C E Murphy: Charles Dickens called and he wants his word count back

Okay, so a little while ago I finished Coyote Dreams, the 3rd installment in the series now being referred to by it's publisher as "The Walker Papers" [Eliel thinks that sobriquet sounds lame and would prefer The Urban Shaman series, but alas, he's not in charge of such decisions--Ed.].

As I noted here, the second book gave me faith in C E Murphy's writing chops and ability to keep me reading (and buying) the new installments in her series. I still think that's true, but this most recent entry in the series was the weakest so far.

Not because the plot and it's elements were weak or annoying in any way, but because Ms. Murphy just used too many damned words to describe Joanne Walker's trips into the realms of Magic and Sleep. I found myself wondering if she was trying a "show don't tell" exercise by using enough somnolence inducing words to put the reader into the dreamlike state that the characters in the book were experiencing.

Yes, that's a little harsh, but this is tough-love time for this series. Having three books of this series in print, we've been exposed to enough now to know what Ms. Murphy does well (plotting the complicated life of a woman who is stumbling through being chosen to save the world [Sometimes from herself, --Ed]) and what she does poorly (edit down descriptions of mystical places that her protagonist travels to to the point where the descriptions are informative, but not overly long).

Here's to hoping that the next book in the series keeps the latter and shows improvement on the former: The bottom line is that this is an enjoyable read, but compared to the first two works, it is by far the weakest of the trio.

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