Joanne and Billy are now the woo-woo team – the pair with
supernatural abilities who help with those cases that are just too weird for anyone
else. So when people show up dying and partially eaten but without a scrap of
any kind of forensic evidence on the bodies, it’s time to call them in.
But even magic can’t work miracles and there’s a limit to
what even they can sense, much to their frustration. What they do learn is that
their enemy is far more dangerous than they imagined and is going to take some…
unorthodox messages to track and stop
Thankfully, Joanne is pretty good at unorthodox methods –
as she proves not only to the people around her but also to Coyote, her mentor,
finally free from a supernatural coma. In his absence Joanne has grown
considerable and they have to refind their balance with what she’s learned, how
she’s grown, the path she is on – and the fact they’re both in the real world,
in the flesh.
It’s another fun mystery – with a lot evolved. The
progression in how the police force treats Joanne and Billy has excellently
developed through the series to Morrison now overtly recognising them as his
woo-woo experts. The mystery itself is interesting and, while it is quickly
solved in terms of “whodunnit” the how to stop it part of the story maintains
some excellent tension and questions to keep the story going. The story is
really well paced without any lags or moments of boredom, confusion, or vast
leaps of logic. But the star of this book has to be the characterisations
I really love the introduction of Coyote, and I really
thought I wouldn’t. I expected his presence to shake his mystique and it did.
But it did it extremely well because it not only humanised him but helped
Joanne to grow. Coyote is a person. He’s more knowledgeable than Joanne, in
many ways more capable and Joanne and has powers and skills Joanne can’t touch.
But he is a person and he isn’t god. There are areas
where Joanne is better suited than him, there are areas where Joanne is more
powerful than him and there are things she can do which he cannot. And him
showing up didn’t turn this into a story that focuses on Coyote, Joanne is
still the protagonist, she is still the one investigating, she is still the one
in charge and the one who makes the decision in her city and her life. I liked
that it made it really clear that they can be powerful in different ways and
walk different path. That Coyote, healer, teacher, advisor has far greater
strengths in those areas – but Joanne doesn’t have to follow the same way; she’s
a warrior, a defender, a soldier who heals things and makes things better in
her own way. I liked that he had his precious philosophy that was truly
valuable to him – but at the same time it was acknowledge he could have that
and not need Joanne to follow it.
To me this is especially important given how much Joanne
has grown and learned over the last few books. She needs a mentor, not a boss
and not a character to remind her how much she doesn’t know, how new she is and
how weak she is. After what she has achieved in the series, she has proved her
worth and her capability even if she has made mistakes and caused problems in
the past, she has also gone on to fix them. She needs a peer, not a school
teacher and it was really well written to give her that.
Another element that impressed me was the emphasis on
Joanne being a healer - even while she’s a warrior and even while hunting a “monster.”
There is always a willingness to be sympathetic to the enemy even while being
prepared to kick its arse and stab it until it stops moving. Even while knowing
it has to be stopped, Joanne can still sympathise with the pain the Wendigo
feels
Also we have a Wendigo which is actually a Wendigo which has at least a nod to the actual legends of a Wendigo rather than just being a fancy werewolf you have to kill with fire as we see so much in this genre. There was some depth behind it. This is something this series does well – the creatures, the realms, the legends have had some research behind them, there’s some work to present the legends as they actually were, their beliefs as they are actually held and not just raid random cultures for any spare monsters they have around. It’s detailed, it’s deep and it’s fascinating. However, I still have a minor complaint that it’s also damn confusing at times. The writing can become very abstract, very confused and very lost especially as Joanne travels from realm to realm to realm. It’s a lot tighter than it has been in previous books and it’s a definite improvement but it is still an issue.
The Walker Papers have some of my favourite characters in
the genre. Joanne herself has a lot of depth from her mixed heritage, rather
than it being there of convenient woo-woo (though it is a constant source of the
latter). She recognises her conflict outsider feeling with her mother’s Irish
family and her father’s Native American family (it’s neatly done in one line –
who she always thought of herself as deathly pale compared to her father’s
family but going to her mother’s funeral she realised how much darker she was
than her relatives). She has steadily grown and grown to accept both elements
of her heritage and marrying them together without running from both as she had
– even down to her very name; changing Siobahn Walkingstick to Joanne Walker.
The men around her can act sexist – either being jealous
over her or being protective and in response to that you get this line:
“I don’t require
rescuing. I don’t require protecting. I frequently require help, which this
pissing-match behaviour in no way qualifies”
That combination of her utterly rejecting their
paternalistic crap while at the same time not running off to do it all alone to
show how big and tough she is is perfectly balanced. She’s not super woman, but
she’s not weaker because she’s a woman, she can’t do everything on her own, but
that doesn’t mean she needs people to do things for her. She is human enough to
be confused by her conflicting attraction between Morrison and Coyote, but not
fool enough to let a love triangle develop – nor does she allow sexual attraction
to destroy any pretence of good sense. She is determined enough to tell
Morrison she has to give him an ultimatum, but apologetic in recognising he is
her boss (and there’s nothing wrong with him being her boss) and she’s putting
him in an impossible position – and she drags Coyote out on the carpet for
locking horns with Morrison to try and prove whose boss or who has “ownership”
of her. It grows excellently through the book as she goes from uncertainty with
Coyote’s presence then mild resentment before asserting her own strength.
She does need some more female friends though. Again this
book kind of emphasised that with her running around with Billy, Coyote and
Gary. Especially with her reconnecting with an old, highschool female friend
and them having an almost instant hate reaction, completer with old, childish
grudges and lots of jealousy and Laurie Corvallis who is a constant thorn in
Joanne’s side (albeit one who is redeemed). However we are seeing more and more
of Melinda in her life adding a strong, centred, loving, powerful female figure
who is awesome in her own right.
Which brings us to POC of which there are a number –
Coyote, Melinda and Joanne herself as well as Laurie Corvallis. A number of
these have woo-woo of course – but then she also knows Billy who is psychic and
another White medium and even Gary is a powerful spiritual centre for her. Most
of the characters have woo-woo. The only
thing which, I think, kind of makes the woo-woo different is that Billy and his
medium friend have woo-woo, they just do. Melinda’s woo-woo is connected to her
Bruja grandmother and Coyote’s and Joanne’s to their heritages. They all have
woo-woo but the woo-woo of the POC feels more connected to their ancestry
rather than “it just is”. Still, in general they’re portrayals that aren’t
rammed with stereotypes we see so often and make up a substantial part of the
story
All of the characters interact well and in a really human
manner – from Melinda’s powerful love of family, to Billy’s balance and
strength and fun to Morrison’s conflicted acceptance of woo-woo through to Gary
being just this awesome figure behind everything, solid and strong and
excellently supportive – they’re all really well written and humanised.
I loved this book and I think, as a series, it’s also
artfully balanced. In the last book Joanne was getting over the last of the
mistakes she has made and setting off more on her own and more openly embracing
her full self as well as embarking on the dire meta enemy that has been hinted
at. And this is the book that almost formally puts it into practice – Joanne is
now out there asserting her strength, her power and her leadership. This book
is, in many ways, Joanne’s graduation and a good sign for more to come.
(Also I have a geeky fanboy love of 2 fake FBI agents with
the 1967 Impala with Kansas License plates. And one of the agents was “really
tall” and the other “really cute”.
Sneaky Supernatural cameo, I love it)
