nightside. Taylor finds the girl alright, and he finds plenty of trouble along the way.

En­ter­tain­ing …continue.

A loose sequel to The Lion of Farside. The newly widowed Curtis Macurdy has returned to Earth in 1933. He heads west to a lumber town in Oregon where he becomes a sheriff's deputy. After Pearl Harbor, he enlists in the Army and quickly becomes a para­troop­er. Despite showing great promise (and having been a general on Yuulith!), Macurdy refuses to be sent to Officer Training School. After some hair-raising adventures in North Africa that he only survives due to his Yuulith-trained magical abilities, he is recruited by the Office of …continue.

Sequel to The Bavarian Gate. Again widowed, Macurdy returns to Yuulith from Earth. He meets up with Vulkan, a bod­hisatt­va in the avatar of a wild boar, who is troubled by portents of trouble coming across the ocean. The voitar are invading the continent of Yuulith and Macurdy must pull together the disparate nations to fight back against the brutal voitar.

The series works better in a swords-and-sorcery milieu than in 20th century Earth, and this book is more enjoyable than its pre­de­ces­sor. Overall, the series is rather clumsily written. Emma said the books …continue.

Curtis Macurdy is a simple, Depression-era farmer married to the beautiful and exotic Varia. Varia is kidnapped and drawn back to her home in the parallel world of Yuulith. Macurdy follows her, but is im­me­di­ate­ly enslaved. After some training as a shaman, he shows promise as a fighter, and is sent to an elite regiment. He breaks out a few months later with two friends. Soon they fall in with outlaws and Macurdy quickly rises to the top, leading a successful rebellion.

Meanwhile, Varia is back with the Sisterhood, which she forswore …continue.

Mercy Thompson, heroine of Moon Called, is back. Mercedes the Volkswagen mechanic is a shape-shifter living in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington.

A new vampire is in town, one who also happens to be a demon-possessed sorceror, and he's killing in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly. The other vampires and the local werewolf pack need to shut him down before the general public catches on. In the end, Mercy's skills are needed to track him down and put an end to him. Along the way, she has two werewolves and a vampire paying court to her. Mercy …continue.

Charlie Asher is the pluperfect Beta Male: nerdy, neurotic, and possessed of too much imag­i­na­tion. But he is not imagining things when people start dropping dead around him, after his wife Rachel dies giving birth to Sophie. Gradually, he comes to realize that he has somehow been appointed a Death Merchant, a sort of Santa's Helper to Death. His role is to facilitate the ascendance of souls.

Over the years, he tries to get on with his life, raising Sophie, running his second-hand store, grieving for Rachel, and collecting …continue.

Thraxas is an middle-aged minor sorceror and retired warrior, who is entirely too fond of the bottle, his grub, and the racetrack. He long ago fell from grace at the palace in the city of Turai and now makes ends meet by discreet private in­ves­ti­ga­tions. He is oc­ca­sion­al­ly aided by Makri, a gladiator-turned-barmaid and would-be university student, who happens to be part Orc, part Elf, and half human.

This book was published as two separate novels in Britain, Thraxas and Thraxas and the Warrior Monks. The plots are fairly for­get­table, but …continue.