The Shambling Guide to New York City

Zoe Norris narrowly escaped a bad job and a bad relationship in Raleigh and moved back to New York City, where she grew up. But now she is completely desperate for a job - any job. Imagine her good luck when she stops in a creepy hole-in-the-wall bookstore and sees a help-wanted notice for a guidebook company. Zoe persistently applies for the job, despite repeatedly being told that it is "not for people like her". After wrangling a meeting with the president, she discovers the job is actually editing a city guide for monsters - vampires, zombies, dragons, golems, deities, etc. - but they prefer to be called coterie. They end up hiring her, figuring it will be useful to have a human on staff. Plus, unlike everyone else who works there, show more she has actual experience writing a guidebook. Zoe has a sometimes grand, sometimes dangerous time learning about her "interesting" coworkers' lives and their favorite places in the City. Soon, however, strange happenings and signs begin pointing to some impending disaster in which Zoe is more involved than she could have imagined.

The world-building here is amazing. The plot was perfectly good, but the world-building! The coterie New York City is fully of interesting details from a maze of tunnels under the city built by rats to the New York Department of Public Works which, along with fixing sewer lines, maintains the delicate balance between humans and coterie in the city. In between chapters is a paragraph excerpt from the guidebook that is eventually written, detailing a coterie-friendly restaurant or coterie-related history of Central Park. The writing is good, and there's just the perfect amount of humor that doesn't overshadow the danger Zoe sometimes finds herself in. I loved all the characters, from Morgen the water sprite and Fanny the fertility goddess to John the sometimes-sexy incubus and Benjamin Rosenberg the zoetist. Highly recommended if you like the supernatural - especially with a dash of humor. show less

This book is about Zoe Norris, newly returned to New York City after a very bad breakup (she was sleeping with her married boss). She's looking for work and sees a help wanted ad in a very strange bookstore that seems to be perfect for her -- travel guide writer, the same job she just left behind in North Carolina. The owner of that company happens to be standing right by her when she sees the ad and he bluntly tells her that she is the wrong person for the job. Zoe doesn't give up though and, when she happens across another employee of Underground Publishing in a local coffee shop, she manages to get a foot in the door. Whether the job is actually going to be a good fit for her will be determined once she finally sees who (and what) show more she will be working with and whether or not she can survive her first days on the job.

This story was funny and sexy and terrifying and I had an absolute blast reading it. There were all sorts of creatures and people, lots of adventure and peril, and New York City herself was actually a character -- and not in that way that one usually says "it's like the city was a character". No, in this book it was literal. And there was one sexy-type scene that embarrassed me so much that it made me think that I should probably read more romance because my reading choices are apparently a bit prim. But I loved Zoe's confidence and her acceptance of a ridiculous amount of diversity. She was sensitive while finding out new information and tried her best to be an ally, even when it put her life in danger.

http://webereading.com/2017/06/a-fish-out-of-water-or-two.html show less

I've been a fan of Mur Lafferty's podcast, I Should Be Writing, for a while now, I've listened to her Marco and the Red Granny and Playing For Keeps (both available on Podiobooks), and was very excited when she sold her first book to a publisher. Mur loves her fans, so one of the things she did was podcast her book for free. We're on an extremely tight budget right now, so although I wanted to buy the book I had to listen to the podcast and console myself that I would buy the sequel.
The best thing about The Shambling Guide is that it's fun and fast-paced, and the main characters are colorful and engaging. I particularly liked Morgen the water sprite and the baker at the cafe, they stole the show at least half the time for me. There was show more snappy dialogue, descriptions that set the scene just enough without taking away the readers' ability to fill in some details on their own, and enough humor to make me chuckle on a number of occasions. I had a blast listening to it. Of course having the author read the book is an extra bonus because they put the emphasis where they want it to be, and the whole experience feels more intimate than when there's a professional voice actor in the picture.
Lafferty's world-building skills deserve a special mention. There are zombies, vampires, golums, all of which roughly follow the traditional lore of being dangerous creatures, but the author has made them her own and humanized them along the way. Of course this happens when you are looking at them from inside their world and witness their weaknesses and their struggles to make it in a world where nobody's supposed to know about them.
There's a lot to recommend this book, yet there was enough that didn't work for me to spoil the experience. Some characters came to life and some were pretty flat. Take Arthur the love interest, he was just a generic hot guy with a bunch of preconceived notions. The protagonist, Zoë, is too comfortable too soon in her new job and with her co-workers. Yeah, the pay is good and she needed the job, but she is almost blasé when it comes to the world of monsters where she suddenly finds herself. Would you be totally cool if you found out that your boss is a vampire (not vegetarian either) and that every one of your coworkers can kill you without exerting themselves too much? I know I wouldn't.
There was a sex scene, which, although well-executed, didn't have to be there and didn't really do anything to move the story forward or develop any of the characters. (For fairness' sake I do have to admit that this is my usual complaint about sex scenes, and unless the book is a romance I'd rather authors kept them out of the story. After all, what exactly has to happen between the sheets to serve the story or character development? Off the top of my head, not too many options there.) The mystery at the center of the story was interesting and I was surprised to find out who the villain was, but there was so much going on during the final battle that frankly I lost track of it all and just waited for it to be over. If it was a paper book I would've skimmed the pages and gotten to the end. All in all I thought her shorter works were tighter and therefore more effective, the novel format allowed for too much room for digression.
The Shambling Guide is a fun read and if you've had a stressful stretch it's just the thing to get your mind off the problems. Get the audio book to give you a charge for the work day or to help you unwind during your commute in the evening. It's not great, but for all its faults it is good enough to make me want to pick up the sequel, Ghost Train to New Orleans, and to hope that there will be a third book. After all, I believe writers get better with every new novel. Unless their work becomes formulaic, but that's a topic for another time. show less

Really enjoyed this up to the point when the love interest entered the scene. I was a little surprised by how much that character dragged everything down. I'm a little tired of the chivalry schtick, though, so maybe that's my issue. Granted, the author did make a point of saying that Zoe was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but it's irritating that the point has to be made. Why can't men approach the situation with the idea already formed that women are capable on their own? Why does it have to be something they learn? Silly and a tad nitpicky, but I enjoyed the story and eagerly await the next.

Quite a different normal young woman (but maybe not so normal as she thinks) finds a place for herself among monsters. What's different about this is that the light hand is not because the monsters aren't as monstrous as they're made out to be. Well, for their own survival they obey, mostly, rules and restrictions, but these aren't Illona Andrews Werewolves (well, no werewolves in this one). The humor is in the monsters having the same issues as humans in navigating the big city and needing a guide book and that sort of thing as we learn to navigate the world of coterie - don't call them monsters, with our heroine Zoë.

One of the best things about this urban fantasy is that Zoe, the main character, isn’t paranormal herself. She doesn’t even know that “monsters” really exist until she’s hired by a vampire to edit a series of city guides aimed at the zombies, death goddesses, water sprites, and other supernaturals who are able to hide in plain sight among us on crowded streets and subway platforms.

Sharing a workspace with creatures who would enjoy drinking your blood or eating your brains has complications, of course, but times are tough and Zoe is paid really well. And though Zoe doesn’t have any cool special powers herself, she is hardworking, competent, cautiously open-minded about alternative lifestyles (or in some cases, death-styles), show more and resigned to acts of bravery when human decency requires jumping into the fray.

Though the pace is fast and the tension is kept high with one inventive surprise or crazy crisis after another, the style is breezy and funny. And the characters, human and not, are wonderful. I hope to meet most of them again in the sequel which looks like it will be set in New Orleans, a city with a lot of paranormal possibilities. show less

An absolutely delightful almost-debut from RPG writer, Escape Pod editor and podcaster extraordinaire Mur Lafferty, whose career I’ve been following for some time.

Zoe’s last job was a train wreck. She’s back in her home town of New York City,
desperate for a new start, but running out of cash fast. So when she finds an ad for a seemingly-perfect job as a travel guide editor, she’s not going to let the excuse that ‘she’s not the right type for the job’ and ‘wouldn’t fit in with the team’ stand in her way. Sheer determination wins her an interview in a dilapidated theatre and dinner with her potential new boss.

It turns out the job is to write a guide book for New York’s visiting monster population, who have been The show more boss is a vampire and the payroll includes zombies, an incubus and a death goddess. Zoe has to come to terms with the existence of another world, hidden in plain sight in her city, and learn to deal with her new co-workers often-disturbing feeding habits. When the balance between humans and coterie – monster is an offensive term – starts falling apart, she finds herself caught in the crossfire.

This is not Mur Lafferty’s first published work – she has self-published the Heaven series and her novel Playing For Keeps came out from Swarm Press in 2008 – but it is her best yet.

She presents us with a rich supernatural underground to New York City, full of hilarious anecdotes and smart tweaks to reality (the MoMA’s closed galleries are really hired out by visiting demons who are too big to fit in human-sized hotels) told through excerpts from the book Zoe is writing.

As a protagonist, Zoe is made even more likeable by the fact that is allowed to showcase real strength of character, even as she has to accept her weaknesses in dealing with an overwhelming situation. After her engrossing and thought-provoking novella Marco and the Red Granny, Lafferty gives us another kick-ass elderly woman to love and cheer on in the hilarious and irreverent Granny Good Mae. The rest of the varied cast of characters is also handled perfectly so that even the brain-eating zombies become relatable.

This is also a very funny book, Lafferty’s humorous touch is spot-on throughout and her dry observations on the human or coterie conditions made me snort out loud several times.

In short, I can’t wait for the second instalment in this series, The Ghost Train To New Orleans, and you should all go read The Shambling Guide To New York City, out in UK and US bookshops now. You can also go to Mur’s website to listen to a chapter of the audiobook for free every week. show less