Unholy Ghosts

Downside Ghosts, Book 1

By: Stacia Kane

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

The world is not the way it was. The dead have risen, and the living are under attack.

In a future world under attack from the undead, the powerful Church of Real Truth, in charge since the government fell, has sworn to reimburse citizens being harassed by the deceased. Consequently, there are many false claims of hauntings from those hoping to profit. Enter Chess Putnam, a fully-tattooed witch and freewheeling ghost hunter. She’s got a real talent for nailing human liars and banishing the wicked dead. But she’s keeping a dark secret from the Church: a little drug problem that’s landed her in hot water.

Chess owes a lot of money to a dangerous drug lord who wants immediate payback. All Chess has to do is dispatch a very nasty species of undead from an old airport. But the job involves black magic, human sacrifice, a nefarious demonic creature, and crossing swords with enough wicked energy to wipe out a city of souls. Toss in a dangerous attraction to the drug lord’s ruthless enforcer, and Chess begins to wonder if the rush is really worth it. Hell, yeah.

©2009 Stacey Fackler (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“[A] dark futuristic urban fantasy….atmospheric and well written.” ( Publishers Weekly)

“Gripping….Vivid characters and a wonderful sense of place….I was enthralled.” (Charlaine Harris, New York Times best-selling author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels)

“ Unholy Ghosts is a wonderful, weird, wild tale filled with gritty magic, punk rock, and macabre spirits. Kane’s world is dark, dangerous, and haunted, populated by hustlers, junkies and exorcists…and you’ll never want to leave. Simply the best book I’ve read this year.” (Caitlin Kittredge, author of Street Magic)

Worst Narration!

Okay the description of the characters and the narration DID NOT match up at all! Everyone sounded like some cheap hood thug, which is fine if ALL the characters were cheap hood thugs, but they are not. I can’t finish this by audible I’m going to have to read these.

A surprise

I didn’t think I would enjoy this as much as I did. I loved the narrator. She did an excellent job on voices. My only complaint was that sometimes she made Chess come off a little whiny. Either it didn’t bother me as much by the end or she got better at that but I stopped noticing it as much. Of course, I love Terible. Love love love him.

What a wonderful narrative!

I read this book when it first was published. Chess is so damaged but strong in her own way. I think listening to this book was better than reading it!!

Conflicted

Great story well written makes me make some very hard decisions on people’s character. But I still hate that at the end of the story she is still a junkie and I hate to imagine her it’s just another junkie laying around in the street one day. I guess I’ll have to listen to the other books and hope that maybe things change.

Phenomenal Writing & Acting

I was so surprised to be so engrossed in this character and story, given how it started out when I thought I couldn't relate to the main character. It got so tense, was read so brilliantly, that I had to stop doing the housework I usually do while listening, and just waste a day to finish listening to it!

Odd Mixture of Creativity and Juvenile Flippancy

Let me start by saying I enjoyed this story. The three stars and the remarks that follow will make this sound like a more negative review than it is. It suffers mainly in storytelling style, and by comparison with other novels in the post-apocalyptic UF genre. Taken on its own terms, it was very entertaining, dark, and imaginative. The author has succeeded in creating her own version of a world shattered by, and rebuilt anew after, an apocalyptic catastrophe in which the threats still abound. And her vision is remarkably unique - something increasingly hard to find in the glut of "zombie-apocalypse" books. Kudos for that.

All the wonderfully dark, gritty UF details here have been diminished, however, by the flippantly adolescent style - this applies to both the book as written and the audiobook as narrated. The story is told, not in the first person but nevertheless from the protagonist's point of view, and that person, Chess Putnam, is a young girl, teens or early twenties, I believe. A multiple drug addict and exorcist/witch/debunker for the Church of Real Truth, yes, but a young girl just the same, and much of her style - and thus the style of the narration here - sounds like a flippant, eye-rolling, sarcastic 16-year-old. I managed to enjoy this story despite this annoying style, certainly not because of it, and that must only be because I am so addicted to the whole genre.

The plot moves along nicely, although most of it is not exactly a nail-biter. The characters, except for Chess herself and the utterly engaging Terrible, are largely flat, cardboard stereotypes, from "Bump," the drug dealer/pimp to the church officials to the middle class families whose homes may - or may not - be haunted.

Bahni Turpin's narration of Chess has the hip-but-squeaky affectation of a 16-year-old, one who is trying to make it in a hard, strange world by being just a bit too casually "whatever" about nearly everything. Turpin voices Chess just so, and gets it right, true to the author's style (much as this style annoyed me), but she struggles, and often simply fails, to give credible voices to the male characters. I found myself substituting my own version of the voices in my mind, something an audiobook narration should relieve you of the chore of doing. A second, male narrator would have greatly improved the experience.

So there you have it. Many will no doubt take issue with my comments, and I do hear that the books that follow get progressively better. I will listen. But I will say, as a true lover of the whole postapocalyptic and UF genres, that it is hard to come from "The Passage" or "The Stand" or "Swan Song" and find nearly as much enjoyment here. That said, three solid stars for the sheer imaginativeness of the world Stacia Kane has created for us.

Slow to burn

This book was hard to get into at first. After about the third chapter, I began to get invested into the characters. It’s worth the read

Liked the world, hated the main character

There were several times I was tempted to stop this book, because I found the main character unlikeable. (She’s a tweaker. Couple of my brothers are tweakers. Others might find that premise more interesting than I do.) Ultimately I stuck with it because I’ve listened to a couple of other books Ms Turpin narrated and which I really enjoyed, so her voice was a comfort level and trust that it would get better. The world-building was really good at the paranormal apocalypse that caused this societal construct, and the seedy criminal underworld the main character inhabits, but pretty vague on how the magic works. The several threads came together in an ending that was well written, tense and exciting. Ultimately, the world is one that I’d be interested to know more about, but this character isn’t one that I want to spend more time with.

Books like these keep me a member

As part of my Audible membership I listened to this book. High story, great world building, unique characters make this book such a great find for me. If anyone in Audible is reading this, know that stories like these that are included in my membership keep me paying monthly.

I want the author to make millions off her books for sure but I’d have not met her otherwise, most likely. Thanks for a new story Ms Kane!

The voice actor is amazing!!! Love her range and inflections. I got caught up at times with the tension of the story just from her inflections and voice acting. Bravo Ms Turpin!!! I now look for books based on who is narrating almost as much as by author.

Diving into the rest of the series now. I’m so excited to have a new reading/listening adventure.

not sure

I couldn't get into like I wanted. I don't like the narrator to speak to me in 3rd person. I like it when they are speaking as if I'm in the mind. example: I went to the green door to speak with Ms. Jane. ....not "Lane went to the green door to speak with Ms.jane" and it's Lane who is telling us smh