Waiting on Wednesday #3

  Happy February!! Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Jill's blog, and showcases upcoming releases we're highly anticipating.

And my entry for today is somewhat special. I'll tell you why after the blurb, heh :) That's code for I'll be doing a lot of rambling, but it's worth it...I think.

 
Raven Calls, by C.E. Murphy. This baby is going to be the 7th book in the Walker Papers series. It is slated for release on February 21st

Description via amazon.com

 Something wicked this way comes…

Suddenly, being bitten by a werewolf is the least of Joanne Walker's problems.

Her personal life in turmoil, her job as a cop over, she's been called to Ireland by the magic within her. And though Joanne's skills have grown by leaps and bounds, Ireland's magic is old and very powerful….

In fact, this is a case of unfinished business. Because the woman Joanne has come to Ireland to rescue is the woman who sacrificed everything for Joanne—the woman who died a year ago. Now, through a slip in time, she's in thrall to a dark power and Joanne must battle darkness, time and the gods themselves to save her.

I say this book is special for two reasons, the most important being if you had asked me about this series even two weeks ago, I would have said fervently, "Heck no! I hate that series!" and probably proceeded to explain why this is one of those series that must die. The first two books were terrible because the heroine Joanne, frankly, was an insufferable dimwit and I wanted to smack her senseless. My less-than-charitable-reviews for books 1 and 2 can be found here:
 Book #1: Urban Shaman (Goodreads link)
 Book #2: Thunderbird Falls
 Book #3: Coyote Dreams

I read book three ...just Monday? - and all that changed. Ms. Murphy discarded the layers of Dimwit that coated Joanne and showed what lies beneath. She gave us a new Joanne, someone whose journey is worth reading about. And yes, it is as dramatic as I make it sound, at least for me it was. My very-charitable-aka-I-was-wrong-about-this-series review of book three is also linked above, just in case anyone cares. Coyote Dreams changed my view of this series so drastically that I am excited about it enough to power through book 4-6 in 3 weeks or less, just so I can read Raven Calls as soon as it comes out (or slightly before, thank you NetGalley ^_^). I am excited about Joanne and how much potential her character has for growth and I want to be there for the journey. I have no idea what the plots of the next books are, but now, instead of the dread of two weeks ago, I am going into this series with  a sense of enthusiasm and expectation.

Reason  #2: This is another mythology that you won't see too much of peppered along the landscape of fantasy (really bad sentence structure, but you know what I mean). It's basically a series about a half-Irish, half-Cherokee police-officer-who's-really-a-mechanic; it's about being a shaman. It's new. And it pretty much sticks to Native American mythology, which is kinda cool, and again not too common in the Urban Fantasy genre.

I am really excited about this release, for not-the-usual-reasons, and that gives me an extra thrill :)