City of Ghosts [Mass Market Paperback]

** I strongly advise reading Unholy Ghosts and Unholy Magic before reading CITY OF GHOSTS as characters names from the earlier books come up from time to time, the characters relationships are complicated and gaining an understanding to the background of 'The Church' is needed to fully understand the rules here and the way things work **

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Basic background info
(No major spoilers)
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In 1997 every ghost in the world raised up and killed two thirds of the population in just one week. World leaders were powerless, prayers went unanswered, resulting in every government and religion collapsing. Eventually a group were able to imprison most of the ghosts in a huge underground city - they called their organization The Church Of Real Truth.

The Church Of Real Truth is today the world's only power; there is no other government, no other faith, just The Church. They are in the process of hunting the ghosts that remain uncaptured and compensating the unlucky people being haunted. To find the ghosts the Church educates and trains witches [known as debunkers] to find and capture the ghosts, and find the fraudsters faking a haunting to try and defraud money out of the Church.

Cesaria 'Chess' Putnam is one of these debunkers. In fact her recent work on previous cases has put her in high esteem of her superiors. But what they don't know is that she has been leading a double life of sorts. She has a drug addiction and her drug dealer [Bump] views her as one of his lackeys that shall do his bidding for him whenever he so chooses.

Aside from hiding her drug addiction from her employees, Chess is also hiding something from Bump; Her involvement with a rival drug dealer's enforcer - Lex - who has been supplying her with free drugs. As her life becomes more complicated and she has to lie on a regular basis and keep more and more secrets, she takes an increasing amount of drugs to drown her feelings, thoughts and self-disgust.

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In a nutshell
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The church offers Chess a chance to work with the elite Black Squad agency [similar to a FBI type of agency]- but until she agrees to take the case and undergo a magical binding [a magical gagging order] none of the details will be shared with her. Her first instinct is to refuse; She'd have to work with Lauren, the squad's leader who Chess takes an instant dislike to and there's the small matter of the magical bind, which will cause her death if she talks about the case with people who aren't authorized. But she is offered a generous bonus, so - having a growing addiction to handle - she agrees to take the case.

So this is why Chess is now hunting a group who uses black magic, leaves mutilated bodies all over town and who are plotting to overthrow The Church. Seeing as Chess has no luck but bad luck Bump quickly learns how she has been leading Black Squad members over his turf and demands to know what's going on, dragging Chess into even more trouble when she can't tell him. Just when she thinks that life can't get any worse it does; Bump orders Terrible to stick close to Chess and report back to him. Normally Chess would find working closely with Terrible enjoyable, but he now hates her with a passion and if he's not ignoring her he's verbally abusing her.

It looks like it's going to be one hell of a case...

The plot layout for CITY OF GHOSTS is different to the earlier books in that there is only one case Chess is working - before she always had one professional case and one secret one running parallel to each other. This means that the author was able to spend more time fleshing out all of the secondary characters and make the villains even more menacing.

The concept of a magical binding is also used to full advantage; It adds real tension to the story as Chess is unable to warn anyone about the
impending danger when no-one she's working with takes her suspicions seriously. This also provides a realistic reason for her to keep working the case when most other people would run - She's the only person who can see the threat and can literally save the world.

Chess herself isn't someone I should like and root for, but I do. Even as she gobbles her drugs like smarties, uses people for sex and hurts the only person who has looked out for her. It speaks volumes for Stacia Kane's writing ability that I still want to see Chess come out on top. I also love that chess isn't the best of the best at her job, she doesn't do Buffy-style roundhouse kicks and she doesn't have mystical powers developing here, there and everywhere. She has numerous flaws and makes mistakes, shes human.

but I think Chess comes second to Terrible this time around. He's also someone I shouldn't like; He's the enforcer for Chess' drug dealer, so terrorises and beats on people for the money they owe Bump, he admits that he has killed people and is drinking through the job with Chess, childishly ignoring and snubbing her in life-or-death situations. But through it all his hurt, insecurities and feelings of being betrayed are plain to see and I just want to give him a big hug.

I never took to the character Lex in the first two books; But this time I do feel a bit of sympathy for him. I suspect that he may have been using Chess, but she has been using him too; She uses sex to empty her mind and experience the highs - pretty much the same way she uses drugs. I'm left wondering if maybe he has developed feelings for her, whilst she has spent all of the time pining for another man?

I found the two earlier books perfect, but CITY OF GHOSTS has blown them out of the water. It's been a while since I've been this excited over an UF [urban fiction] book (the genre is overcrowded with samey books) and was counting down the days to release; That this series hasn't been more popular is a crime.

** The Downside Ghosts was originally a trilogy, but Stacia has recently confirmed that she is writing a 4h and 5h book for the series for her US publishers. No exact release date yet, but it's planned for autumn 2011/spring 2012. I don't know if they'll be published in the UK, as the series hasn't been as popular here **

This series and I have a love/hate relationship. Really, I've never felt so confused by a book series.

I loathe the fact that Chess is drug user...to the extreme that she pops pills right in the middle of heated action with the bad guys. I wish she was repentant or maybe trying to beat her addiction. Nothing of the sort is even hinted at in the first three books to this Downside series. This makes it extremely difficult to root for Chess. She lies to cover her drug habit. She makes poor choices both in her work life and even more so in her personal life. Sometimes her foggy brain seems to help her in her efforts but just as often it seems to hinder her decision making. I loathe
the slang used by the tough guys in the series. After three books, I am starting to learn the language because I don't have to re-read lines anymore to figure out what the characters are saying.

Now, I've made it three book and I know there are more to come. I highly doubt I will be able to keep my hands off of them. Ms. Kane can really write a book. The action is there, the world building is completely phenomenal. The pages fly by when I sit down to read one of these books. Sometimes I get a little confused, because Chess's way of thinking is altered. The readers are literally reading every thought in Chess's head and those thoughts, especially in mid-action, are all over the place.

"City of Ghosts" is probably the best of the three books thus far. The stakes are extremely high and there are a lot of players involved in the big game here. Chess is good at what she does and it was very evident here. She is also eager to help the few friends she has and she wants to keep them safe.

Also, the resolution between Chess and Terrible had to be one of the most emotional scenes I have read in eons. I felt the tension and the emotion from each of them to the point I almost couldn't stand it anymore. I think I MAY have teared up a little there. Now though, Kane must be very careful about handling this relationship in future book because I (and probably many other readers) am thoroughly invested. Terrible has been the best character in this book since the very beginning. I can't believe I care so much about a murdering drug enforcer.

There are definitely things that keep this series from being perfect in my eyes, but it is a solid, action packed urban fantasy novel. Its core is stronger than many of the others on the book shelves today.

Chess continues to move up in the world...sort of, anyway. She's offered a lucrative opportunity to help the Black Squad investigate a grisly case for the Church of Real Truth and the advance for taking the job is more money than Chess could smoke, snort, or pop in years. Problem is, she has to submit to a binding oath to take it. That means she can't mention anything about the case to anyone not directly connected to the chain of command under penalty of extreme magical pain.

That doesn't please her drug supplier and crime lord Bump at all when he wants answers to why a couple of Churchwitches are stomping around in his territory, and why some of his people have ended up in bloody pieces. He forces Chess to take Terrible with her on investigations without her new Black Squad partner, and after the events between them in Unholy Magic, neither one of them are too comfortable with that.

Chess' investigation points to the return of an insidious threat to the Church and stumbles upon intensely strong and evil-feeling magic the likes of which she's never seen or heard of before. Despite the rift between her and Terrible, and the ache of the loss of his friendship, Chess still has to do her job, and she still has to have help from Lex to do so. When people start dying, when the tenets of her job start being undermined in the worst possible way, Chess has no choice but to use every possible tool at her disposal to stop a power hungry organization from destroying the world as she knows it. No matter how much it costs her in the end.

One of the best things about reaching the end of this book, aside from the total awesomeness of the story itself and the glimmers of true progress in Chess' personal life, is that Kane as an agreement for three more books in the series, and so we'll be seeing more of Chess in 2011. I, for one, am thrilled, as I've mentioned before, both she and this series have grown on me.

Tragically flawed, almost helplessly broken, Chess still takes pride in her job, and that's exactly what comes under threat in this book. Her reaction to that is understandably fierce, and it was perhaps the first time I've seen Chess fight for something beyond her own often selfish needs and desires. She's always done her job, but even when doing it, her vices have often gotten in the way or compromised her duty, and she's always chosen her vices over the job in each case. While it didn't come down to that sort of choice in this book, I saw Chess draw lines in the sand that she refused to cross, and cross lines she needed to cross to both stop a big bad from tearing apart the world and to make some progress in her personal life.

In a lot of ways, those triumphs could be seen as small, but for the normally hopeless and self destructive Chess, any progress is impressive progress. She continues to be a compelling, if unsympathetic character, and the duality and complexity of her nature offers up a lot of potential for meaty, dark storytelling. The world of Downside Ghosts is harsh, gritty, and unforgiving, and Chess thrives there in a way that seems utterly realistic, if a bit heartbreaking. Combine the two and you have a series that is difficult and distasteful at times, but thoroughly entertaining.

I don't know if I'd say that the external conflict in this story was as interesting to me, or as well told, as those in the previous two books. There were several instances where big reveals didn't surprise me at all, and a couple of times that plot twists could be seen coming miles away, but as I've said in my reviews of Unholy Ghosts and Unholy Magic, the draw of this series and my impetus behind continuing it lie in Chess' internal conflicts and the damage from them, not external, so while I don't think the threat in this book was as thrilling as the others, this is still my favorite book of the three for Chess' development.

It's going to be a long wait for more from Downside Ghosts, and I have no doubt I'll return to the first three books in the series before getting a chance at another. Kudos to Kane for penning a stark, bleak, decaying paradise of character and story that does more than entertain - it leaves an impression. Well done. 4.5 Stars.

Reviewed for One Good Book Deserves Another.

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