Quickie Review: Half-Resurrection Blues

Published: 2015 by ROC (an imprint of Penguin Books)

Length: 326 pages

Genre: Fiction, Urban Fantasy

Source: Book Riot Quarterly Box that I purchased

My rating: 4 stars

From Goodreads:

photo courtesy of me

Carlos Delacruz is one of the New York Council of the Dead’s most unusual agents—an inbetweener, partially resurrected from a death he barely recalls suffering, after a life that’s missing from his memory. He thinks he is one of a kind—until he encounters other entities walking the fine line between life and death.

One inbetweener is a sorcerer. He’s summoned a horde of implike ngks capable of eliminating spirits, and they’re spreading through the city like a plague. They’ve already taken out some of NYCOD’s finest, leaving Carlos desperate to stop their master before he opens up the entrada to the Underworld—which would destroy the balance between the living and the dead.

But in uncovering this man’s identity, Carlos confronts the truth of his own life—and death…

This isn’t a genre that I usually buy or read, but it came to me in my first Book Riot Quarterly Box back in March of 2015 and quickly took up residency on my TBR pile. Last year I participated in the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge and for one of the tasks I needed to read a book that is first in a series by a person of color. This book hits both of the criteria for that task. I finally read it the week before Christmas as one of the last books for the challenge. Much to my surprise, I love this book; I was blown away! What a fun, exciting read. In fact, it could, and maybe should, be on my Top 10 Reads of the year.

The story’s setting is Brooklyn, NY, and it’s haunted streets. The main character, Carlos Delacruz is only half alive making him someone who exists on fringes of the living and the dead. And he thinks he is the only one of his kind in existence: an inbetweener.  He is a member of a squad that “polices” the dead who inhabit Brooklyn. But one day he discovers he isn’t the only  one. There are more out there like him. And that is only the beginning of  the hero’s quest.  And so begins the wild ride through haunted Brooklyn. It’s faced paced and fascinating.The world Older overlays on real world Brooklyn is beautifully rendered. And the characteres that we are introduced to in this story are intriguing. I hope there is more of the teen Kia who works at Baba Eddie’s botánica in future books. Actually more of Baba Eddie, too. I love everyone associated with the shop. And Mama Esther, the house ghost, is interesting as well. I want to know more about her beginnings and why she is attached to that particular house. I’m so glad that there are at least two more of this series because I do want to visit Older’s Brooklyn again.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it and would you/did you read the rest of the series? If you haven’t read it, would you?  Let me know in the comments below.