Necromancer is such an ugly word, but it’s a title Eric Carter is stuck with. 

He sees ghosts, talks to the dead. He’s turned it into a lucrative career putting troublesome spirits to rest, sometimes taking on even more dangerous things. For a fee, of course. 

When he left LA fifteen years ago, he thought he’d never go back. Too many bad memories. Too many people trying to kill him. 

But now his sister’s been brutally murdered and Carter wants to find out why. 

Was it the gangster looking to settle a score? The ghost of a mage he killed the night he left town? Maybe it’s the patron saint of violent death herself, Santa Muerte, who’s taken an unusually keen interest in him. 

Carter’s going to find out who did it, and he’s going to make them pay. 

As long as they don’t kill him first.

I’m having a bit of déjà vu right here, not only because time has no meaning anymore, but because I was here just the other day (week? month?) talking about how there’s no more rules and I’m just gonna start all the series I want. AND!!! And, I was talking about a new (to me) urban fantasy series about a guy who had been away from Los Angeles for a number of years, only to return on a mission of revenge!

All jokes aside, and taking into consideration the fact that I’ve only read the first book in each, there doesn’t seem to be a ton of similarities between the Sandman Slim series and the Eric Carter series beyond that central idea.

Anyway, Dead Things! Eric Carter is a necromancer, which…I mean…NECROMANCY!!!! He sees ghosts everywhere…which is certainly exhausting. After a lot of heartbreak & tragedy, he’s left his life in Los Angeles behind him, taking on what seems to be a somewhat nomadic lifestyle, and operating kinda like a freelance ghostbuster.

But a call from an old friend brings his old life crashing down all around him. Eric’s sister has been brutally murdered, and it seems the murderer is trying to bait Eric into returning to Los Angeles. Which of course he does. Things get dark, violent, spooky, there’s BLOOD MAGIC, tons of swearing…what more could you want?

I fucking loved this book…Stephen Blackmoore is a hell of a writer, and balances the darker & gorier moments with some great banter & dialogue. I really dug Eric as a protagonist, especially in some of the grittier & more violent scenes. He reacts to these things in a way that feels so real…like, as much as he’s this badass necromancer covered in magical tattoos, some of the shit that happens in this book gets to him. Badly. There were moments where it felt like he was on the cusp of a full-blown panic attack, and I just thought that was an interesting element to bring into the series.

Dead Things is insanely fast paced…the kind of book you can read in a day if you set your mind to it. This was a fucking blast to read…just a propulsive page turner with its own mythology, a unique & flawed protagonist, a colorful cast of secondary characters, and a shit-ton of bloody action. More & more, urban fantasy books are really feeling like comfort reads to me, and I’m happy to add the Eric Carter books to my list of series to work my way through!