Review: Thunderbird Falls by C.E. Murphy

[megwrites]

Title: Thunderbird Falls (Walker Papers, Book 2)
Author: C.E. Murphy (mizkit; CEMurphy.net.
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Page Count:
Publisher: Luna (Harlequin)






Basic Plotline: After the events of Urban Shaman, Joanne Walker (born Siobhan Walkingstick) finds herself again using the powers she's not certain she wants or trusts to save Seattle when a freakish heatwave arrives and a coven comes to her, claiming that she's supposed to join them in bringing Virissong, a long banished spirit, back to Seattle to bring magic back into the world and set things right. Only, Virissong may not be what he seems.


Positives: For all that I think the first book in this series was better than the second, I still like the heroine much better than your average urban fantasy heroine. First off, there still remains a refreshing lack of leather, vampires, or improbable high heels.

I was also glad to see Gary, who I had enjoyed as a supporting character, make his return in his book instead of being forgotten by the wayside. It was nice to see some continuity with the first book.

My biggest delight was finding out that, thank goodness, Joanne hadn't gotten herself magically promoted from mechanic to hardboiled detective without first having to do what every cop must do - walk a beat, wear a uniform. I enjoy the occasional glimpses into being a beat cop and Murphy did a good job of making that seem like an abstract idea and more like a real job that a real human being does.

The tension between Morrison and Walker is palpable and delicious. Their love/hate is still juicy, though all too rare in this book. I wish more time had focused on them, because I really liked him as a character. He cares, but he doesn't let anyone get away with shit. Which every good boss should do.

I like that Joanne still uses her car fixing metaphors for healing, and honestly, I wish that the author had delved more into that. Why cars? Why does this metaphor work so well? Because I enjoy reading about character who do something so expertly that it becomes it's own kind of zen for them, even if it's something I know nothing about (like cars).

The most pleasant surprise was that when it came time for the Sex Magic, Joanne just said no and made it stick. In most books, people say "oh no, there's no other way to do the spell but to have sex!" and of course, cue the cheesy, porntastic sex scene where the heroine actually likes her dubiously consensual sex and the hero throbs with muscles and manhoods and whatnot. This time, a heroine actually says, "Um, hell no, if it requires sex, then this spell just ain't happenin'" and doesn't give in.

Negatives: Unfortunately, sequels often don't live up to the promise of their predecessors. While a decent read, the first book was better by far.

My main complaints are that the plot did not seem to justify it's length, and that Murphy got a bit carried away with the metaphysical, acid-trip descriptions of the otherworld. There were times when I completely lost touch with the narrative because of the abstract nature of the descriptions and how hard it was to root that in anything physical or literal that I understood. While I'm usually okay with abstract things, there were times that I think the mind-trippy descriptions went a bit overboard and were completely unnecessary.

Which is part of the reason the plot didn't seem to justify an entire novel. It didn't seem like enough actual things happened. I honestly think this might have made a better short story or novella than a full blown novel, especially since one could see the outcome from a mile off.

I was disappointed that everything was so obvious from the get-go. The coven summoning up a spirit to enter the world with powerful magic? Gee, I wonder if that's going to go horribly wrong. The kid who has been fighting cancer prolongedly? I wonder if he's going to die in a spectacular fashion when an attempt to save his life goes wrong. I could see that Virissong was going to be the bad guy from a long way off.

One thing that frustrates me is that this plot suffers from Five Minute Syndrome. And by FMS, I mean, that this plot would not have happened if Joanne, had, at a couple of key points, taken Five Minutes to either ask the right questions (and by right, I mean, freakin' obvious) or if Coyote had taken Five Minutes to explain the facts of life to her. Because it seems like this entire plot is one big cosmic hiccup caused by having someone (Coyote) who can't be arsed to explain something when it direly needs explaining and having someone else (Joanne) who can't be arsed to ask something when she really ought to.

The scene where she is sitting in her garden and her "teacher" shows up out of the blue, if Joanne had bothered to ask the obvious, "Umm, who the hell are you and how did you know I needed a teacher and how did you get here and why are you just teaching me for free? Don't most people charge for this?" and the entire plot would not have happened.

I also felt like there were places where the characterizations fell a bit flat, both for Joanne and other supporting characters. The kids speak in Little Kid Speak, and Gary sometimes becomes Old Italian Cabby Guy. I felt a little hurt that, of course, the perky fat girl, Faye, was at turns either stupid, deluded, or outright evil towards the end and it seemed Joanne took a disliking to her immediately for no reason that would be apparent to the readers at that point in time.

Overall, the negatives do take away from the positives, which is sad. Because I liked this heroine and I like this author a lot. I'll give the third book a peak when I get my hands on it at some point and see if maybe the third one is an improvement.


CoC Score: 4. This is probably the lowest score I've assigned to a book with a CoC heroine, but I feel I have to because a lot of mistakes were made in this book when it came to handling race and Native American issues. I want to give it a higher score because I like this author, I think she's a nifty human being and I loved her Inheritor's Cycle books like mad - but I can't justify giving it a high score. Even with a half-Cherokee protagonist, because there were a lot of hurtful tropes that appeared, unchecked, in this novel.

I don't know what sort of research was done on this novel, but either it wasn't thoroughly done or wasn't thoroughly used.

For one, the heroine being half-Cherokee doesn't check out very well with the novel or the facts given. She claims to have grown up on the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina, yet she says she knows precious little of her people or their history/mythology. And I don't buy that. Even when she says she deliberately tried not to listen at all.

You don't grow up in that environment without coming out with some knowledge, even accidentally. I tried not to pay attention to math in school and failed or damn near failed most my classes but I can still recite the Pythagorean Theorem and probably could even do a little algebra if my life depended on it.

More than that, the character describes herself and identifies as white, and that was what bothered me most, because this character is not white, and would be acutely aware of that. Trust me, ask anyone who's grown up bi-racial, you are made aware of your non-white roots very quickly. Not to mention that being bi-racial on an Indian Reservation would also have made her very aware of race and race issues.

But she acts like a white person who has that 1/200th part Magical Indian Princess blood rather than someone who has actually had live and breathe the culture and reality of being non-white in America.

Certain little bits in the novel bear this out disappointingly, such as:

It wasn't that we were white in a predominantly black crowd

and

It was the only time my Cherokee heritage showed up in my coloring

First off, the character shouldn't be identifying as white. Not after living on a reservation. Second, she shouldn't be calling it her magical Indian princess blood "Cherokee heritage". If she's lived on a reservation, if she's been with her people for any amount of time, it's not her heritage. It's her life. It's her personal history.

But this (from the scene in the final battle) was what really stung:

Apparently I wasn't supposed to belittle myself while sharing flesh with mythical Native American archetypes

There are so, so many things wrong with this. For one, she uses the phrase "Native American" archetypes when she is, herself, specifically Cherokee. That's what's most maddening about this novel for me. So much of the mythology is either invented out of whole cloth when it need not be, or so non-specific as to be ridiculous. There were many times when I find myself saying, "Um, that's not Cherokee, that's Navajo" or things like that. Even the cover art itself tells you what you can expect from this novel as far as sensitivity and well thought out inclusion go. Notice that all the Native American symbols on her are decorative. A beaded belt, a bracelet, a symbol on a wall. They're all just little details, not big important central facts.

You can't use Cherokee and Native American interchangeably in all contexts and this novel does that. Especially not this one, because the mythology that she envisions, that she gets from her specific people, the Eastern Cherokee? Is not shared by all other Native Americans. They are not all the same. There is no such thing as "Native American mythology" or "Native American culture". That's like saying "European culture" or "European language". You have to be more specific.

Imagine if someone came over here and conquered all of the North American continent as we know it and ran us around, killed us, relocated us thither and yon, and then eventually started to write books about us, about the ancestors they had killed and eliminated. And imagine if you picked up those books and read about how a character who was supposed to be like you, but instead you saw a story where someone felt that being an American was the same as being a Canadian or a Mexican person. So, in this story you had someone who was supposed to be from Ohio but they were shown speaking French and wearing a sombrero and that even though the character was supposed to be, say, Methodist, they were shown with a rosary, giving confession to the priest. After the genocide and the forcible relocation, you'd be pissed. Very pissed. Especially if this version seemed to be the only one that ever made it into print. The version where you're a French speaking Mexican Methodist from Ohio when you're not, when you never were. When that widely popularized, stereotyped version is all that anyone thinks of you. You'd be offended if, suddenly, Canadian = American = Mexican. If French = Spanish = English. If you = them.

That's what you're doing to people when you, the autho author, try to roll every single Native American tribe, nation, and group into one big mystical, Earth-loving, kumbayahing whole. These tribes, these nations? They were very different, separate peoples with very different religions, beliefs, mythologies.

You can't just say "Native American archetype", that's crap and it's wrong on so many levels. There are so many different religions among this group you call "Native Americans", many of which don't feature coyotes or eagles at ALL. This is a character who is supposed to have lived and had some exposure to Cherokee history, religion, and culture. This is not some ignorant white person who's never met a real Cherokee person in her life. This is someone who should know better.

But they don't, because this character was never really Cherokee in any way. This character is a white woman with a thin veneer of color put over her, and that bothers me. Because the Cherokee, and indeed all Native Americans, are not decorations.

One can't help but wondering if the only motivation for having Joanne be half-Cherokee was so that the author could justify using mystical faux-Native American symbols and mythology, because somehow Native American = more mystical and spiritual and connected to the Earth than other people.

So for all that I like this author and want to like this book, I can't thinking about how much it hurts, for a lot of people.


GLBT Score: 5. Billy the Crossdressing Cop makes another appearance, but he is decidedly straight. Other than that there are no GLBT characters or discussions thereof. There isn't a lot of sexuality in this novel one way or the other, and Joanne doesn't have a love life to speak of, so it actually falls into rather neutral territory if you're looking for Urban Fantasy that doesn't beat you over the head with heterosexuality and heteronormativity.


Gender Score: 9. The heroine is really strong, though I wish she could have been smarter. There are plenty of women of all shapes and sizes in this novel.