Stray Souls

Stray Souls by Kate Griffin, Magicals Anonymous #1

London’s soul has gone missing. Lost? Kidnapped? Murdered? Nobody knows – but when Sharon Li unexpectedly discovers she’s a shaman, she is immediately called upon to use her newfound powers of oneness with the City to rescue it from a slow but inevitable demise.

The problem is, while everyone expects Sharon to have all the answers – from the Midnight Mayor to Sharon’s magically-challenged self-help group – she doesn’t have a clue where to start.

But with London’s soul missing and the Gate open, there are creatures loose that won’t wait for her to catch up before they go hunting.

Urban Fantasy is becoming ever more popular in the recent years and the first UF series that I started reading was Kate Griffin’s Matthew Swift and was utterly amazed by what she had put on paper. I liked the whole ordeal with Matthew Swift very much. Kate Griffin wrote the first book Stray Souls in a new series called Magicals Anonymous last year, and this was definitely a book high on my to read list. The second book in the series is out this summer called The Glass God. Kate Griffin is the penname under which Catherine Webb, known for her many excellent children’s books, writes UF.

Stray Souls doesn’t follow the eccentric Matthew Swift, the Midnight Mayer this time. Instead Kate Griffin introduces you to a new main protagonist, Sharon Li. Who has a job working in a coffeeshop as a barista, but doesn’t really manages to get further in life. She isn’t pleased with the job either, has a terrible boss but her co-worker do make it acceptable. When Sharon finds out about her new shamanistic abilities she doesn’t know what to do with it and seeks help in a self help group known as the Magicals Anonymous. Sharon’s character was just as solid as Matthew’s but does have a different personality and the two series are a bit different though. Magicals Anonymous approaches the storyline with more humor than horror elements. It is the former part that you see mostly back in Sharon’s character, though she doesn’t really know what to do with her new found abilities she stays optimistic and tries to deal with it the best she can and all throughout the series her more kind hearted approach to deal with the flaws of the other members of Magical Anonymous is great to read about, her character really grows on you. And moreover along the lines, when Sharon is growing into her new role as Urban Shaman, she really get that confidence part going which was just super.

I was actually amazed by how well Kate Griffin introduced the other members of Magical Anonymous and some of the other characters. Even though Sharon is the main protagonist of the series, Kate Griffin invests a lot of time and effort into showing what the secondary cast are all about. This wasn’t done on the fly but neatly integrated into the whole story and didn’t feel as an information dump. This added a lot of depth to the character cast. The important characters a get a sort of “confession” where they tell about what they are and more about themselves and in the majority of the cases this was just hilarious to read about. Some of the members of Magicals Anonymous that I enjoyed the most were: Sammy the goblin, a bit foul mouthed goblin and tutor to Sharon, Kevin the Vampire, who has issues. A vampire picky about whose blood to drink, is the person carrying any diseases and are they on a healthy diet, he is bordering on OCD behaviour. Another one was Rhys, a human druid, but has allergies for, I think, almost everything, this is also the reason why he couldn’t complete his training, and lastly Sally, a banshee with a eye for art, and isn’t able to speak but writes on a pad. Now all in all the single members of Magicals Anonymous were just superbly put together and were great stuff to read about. Kate Griffin managed to neatly and cleverly introduce them all in the storyline and all let them play their part. And even Matthew Swift pays a visit! Good stuff overall.

Next to the amazingly rich and satisfying line-up of characters, Stray Souls also has a lot of other things that work in it’s advantage and the first being the layout of the book. Kate Griffin chose to keep the chapters pretty short going from a single page to six of a maximum. This added a nice pacing to the book. Secondly her writing style is highly. Her easy and approachable writing style really draws and engages the reader into the story. Kate Griffin knows when to do what creating  the perfect moments, when to highlight specific things or let them remain obscure. Like I already mentioned above, where the Matthew Swift series had a more darker tone to it, Magicals Anonymous felt that it was more meant to humor the reader.

The story of Stray Souls, was executed in the fine details as well, there was a great start up of Sharon, creating the self-help group Magicals Anonymous, with the clever introduction of Sammy her tutor and the obscure entries of The Midnight Mayor into it. The first part of the book didn’t really show any action but put the emphasis more on creating the new storyline. The time invested in creating the new setting of the Shaman side to the world was done neatly, you learned about the sorcerers in Matthew Swift but introducing the new class into the new series was done with careful consideration. The storyline moves pretty fast and halfway into Stray Souls there is already the revealing of the bad guy in the book. Showing what is plan. Now from this point on I actually had some reservations as to how the last part of the book might follow through on this. But I must admit that from this point onwards the book really really took off as you are thrown in a roller-coaster ride through London along with the Magicals Anonymous. This early revealing only allowed Kate Griffin to work her magic even more.

With Stray Souls Kate Griffin proves again that she is on top of her game when it comes down to writing urban fantasy. She deserves a place up top. With her first series Matthew Swift she was a force to be reckoned with and Magical Anonymous only further shows this. Stray Souls is a powerful story and being set in the same world as her earlier series, Kate Griffin took enough time to seamlessly blend this story into the already existing background of her created universe, which all truly paid off. Approaching the story with a more humorous than horror side was a great change of scenery as you even saw The Midnight Mayor from a different perspective. Kate Griffin’s books are compulsory reading material. Period.