Hold Me Closer, Necromancer

Sam is perfecting the slacker lifestyle. He dropped out of college after one year and is now slinging burgers at a fast-food joint in his hometown of Seattle. However, a chance encounter one evening brings him to the attention of the most powerful necromancer in the area and Sam suddenly discovers that he's a necromancer too. Now his life is really screwed up and his chances of surviving the next week look increasingly slim.

A darker YA fantasy novel, this book definitely has a fun element as well. Sam and his group of friends have an authentically sarcastic sense of humour that makes the book a delight to read. I enjoyed McBride's stylistic choices of making chapters about Sam first person while any other perspectives were done in show more limited third person. She also creates a fascinatingly dark supernatural fantasy world that will have a definite appeal for adults. In addition, she crafts a decently suspenseful plot that it was easy to get caught up in. The book resolves all of the main plot points but leaves an opening for a continuation of the narrative, which I would definitely take a peek at. show less

This book is all kinds of awesome. For a debut author, this girl knows her shit. Its funny, like in a brilliant sort of way. The characters are nothing short of amazing, these are people I would want to be friends with (and some I definitely would not like to be friends with) that are fully fleshed, complex characters. The myths and creatures used were fantastic. I had never heard of necromancy or harbingers before this novel, but both intrigued me. The funny thing was...all of it felt very real, despite the whole magical thing. I loved the songs as chapter titles and I liked having Sam's pov, but also the third person pov once in a while to get the full story, usually I am not a fan when book switch narration type like that, but it show more didn't disrupt the story at all. I got a feel of Christopher Moore with this novel. Everyday slacker like guy thrust into this magical or dangerous situation with humor. Brilliant. Do yourself a favor and pick up this book. show less

A solid 3 stars. I liked the voice, the writing was funny, likeable characters. I wanted to enjoy it more, but I have this issue now where every book has to have werewolves and I'm just sort of werefatigued. I also felt like there was a lot of 90s nostalgia, like the author and me both went to high school in the same place and era, and it shone through making the characters more like 30 something hipsters than teens/young twenties. This one leans towards adult as the main character is out of high school.

This book is just as adorable as can be. I picked it up because it has been the recipient of quite a few awards, so I was a bit surprised (in spite of the title!) to see that it included not only paranormal characters, but a number of new ones I never even knew existed! (...or that don't exist, as the case may be.) Nevertheless, instead of making the book seem more absurd, it just made it way more diverting. The author has a great sense of humor, and a knack for writing sensitive, well-rounded characters of all ages and both genders (except for the bad guys, who are all bad, but in a bumbling bad way that just adds to the fun). I found myself laughing out loud throughout, and delighting at the chapter titles, which are all the names of show more songs or obvious variations thereof.

Sam LaCroix is sort of a loser-ish college drop-out working at a fast food restaurant when he discovers, quite by accident, that he is not who he thought he was. In fact, he is a necromancer, or someone who can summon and speak to the dead. Until now, however, his power has been bound up by spells and hidden, even from him. When Sam is "detected" by Douglas Montgomery, the most powerful necromancer in the area, the cat is out of the bag. Before Sam even understands what he is, he has been abducted by Douglas and put into a cage with Brid, a very attractive hybrid werewolf-fey hound. Sam and Brid desperately need to join forces and escape before Douglas is ready to eliminate them.

Evaluation: Although this story has werewolves, necromancers, satyrs, harbingers, and everything in between, I hope that doesn’t cause anyone not to give this book a chance. The dialogue is full of snark and very humorous, the characters are loveable (i.e., the good ones, at any rate), and the plot is quick-paced. This is not "heavy" fiction; you need to be in the right mood to enjoy this light-hearted romp. show less

How can you not love that title? Seriously, how can you? It gives you tone (tongue-in-cheek humor) and content (necromancers, or more broadly, wizardry in a modern setting), plus it rolls right off the tongue. Who cares if it's paraphrased from an old Elton John song? It's awesome. So I had some expectations of quality when I cracked this book open. And they were mostly met. Mostly. Hold Me Closer, Necromancer is a good read start to finish, but it's a somewhat better read at the start than it is at the finish. Somewhere along the way, it runs out of steam.

Read the full review at Lupines and Lunatics

And this is how you make me buy a book without much caring about the blurb (yes, I did read it, but I was already pretty sure I was going to read the book no matter what). I'm talking about the title of course, with its cheeky silliness and intriguing contradiction. Even better, the book delivers just that - it's cheeky and fun and often quite scary, and the characters are GREAT - and also, surprise, cheeky and funny, in a teenage horror comedy "ogod I know it's going to get me killed but I just can't keep my mouth shut" way. I loved how there was no sudden "with great power comes great responsibility" thing (at least not yet), and the characters were clearly out of their depths for most of the book, clutching their skateboards to their show more chests and trying to deal with the sudden supernatural element in their lives.

It's sometimes a bit over the top, or rather, sometimes the over-the-top-stuff gets a bit too ambitious; there's pretty easy acceptance by almost everyone who's exposed to the supernatural stuff, for example. On one hand I was ready to just suspend my disbelief willingly because I thought the author deliberately chose to do it like that, so as not to bog the book down with rationalisation and attempts to be realistic, but on the other hand I sometimes questioned if I *should* be more disdainful of the easy way some things were handled. In the end there were some thin lines where it could have gone bad for me, but it never really did. I was having too much fun.

Some caveats (is there a plural? oh well): I guess some people might not quite like the combination of comedy and death; for me it was part of the over-the-top thing. The switching between the 1st person protagonist POV and the 3rd person omniscient narrator for the side characters can bring a slight stutter to your reading experience; it's tied to chapters, however, so there's no in-paragraph switching, and the 3rd person chapters are generally kept to just one of the side characters, too. I didn't mind that much and actually liked the multiple points of view despite that slightly strange choice of mixing 1st and 3rd person, but others might.

Anyway, the book is great fun and rather brilliant for a debut, the story is refreshing and full of good ideas and manages to tie standard mythical creatures into a completely new type of plotline and setting. I just like that here's a nice young protagonist with a gift that is usually linked to soulless baddies and corrupted power-hungry old men. There's werewolves and some romance, which smacks of typical paranormal romance, but the romance is of the good kind that adds to the plot instead of constituting it, and the werewolves or other token supernatural beings are all a bit different than what you expect. The author has a strong and very even voice, and the characters are distinct and rounded (although Sam and Ramon are somewhat samey - then again, they are best friends. And I loved Frank), and I hope to read more about them in the next book, which I'm totally going to get, and soon. And I can't wait to read more about the lawn gnomes. show less

I guarantee you, if you read this book: (1) You will laugh; and (2) You will want to eat some waffles. I have eaten three waffles in the past two days just because of this book. (Fine, it was also because someone else made waffle batter and it takes a minute to make once all that work is done:)) But in all seriousness, this book is buckets of awesome. Samhain Corvus LaCroix (Sam) is a Seattle college dropout working at a fast food restaurant with a few of his friends and generally slacking it up in his off-time. After an unfortunate potato hockey accident behind the restaurant, Sam comes into contact with an intimidating man who recognizes Sam for what he is—a necromancer. Clueless, Sam is faced with an ultimatum before he even comes show more to terms with his dead-controlling ways. Craziness ensues.

Author Lish McBride uses short song snippets as the titles for the chapters and they are fabulous. I think my heart just about exploded when I got to the one entitled “Make A Little Birdhouse in Your Soul.” (My first concert besides Raffi and the parentally-enforced-you-must-love-being-Irish Chieftains concerts I went to with the family was They Might Be Giants, which I think is a totally respectable first concert, no?) Anyway, I loved every single one of them. It might be a little annoying to some people but I thought it went well with the overall campiness. Crowinator got there before me but she is dead-on that this book reminded me of a mixture of Buffy’s fun and the snarkiness of Dead Like Me. Sam very much reminded me of George from Dead Like Me—a sarcastic yet compassionate slacker working at a just-for-the-money job, only Sam is far nicer than George ever was. And he has his kickass friends, one of whom is a head in a bag. Yeah, you read that right. A head. In a bowling bag. The sense of humor is dead-on and the story was fun in the same way that Paranormalcy was. It felt fresh in a genre where originality can be hard to come by.

This book has it all, and I almost feel like Stefon from SNL could do a wonderful recap of what this book has to offer: Crazy garden gnomes that want to kill you, a talking cat that is really a dragon, sexy werewolves, a head in a bowling bag, medicine bags that make people invisible to supernatural radar, a Catholic schoolgirl harbringer that loves waffles, sex in a cage, and ZOMBIES. You get the idea. The pacing is quick but unhurried and the story arc is complete at the end yet leaves itself open to future books that I really hope will exist despite a lack of parenthetical series markers. It would be a huge shame if this was a standalone.

This is actually more like 4.5 stars but I'm gonna leave it at 4 instead of 5 for differentiation purposes. show less