Grave Importance

De: Vivian Shaw

Narrado por: Suzannah Hampton

A charmingly witty fantasy adventure in the world of Strange Practice, starring Dr. Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, who must solve a dangerous medical mystery at a secret French spa for mummies.

Oasis Natrun: a private, exclusive, highly secret luxury health spa for mummies, high in the hills above Marseille, equipped with the very latest in therapeutic innovations both magical and medical. To Dr. Greta Helsing, London's de facto mummy specialist, it sounds like paradise. But when Greta is invited to spend four months there as the interim clinical director, it isn't long before she finds herself faced with a medical mystery that will take all her diagnostic skill to solve.

A peculiar complaint is spreading among her mummy patients, one she's never seen before. With help from her friends and colleagues - including Dr. Faust (yes, that Dr. Faust), a sleepy scribe-god, witches, demons, a British Museum curator, and the inimitable vampyre Sir Francis Varney - Greta must put a stop to this mysterious illness before anybody else crumbles to irreparable dust...

...and before the fabric of reality itself can undergo any more structural damage.

Grave Importance is the third Dr. Greta Helsing Novel - perfect for fans of Neverwhere and V. E. Schwab.

Dr. Greta Helsing novels
Strange Practice
Dreadful Company
Grave Importance

©2019 Vivian Shaw (P)2019 Orbit

Very enjoyable!!

The third book of Greta Helsing was a wonderful listen. I enjoyed the mummies and the Egyptian storyline. I was also thrilled with the trip to hell. I can’t wait for the next book in the series. I love listening to books that can take you out of your own reality.

Plot Problems...and What is Up with Varney?

I LOOOOOVED the other two, but this one didn't quite work for me. I was hoping she'd be doing angels at some point, but her angels were...eh. I didn't get why they were morons. My husband said that's apparently a trope, but it didn't work for me. The author seemed a lot more interested in Varney than she gave her readers any reason to be, so I didn't buy why Greta would be interested in him, like, at all. That said, I liked the resolution, even though it was deus ex machina (doesn't bother me--seems reasonable given the world building) and that it hinged on Varney.

I didn't care for Shaw's rendition of Hell. (Or heaven, but we see much less of that.) Very techy. Didn't work for me. Interesting as an otherworld, but not interesting as Hell. I love Egyptology, but I wasn't that interested in the mummy thing, for whatever reason.

The narrator, whose voice I LOVE, can't really do an American accent, but that's minor. Grisaille is somehow not Yorkshire anymore, but okay. And wasn't Van Dorn purebred New York royalty? She spoke with an English accent, but I can live with that, I guess. (Or maybe I missed something.) I had a lot of problems with how she was involved in the plot (so many problems!), which I won't spell out here because they'd be spoilers.

These things said, I still basically enjoyed it because I like the characters. Although I'm indifferent to Varney and I'm so sorry Fastitocalon was so awesome in the first book and then just sort of meh in the other two. I'm devastated this is apparently the last in the trilogy, but after the ending of this one, I guess there is no way to go back to the Dr. House thing or a way to build something bigger. I would definitely read/listen to more of them.

As the scope grows the cohesion suffers

Hellsing once again proves she’s competent in the face of ever increasing ridiculousness. While I enjoyed the overall story (and the narrator!) it was harder overall to feel any emotional depth with the many (many) viewpoints we had to be subject to. While I understand the desire to once more up the stakes and make everyone involved, there wasn’t enough time to really get emotionally invested in any one person’s plight. I was exhausted as hellsing during the climatic final third of the book because there was just so much going on. The varney stuff is cute but I the end it just didn’t grip me like the first novel did (even though I loved! All the spa and spa related stuff. Cut out everything else and it would have been delightful). Overall I’d you want to see the conclusion to the varneyxhellsing stuff you’ll want to stick around for it but not the most compelling.

Awesome!

A really fantastic volume in Dr. Greta Helsing's adventures. I've loved every volume and this was no exception!

big Vivian Shaw fan

I have loved all of the Greta VanHelsing books and am sad this is the last. Dr. Greta, physician to the supernatural, goes to an elite spa in France to work with mummies, and as usual, it gets complicated. This book gives the insight into varney, and Ruthven and you'll even enjoy Hell a bit. No hairy deep literature here, just entertainment.

Fun

I really enjoyed the characters and their interactions. Very entertaining. I have read these books three times already. I hope there are more to come.

Fun with Mummies

Book 3 was quite complicated with a bit of deus ex machina, quite literally. It's fun with the good guys who are usually cast as the bad guys - demons, mummies, vampires and ghouls. The only challenge is the narrator doesn't have a different voice for each of the characters and it becomes challenging to tell who's doing/saying what. However, she does have good emotion and phrasing as well as subtle accents.

Great series

I loved this entire trilogy and I hope Vivien Shaw writes another. My favorite is that she wraps each book up nice and neat unlike a few books I’ve read recently where it felt like the writer was too lazy to wrap things up and explain. It’s a very creative series, entertaining and all around fun. The writing is nice and the plot is good. If you like books about vampires, werewolves and mummies then this is the book for you. If you are a twilight fan however steer clear, the only vampires that sparkle in this book are a joke.

A good, fun read!

I'm loving Shaw's books. They are fun, not too heavy, but well plotted and well written. I love the premise and her characters are easy to relate to and care about. Even the devil is likeable!

Another Excellent Sequel!

I enjoyed all the new characters and settings very much. The performance was delightful! More, more, more please!!!