Staying Dead

 

Staying Dead by Laura Anne Gilman was my book for Urban Fantasy on the Eclectic Challenge.

Most of Staying Dead occurs in Manhattan.  Wren Valare is a retriever or thief if you wish who finds things that have been missing and brings them back.  She is hired to find a cornerstone that has a spell that was cast upon it.  She uses her friends to help her:  P.B. who is a minor demon, a mage who has lost his mind, and her business partner, Sergei.  Miss Valare is a Talent, which means she uses what we who are nulls call magic to help her in her work.  It turns out that a ghost was in the cornerstone and does not want to return to it.  The client will not pay unless the ghost is returned.

There is a Council that oversees Talent but Wren is a lonejack and takes cases she wants to take.  There is also a group called the Silence who is trying to recruit Wren and have Sergei be her handler.

This is a long book and even though I did look at the very end, I still had to read the book to find out how they got there.  Wren and Sergei work well together and others can see they are in love but they do not kiss until near the end of the book.  The "magic" Wren uses is fueled by current which comes from the ground and can cause power blackouts in the immediate area.

I did enjoy reading this book even though it is over 500 pages long.  I wish I had more time to read it in larger chunks than I did as it had descriptions of the people and locations.  I would say that the use of demons and ghosts would make it a fantasy as would the translocation ability that Wren uses.  I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to believe in "magic".