(The strange case of shadows, title translation mine)

This one is a novella, set in the shadow world universe Daniel Timariu has created, set in my city. I’m gonna buy one of his full novels for sure. I’ve always loved urban fantasy that really gives life to a city,and a small city should be pretty easy to get right, but I like how I even know which shrubs and trees he’s talking about on particular streets.

It’s urban fantasy, in fact Alex, the main character, is pretty much a Romanian Harry Dresden, even the questionable attitude towards women. Alex is guilty of some ogling, but not that much, and keeps bring up his love interest in two of the side characters. He’s also a broke detective.

Alex lives in between the human world and the shadow world. He might be a little bit dead, some say Golem some say Zombie, in any case he’s in constant danger of slipping completely into the shadow world. Luckily his hell hound companion occasionally chomps down on his leg to keep him anchored.

The side characters are really cool. The guy at comic-con (fellow author, not Daniel Timariu) told me the non human entities are named based on how old they are, so the Strigoi have Dacian names (pre-roman people here ), and the werewolves have Hungarian names. I didn’t get what all of them came from, but the love interest witch is call Crystal Dezordine (=mess, disorder, clutter) and I relate to that on a deep personal level. There’s a guy who’s a half-werewolf, who’s very sweet in a sort of local hillbilly sort of way, and at the full moon his ears stay pink and human, so all the other werewolves laugh and call him names.

The story was good, it had a very eerie feeling, reminded me of magical realism a bit. There’s a lot of play with illusions and slipping between worlds, not knowing where you are and what’s really real. There’s also very well developed shadow world, with organisations for all sorts of supernatural beings. I think if I knew as much about local legends as I do about whether a dragon has 4 or 6 limbs, I would have been able to figure out what the big bad monster was, as a big of googling reveals she fits the type really well.