Half-Resurrection Blues (Bone Street Rumba) (original 2015; udgave 2015)

Well, book 2 from this author for me and the way he writes women officially makes me want to vomit. This is a very helpful thing to learn before I invest in any more books, so go me.
Let me elaborate a little: the main female character in here is immediately so attractive he can't stop thinking about her even though he's never seen her in person. (Spoiler alert, she is of course perfect, and sad, and beautiful, and so flat you could use her as a level, which means she doesn't say anything rude or interesting that would take away from her superficial prettiness.) The MC is downright gross in the way he objectifies her into, well, an object. She is basically a gorgeous cut out with damsel level sadness over her dead brother who our MC murdered. He doesn't let this stop him from stalking her and sleeping with her. Basically her personality and actions change around what the plot needs without having any deeper dimension.

Other issues I experienced:
I've read several reviews in which people discuss how it moves along quickly. Yes, with our MC doing very little. The feeling of quickness is created by jumping scene to scene, not by any created flow of character activity.
The MC is obnoxious. He's not driven. He's not kind or nice or interesting. He apparently, up until this very book, had no interest in his history or the actions of the shadowy group he works for. So, I guess, I can say he's almost as 2 dimensional as his female love interest? Only she's so far from 3 dimensional she's practically 1D, which helps him look fleshed out in comparison. A few side characters are at least moderately more interesting with more depth and drive, so it is possible...
I. Cannot. Keep. Track. Of. Who's. Who. Listen, I know that writing books teach you not to overuse signifiers (the tall man, the short woman, blah, blah, blah), but sometimes you have to throw the reader a bone. It took me chapters to sort out his 2 main side kick friends because after an introduction they were all names without any referring back to the difference between the two. C'mon writers. Spend a word or two here and there over the first several chapters to cement characters for us. There are 2 characters who are introduced as what appear to be obvious side characters, and then, when they are introduced chapters and chapters later they are referred to by their names with literally zero context to figure things out from. Is it so f'ing hard to say "the EMT" or "the realtor?" No. Look. I just did it.
The story line was meh for me, because our MC is basically really bad at this detecting thing so he has to be lead around by events. The idea is interesting but that couldn't carry the rest of it for me. That is actually how I felt about the first book I read by this author, which is a much newer book, so for me it's not a "letting the author grow into this thing" issue. Two books, years and series apart - going to be a no for me. It's probably a good sign that if you like his first books you'll like his later books, which is always good to know. ( )

I picked this up at Readercon 2019 (I shouldn't be allowed in the dealer room, really--I hate to disappoint the people working the tables). This book is not entirely my cup of tea. I enjoyed it. It is certainly a page-turner, with an unusual main character. It's deeply evocative and appreciative of New York. It had some funny bits and some touching bits.

I was left somewhat unsatisfied by the world-building. I'm generally a go with the flow reader, but there were a fair few places where I was left perplexed by the world of the dead. A hazard of first person to some extent, and I was able to sail along with my perplexity and enjoy the book, but I Have Questions. Although I like Carlos as a character, I never quite connected with him. ( )

I really wanted to love this book, but somehow it just didn't click for me. It is a paranormal novel about a man that is half dead/half alive who works as a ghost assassin for the governing body of the ghost world. It has a great, gritty feel to the world and some great characters, but I found myself zoning out while I was reading it (I tried both reading the kindle book and listening to the audible version). My biggest problem with the book was the relationship between the main character (Carlos) and his love interest. It seemed very shallow to me and I had a hard time buying the connection they claimed to have. Overall, it was OK for the first book in a series. I will continue with the series because I love the world and the supporting characters. It has a lot of potential as a series. I hope that my connection improves as we see the POV of other characters (which seems to be the case in other books in the series). ( )

I really wanted to love this book, but somehow it just didn't click for me. It is a paranormal novel about a man that is half dead/half alive who works as a ghost assassin for the governing body of the ghost world. It has a great, gritty feel to the world and some great characters, but I found myself zoning out while I was reading it (I tried both reading the kindle book and listening to the audible version). My biggest problem with the book was the relationship between the main character (Carlos) and his love interest. It seemed very shallow to me and I had a hard time buying the connection they claimed to have. Overall, it was OK for the first book in a series. I will continue with the series because I love the world and the supporting characters. It has a lot of potential as a series. I hope that my connection improves as we see the POV of other characters (which seems to be the case in other books in the series). ( )

This was a book I received in one of my Book Riot boxes. The description is "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.…"
I really liked this book, in fact about halfway through the I pre-ordered the second book from Amazon.com, which is coming out in January! Carlos reminded me of a wonderful mix of Odd Thomas and Harry Dresden. So good! The bad guys seemed a little day to defeat and I didn't really care for the ending, but I saw it coming. My only other comment is that sometimes the language felt a little rough, it just didn't have a smoothness to it I was expecting, and the storyline jumped around some. Thankfully this is a series so there is a chance the next one can do it a little better.
*Update of 2nd read: This was a much slower read on the second round, I couldn’t seem to get into it as much as the first time I read it. I also went on vacation, and strangely didn’t have time to read while away.
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