“How Lou hated dealing with the living. The dead were so much easier to manage.” loc 256 ebook.
Lou Merriwether is a psychopomp, or someone who assists spirits from the world of the living to the world of the dead. She doesn’t get along all that well with the living, including her mother, whom Lou had a falling out with around the time that her father passed away.
But when her mother asks her to investigate a series of disappearances, Lou feels like she can’t refuse and begins an adventure across the country and into danger, more danger than she realizes.
“She’d hoped a personal visit to the Oakland office would yield better results than her telegram to Cheyenne, but it seemed no one wanted to talk. loc 863, ebook
In addition to her personal drama, Lou has to deal with racism almost all the time as a half-Chinese, half-white person. She finds all of this easier to deal with by dressing as a man.
I loved the character of Lou- she was so feisty and willing to stick her neck out to help her friends and, sometimes, people she just met. She occasionally uses colorful language, so be warned if that sort of thing bothers you.
This world has so many curious fantasy elements to it. There are talking walruses who ferry people from one place to another. There are talking bear tribes alongside Native American tribes in the west.
The author Molly Tanzer has such a huge imagination. The world she has created is dangerous but also fun to explore.
Highly recommended for fantasy and steampunk fans. I really enjoyed this one.
- Steve Cox and Matthew Walker’s Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, a review
- Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, a review
- Edward Berger’s The Ballad of a Small Player, a review
- Otherwhere: A Field Guide to Nonphysical Reality for the Out-Of-Body Traveler by Kurt Leland
- Psychic Dreamwalking: Explorations at the Edge of Self by Michelle Belanger
