Ah, gang, we are back in the Unnatural Quarter.
Let’s not pussyfoot around though.
If you just want to cut to the chase, here it is.
We’re 12 books, three short story collections and nine novels, into this series.
I have reviewed all of them on this site, as well as some of the short stories individually.
So yeah, I loved this book, I love this series, and I love this world.
If that’s all you were looking for, there you have it, thanks for stopping by the freedom, hope you’ll come back soon.
Now that the normies are gone, sit back, relax, and I’ll tell ya why I love it.
This is your creepy, crawly, and official ***SPOILER ALERT***!
A Maggia war has broken out in the UQ!
When the Mafia Don controlling to illicit wolfsbane trade gets popped and sent up the river for all of eternity, his nephew and a former underling rise up and try to fill the new void of power.
Meanwhile, a Werecat has up and disappeared leaving his wife with an overwhelming litter of Werekittens, the mummy author of the ancient “A Game Of Pharaohs” series of scrolls, and, maybe worst of all, the most terrible monster you can possibly imagine comes to the Quarter to visit Alvina…her mother, Rhonda!
One of the things I really dig about this series is that, this far in, a shit ton of elements have been revealed about the universe and some times it seems like they’ve been forgotten, but if you wait long enough it all comes back and gives you a great sense of continuity.
That’s not to say it’s inaccessible to new readers, but it definitely rewards long time readers.
In particular, I was happy to see a few characters return from Hair Raising, the third novel, which just so happened to be my first and, possibly, favorite book in the series.
As mentioned above, and can be expected from a KJA book, there are multiple storylines in the air spinning like plates.
And as is the usual in a Shamble novel, they all converge at the same inconvenient time.
While everything in the mob war is coming to a head, Alvina is vampnapped from school by Rhonda.
Now, despite the SPOILER warning above, normally I don’t like to so blatantly reveal the conclusions to plotlines in these reviews because I want to leave shit for you all to discover, but this one is of particular note for a few reasons.
The first of which is that there’s no concrete resolution to it.
Dan and McGoo, thanks to some quick thinking from Alvina, track the kid and Rhonda to a blood bar and bust her.
In chapter 41 of 46, McGoo tells Dan, and I quote, “Let me handle this, Shamble. I’ll make sure she doesn’t get off on a technicality.” and then that’s it!
Not a single other mention in the rest of the 31 pages of this novel.
I found that odd that KJA would leave such a major thread just dangling like that…until I gave it a think for a couple seconds!
That led me to my second odd reason, Rhonda is now perfectly poised to make another ass disturbingly thorny appearance in this series!
You see, gang, from book 1, Death Warmed Over, Rhonda has been painted as a mistake that both Shamble and McGoohan regretted making, at least until Alvina showed up at the bus station with that note pinned to her.
So to have a great, prickly foil like that baked in to make at least one more appearance gets me excited for the future of this series.
Because, not only is she disgusted by Dan & McGoo, she’s not a fan of unnaturals either.
Ultimately, a get rich scheme exploiting Alvina is what brought her to town, so I can see her getting roped into other schemes to either exploit unnaturals, or even trying to “cure” Alvina, against the kid’s will.
Maybe I’m looking too deeply into all of this, maybe I need to put away the read string, headshots, and corkboard, but I can feel in my sprunger that I’m onto something here.
I see you, Anderson, I see you.
And on the topic of Al, I wanted to make sure I called out her other role in the book.
I have made it no secret that I was apprehensive about her when she was first introduced, way back in Tastes Like Chicken, but the little blood sucker has grown on me.
I think this might be her best appearance and usage in the series.
As a homework project, she has written the next installment in the A Game Of Pharaohs series, since Tut T. T. Tut has taken 4000 years and is still coming up empty handed.
I like that KJA keeps giving the kid shit to do and she’s not just your tropey sitcom kid that shows up to be cute and make quips. *shudder*
She even hints at maybe taking over the in universe novels based on Dan’s cases, which would be a fun thread to pull in the future.
Gang, I have barely scratched the surface on what wonders are yet to be found in this novel, I didn’t even mention the way Robin gets thrown into the action!
You know I love these books, I’ve been telling you for nearly 10 years at this point.
They are well plotted and paced.
A perfect tribute to the legendary gumshoe detectives we all know and love, but with a fun twist.
I’ve said it a lot in my reviews of this series over the years, and it’s still the best way I can think of to sell the series to somebody interested, but it really is like The Rockford Files meets The Munsters or Scooby-Doo for an adult audience.
What more could you possibly want in life?
As for me, now I have the arduous wait until lucky book 13 comes out.
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And finally, given the state of the world, do what you can to leave it a little bit better than you found it.
As difficult as that may be currently, it can have an impact far greater than you know.
Until next time, stay safe out there, gang.
