Staying Dead

I picked this up after reading one of Gilman’s short stories in an anthology. I’m usually not that enthused with urban fantasy, but this was a great example of that genre. Gilman has a great way with dialog which made the main character really enjoyable to spend time with. She also did a good job dropping little bits of history, much that didn’t affect the plot, but it gave the feeling of reality to the personalities and world without a big info dump.

This was a fun read. I really like the world that Gilman has created. The magic system makes sense and is used in interesting ways. I liked the characters and the relationship between Wren and Sergei. There was a lot of potential in the secondary characters that could become more prominent in subsequent books in the series. That said, something kept me at arms length from both the characters and the story. That could be because this was the first in the series setting the stage for later books, or it could be a flaw in the writing. It is too soon to tell. I will definitely continue reading the series to see if the characters continue to grow and to see if it manages to draw me in more than this one did.

Ok, so she’s missing the obnoxious pet, but she’s got a demon friend that looks like a polar bear, and that almost counts. Wren Valere is a retriever in the magical underworld of New York. What is a retriever? Well, perhaps thief is a better word, but it’s the kind of thief that has to negotiate both magical and mundane politics to get the job done, and balance on knife edge, where her abilities may pull her into madness if she loses control.

Gilman's novel was a little hard to get into and even though it's the first in a series, I felt a little like I was missing something. There was also something about her writing style that bothered me slightly, but not enough to stop me from reading, it just took me longer to get through the novel than it should've. That being said, as the book went on, I enjoyed it more and more and by the time I finished, I really liked the cast of characters and the world she'd created. I enjoy urban fantasy because it's not straight up fantasy and it's set in the modern world and Gilman's novel satisfied that for me. There was magic, demons and humans -- and clash between and within those worlds. I'll probably look for the next book in the series at show more some point. show less

" Staying Dead" is the first book in an Urban Fantasy series. It has a lot of the right elements for success: originalish magics, sassy heroine, creepy baddy and lots of foreboding but, about a third of the way through I wasn't sure I'd continue.

The opening assumes an engagement with what happens to Wren, the magic-using thief, that I just wasn't feeling.

Things got better at about the half-way mark as the world-building and plot complexity ratcheted up with the introduction of a powerful secret society and more focus on how Wren came to be where she is.

There are some good action scenes, a wide variety of players, some intriguing rules for using magic and, in the end, I quite liked Wren and her partner. The novel does have a plot with show more reaches a spectacular, violent but clever resolution but on the whole it felt like a series Pilot, loaded with more that-could-be-interesting ooh-what-will-they-do-with-that stuff that the plot itself could sustain. It reminded me a little of Jim Butcher's first Harry Dresden book, "Storm Front" so I'm hoping there are good things to come.

A couple of things distracted me. Firstly the names. I still don't know what the title means? Perhaps the publishers thought it up to sound noirish? And the series title, "A Retriever Novel" gives me images of dopy dogs fetching tennis balls. And the secret society is called "The Silence" which is the sort of name I associate with 1970's college bands that used a Moog and released concept albums with a straight face.

Secondly, the formatting of the ebook is careless. Laura Anne Gilman uses a lot of sub-chapter shifts in point of view and action which I think work well but there is nothing in the layout to tell you when a shift is happening. How hard would it have been to add a few blank lines between shifts? Not doing it seems disrespectful to both writer and reader.

I've bought the next book in the series because I'm hoping that I've found something good here that just got off to a slow start. show less

the world's a bit different from the usual. it's competently written. the most vital characters were also the most minor, though, which seemed a bit odd. i'll keep it, and even buy the next installment, on the strength of that bit of different. but it needs more than it's got to earn a recommendation.

Interesting premise, poor execution... dragged out storyline...

Staying Dead follows the classic 'job gone wrong' premise, and our main character -- who has a Talent, but has gone rogue, but who's a Retriever, though she's the only one of her kind, but since she's rogue she isn't part of 'civilized magic culture', but the magic culture is hidden so no one knows about it anyway, but the Secret Council for magic users wants her under their control -- has to do something to set it right again.

Got that? Well, I'm glad you did, because it took me at least 100 pages to figure out what the heck was going on and what the point of the story was. Sloppy writing, even worse editing, and an inexcusable amount of telling (every few pages the story show more would stop to explain something to the reader, which also lasted a few pages) made the majority of the book nearly unreadable.

So why did I keep going? That's a question I asked myself a few times... because I really wanted it to get better. I liked the concept of the main character, but she was so flat and uninteresting (and didn't seem to enjoy life or her Talent) that I truly wanted to see some change by the end of the book.

Meander, meander, meander... and in the last 50-70 pages we get action, clear writing, and some character development that makes a difference. Huh. Well then.

I've heard that book two is far better than this one, and it would certainly have to be in order to keep this series going. I think a large part of the problem here is that we don't learn how the world works as the story develops: We're plunked right in and the story reads like we already know how everything works (I hate when books do this as it makes things very confusing), but then every so often the whole thing comes to a grinding halt as we're told flat out how something works. Often the explanation is a repeat of something we were told three chapters ago. This is the sort of thing the editor should have caught...

Unless you really, really like Urban Fantasy and want to suffer through this book to get to the second (and supposedly better) book of the series, save yourself the trouble and just pass it by. There are many better written Urban Fantasies on the shelves (possibly even the author's other series') to spend your time with. show less