Heart of Stone by C.E. Murphy

Heart of Stone by C.E. Murphy (LUNA - Nov 2007)

Rating: Very Good

On one of her nightly runs through Central Park in NYC, Margit, a Legal Aid lawyer, is stopped by a mysterious man. He doesn`t harm her, but when she gets home she sees a murder on the news--and the prime suspect matches the description of the man she met in the park. Soon, he shows up elsewhere in her life...then disappears with supernatural speed. Is he the killer? Or something else?

The characters...frustrations and enjoyments:

I liked Margit most of the time, and found her easy to identify with. Sometimes the book fell into one of my big pet peeves, though, with the characters overpraising Grit. In particular, I'm thinking of her first meeting with Janx. Did he really need to be in awe of her THAT much? The more I'm told how awesome Grit is, the less I like her. However, in addition to being tough, she was also very caring, and a genuinely good person in her treatment of others. Also, I liked when she got a bit of a commeupance and was shown to have some fear, after all.

The Tony thing bothered me because off-again on-again romances just get on my nerves, though it was better handled than in many books. I liked Cole as a character as well, and hope to see more of him in the next book...actually, one of the only times I really disliked Margit was when she told off Cole near the end of the book. I thought he was 100% in the right (particularly in wondering about her relationships with Tony and Alban) and don't think she deserved his apology.

Wonderful mythology:

I really like the world Murphy has created here. The races are unusual enough in fiction that watching the heroine discover didn`t tax my patience the way some paranormal books do. (I hate when it takes 200 pages for a heroine to figure out that her boyfriend who disappears in the full moon is a werewolf...)

At first, I was a bit miffed at the inclusion of vampires as one of the species, because vampires are so overused and I was much more excited about the other species. However, once the earth/water/fire/air connection was revealed, and we saw that vampires didn't fit into this, they became more interesting. I feel like there's enough left to learn about these races to fill the rest of the trilogy.

Speaking of races...I did like the parallels between magical beings and human racism, with Margit as a black woman really suiting to the themes. Sometimes when this is done in urban fantasies it's just too much--too obvious and preachy. But because it's a theme running through the background of the novel most of the time, it worked for me.

The final verdict:

I`ll definitely buy the next book in this series. The minor annoyances are far outweighed by a fascinating mythology and my curiousity about what Murphy will reveal next about Grit`s new world. Also, gargoyles are just awesome, what can I say? I have a couple of gargoyle scupltures in my apartment, so this book definitely hooked me with the creature aspect.

Series: Book one in the Negotiator trilogy; can work as a standalone