Mountain Echoes (Walker Papers #8) by C.E. Murphy

Joanne has barely had time to process what happened in Ireland when she receives news her father is missing. She quickly returns to North Carolina, to a place she hasn’t been since a child, to discover not only is her father missing, but so is the man who fathered her child.

He Master is there, seeking to tap into the devastating pain and loss suffered by the Native Americans to power evil beyond imagining; unless they can stop it.

But also there are the people Joanne long left behind, not all of whom are that willing to welcome her back, even if she has finally embraced her legacy of a shaman. There’s also Aida, the son she gave up at birth and a powerful shaman in his own right – and a source of both emotional and mystical turmoil.

Joanne has, in many ways, completely her journey of development in this book and the last book. Last book she confronted so many of the issues she had with her mother – and this book she does the same with her father and with Aidan, the son she gave up for adoption. It’s not easy, there’s some heavy emotional content there, but it’s handled in a very reasonable and mature level – no dramatic angst, not seething rage, no losing their sense of priorities or avoiding the actual plot and disaster they are facing. It also reflects Joanne’s personal growth – she has finally decided to put away her desire for an instruction manual – because she has been doing this for some time now and she’s been managing and achieving great things. Joanne acknowledges her own skill – her own mastery. When her dad does things differently, she accepts that they do things differently, not better or worse. When she does something her dad says is impossible, she doesn’t think she’s doing something wrong, she just knows she does something different from her dad.

Joanne has reached an excellent point where she is willing to learn from others, but not feel inferior for it and not feel like she has to do anything their way – while still being confident in her skills and her achievements and finally settling on the idea that she is strong, she can do things others cannot and there’s no problem with her doing just that. Even if it is unwise at times. It’s a wonderful development after books of denial, books of panic, books of her messing things up epicly through ignorance and confusion and now her finally reaching the end of that path. I love her growth

Not just with magic – but relationships as well, recognising her old problems, her old grudges, when she was often unfair or unthinking or how her perception was skewed. Through a more mature, wiser eye, Joanne looks back at herself and her old home and a fair whack of complex feelings about it

Review: Thunderbird Falls, by C.E Murphy, book 2 of the Walker Papers.

Joanne Walker, or Siobhan Walking Stick and reluctant shaman, returns to face her powers that she can’t keep running from. After the vast events of Urban Shaman, she is intimidated by the power and the responsibility that comes with it – but she can’t deny the damage she did in saving the city last time, nor can she deny her urge to heal. After months of neglect, she’s finally acknowledges she needs to learn more, she needs to explore her powers and she needs to use them – to heal, to help and to fix what has been broken.

Thankfully, she finds a teacher who is willing to pull her stubbornly through the nature of her powers, allow her to explore them further and develop them to their potential regardless of Joanne’s reluctance; though Joanne still has a lot of trouble accepting – her power and her teacher.

And she can hardly focus on her power alone. Her friend, Gary, is in the hospital after a heart attack, giving her more impetus to learn to heal. There’s a mysterious murder in her gym which, her boss is thrilled to learn, has a supernatural element; and she is approached by a local witch coven who are uniting their powers to try and help fix the damage to the city and summon an ancient shaman from the spirit world

But the witches may be in over their heads, things are moving too fast for Joanne to keep up and she’s not sure who to trust or what to do as more and more demands are put on her, not all of which she is comfortable with. But is this reasonable or her own reluctance to accept the supernatural getting in the way?

Storywise I had a little bit of a genre-savvy moment that almost detracted a fair bit from the book for me. I basically pegged the villain long before the villain was supposed to be obvious. As I saw Joanne become ever more involved in the villain’s plans it was frustrating to me because the villainous intent was pretty obvious to me.

I can’t say it was unrealistic storywise, though. Joanne, because of her interactions with Coyote, had reason to trust the people she did. I think she threw herself too quickly and too deeply into the plans of the coven, but even then she did some basic fact checking before. There was no reason for Joanne to not do what she did, her every action was reasonable, even if mistaken, and it didn’t require foolishness or spunkiness for her to do what she did. Though, it did require a little naivety. I’m torn because I’m not sure how much of my objection is based on, as I say, genre-savviness and pattern recognition because internally, within the book, there is no real reason to be suspicious.

Other than that, the story is excellently well paced, perhaps a little rushed, again there’s the sense that Joanne has 100 things to do and not enough time to do it in – I wonder sometimes when she finds the time to sleep (she hardly does). But the number of plot lines going on sometimes feel like when Joanne takes some time to do something important, like visit Gary or look after Melinda’s kids, there’s a sense that she doesn’t have time for it. I think the author did an excellent job of conveying a sense of urgency – but the sense of urgency was so emphasised that it felt like Joanne should be running everywhere – and if she weren’t, what was she doing?

Review: Urban Shaman by C.E. Murphy, Book 1 of the Walker Papers

Joanne Walker - or Siobhan Walkingstick - is a rational woman. A sensible woman, a practical mechanic, she has very little to do with woo-woo of any kind and seems to have developed and aversion to it.  Along with shunning anything paranormal, Joanne spends much of her life running from her past, and this includes her heritage as an Indigenous woman.

And then, after feeling a desperate urge to save a woman she saw fleeing for her life from a plane, (can we just pause for a moment and say how ridiculous this is, there’s suspending belief, and then there’s stupidity) she has a near death experience at the hands of an ancient Celtic god, before putting herself together at the instructions of Coyote.

At this point, it became much much harder to ignore magic and the fantastic. Not least of which because ancient Celtic gods and demi-gods are now killing people and Joanne maybe the only person who can stop them.


There are some huge positive elements to this book. The story is nicely paced and fun with plenty of interesting twists and turns as Joanna tracks down her adversaries - after figuring out exactly what they are and what they’re doing. And, for that matter, who is doing what and who they actual enemy is. It’s knotty, it twists and there are many points in the book where I didn’t know where we were going or why - it’s nice to have some unpredictability, especially in a mystery. All in all, I managed to read the book cover to cover only stopping when forced to - I didn’t want to put it down, I didn’t want to stop reading. It made me smile and it made me curious - a very nice combination if you can pull it off - and it didn’t make me bored at all.

The way the magic is handled is interesting and nicely described. It makes me want to learn a lot more and to figure out where the parameters are. I do wish we’d actually had some cultural references for the magic, rather than just the descriptions, but still it’s a nice, rather unique system that I very much want to see more of. I love her emphasis on healing - even when it comes to hunting down a killer, it’s all about healing and a magical drive to heal and help people. I also like the blending of both Celtic and Native American traditions, it has a great deal of potential but it could certainly do to be developed more.

I’m curious about the world and how accepting everyone is of the fantastic. How so many of the police around Joanne see her magic and kind of accept it. But then, I can see the dynamic - after all, if you live in a world were magic is real, you’re going to have more people with experiences who are willing to believe it. And police are a group who are highly likely to be exposed to the shadowy corners of the world.

I’m also quite impressed that there didn’t appear to be any kind of romance (albeit a couple of budding ones). not that I’m against their being a romance, but by the signs of it we’re not going to be fast-tracked into a hurried, rather convoluted romance that consumes the story as is so often the case

The characters also interact extremely well. Joanne’s banter with Gary is hilarious and they have a real, powerful friendship even if it did come about quickly. Joanne bounces off her colleagues in the police station extremely well. I do love that in a story - powerful personal relationships and great, natural interaction