Geekomancy by Michael R. Underwood

Synopsis: Ree Reyes’ life was easier when she just had to worry about scraping together tips from her gig as a barista-and-comicshop slave wage in the port city of Pearson to pursue her ambitions as a screenwriter.

When a scruffy-looking guy storms into the shop looking for a comic like his life depends on it, Ree writes it off as just another day in the land of the geeks. Until a gigantic ‘BOOM!’ echoes from the alley a minute later, and Ree follows the rabbit hole into Pearson’s magical flip-side. Here, astral cowboy hackers fight trolls, rubber-suited werewolves and Elegant Gothic Lolita fate witches by channeling genre tropes and wielding nostalgia-powered props.

Ree joins Eastwood (aka scruffy guy), investigating a mysterious string of teen suicides as she tries to avoid imploding after her own drag-your-heart-through-jagged-glass breakup. But as she digs deeper, Ree discovers Eastwood may not be the knight-in-cardboard-armor she thought. Will Ree be able to stop the suicides, save Eastwood from himself, and somehow keep her job?

review:  I didn’t expect a book like this one. I can tell you that the ideas we find here are totally unique. I did expect something a little different with this kind of topic but maybe not at this point. Don’t not think it’s a bad thing, not at all! It was a pleasure to follow the Michael R. Underwood’s ideas all along the book and to try to understand all the little things he perfectly included in his story.

Ree is a young woman who dreams to become a scenarist but for now she works in a comicshop while trying to write when she has the time to do it. It’s a job that allows her to know a lot about the comic’s heroes and other things that geeks love about. It doesn’t bother her as she can meet a lot of different persons who don’t even know how to approach a woman like her. But when one day, a man enters in the shop and asks for a comic book in a quite strange way, she starts to wonder what is going on. And when one evening she finds him fighting against a Troll, she doesn’t have any other choice than to accept the truth and to believe that the life isn’t what she had thought. She will team up with him and therefore discover an incredible world. Indeed, Ree will learn that she isn’t only a banal human like others but a geekomancer, it means that she can become or steal the aptitudes of fiction characters she knows. An incredible gift.

I really enjoyed the author’s writing style despite I think I sometimes didn’t understand everything about the references. But it’s my own fault and my lack of culture. It was a pleasure to see so many references like Pokemon (yes, really!), harry Potter, Matrix, and many others. I always wondered what could be the next one. Plus, the plot was really interesting and we try to understand what is going on all along the book.

I really liked to meet Eastwood and Drake. We think we know them a bit at first but it’s only appearance, and we discover them with the chapters. Our feelings change quite fast about them both. I confess I don’t know what I can think about Eastwood, he is not the person we thought he was and Drake is more like a knight in armor, ready to do everything to help our heroine and it’s was touching to see what he could do for her. I think I would have liked to learn more about him and to know exactly how he ended up here, mainly with all the comments we have about his past.

Well, this book is a nice discovery and I really enjoyed the story and the unique ideas of the author.