C. E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

Joanne Walker has survived an encounter with the Master at great personal cost, but now her father is missing-stolen from the timeline. She must finally return to North Carolina to find him-and to meet Aidan, the son she left behind long ago.
That would be enough for any shaman to face, but Joanne's beloved Appalachians are being torn apart by an evil reaching forward from the distant past. Anything that gets in its way becomes tainted-or worse.
And Aidan has gotten in the way.
Only by calling on every aspect of her shamanic powers can Joanne pull the past apart and weave a better future. It will take everything she has-and more.
Unless she can turn back time... 

Comment: Another series updated.

This is the 8th book in the Walker Paper series by CE Murphy, a story about Joanne, a shaman finding out about her powers and the voyage she makes to acceptance. In this book Joanne has already accepted her shaman heritage and in the last couple of books she has been fighting the Master,a spiritual enemy that wants to bring darkness to the world.

In this installment, Joanne arrives the reserve where he spend some part of her adolescence and where her biggest tribulations happened. Since then, she has understood and got over some of her issues and she's in a better place now to confront this part of her past.

Now that she's talked to her mother, she goes to the place where her father is, hopefully to help him too. Morrison also makes an appearance so they can deal with what is between them as well. And Joanne meets Aidan, the boy that's part of her life like no one else could ever be. Will Joanne be able to win another fight against the Master?

Once again, I enjoyed a book by this author. She has a talent to structure, making her work steady and reliable even in the parts where the descriptions of the fighting  and the shamanism could get a bit more confused. I think this wasn't the strongest book although it presented many good elements. I liked it but I confess I expected to be more awed by what could happen, especially in what concerned Joanne and the people she was going to meet. I thought it was all smooth, I wanted to see more of the reactions and the feelings in everyone involved. Joanne had a difficult past in Qualla, the reserve where she went to. I thought we'd see a lot more of dealing with what happened until Joanne left for good and what it meant, but surprisingly, all the conversations were quick and almost too easily dealt with.

Joanne is mush more confidant in her powers and her abilities so this shows in the way she acts. I still think it's believable but I can't help but notice that some of those around her don't seem to find it weird how her powers work and how she went from someone so awkward to this new strong person. Of course, she has to, th whole point id for ehr to grow up and the reader has to understand the message that only by working on something can we achieve some sort of control of an ability we might have, but in some parts of the story this doesn't seem so obvious, I think the author could have worked a bit more this thing.

I liked how Joanne and Morrison talked and spent some time having a conversation about their feelings, about what it means and their fears about how easy it would be for them to hurt each other. I think it's much more easier to accept their I love yous instead of an instantaneous HEA then and there.The romance is believable and made me smile, especially when Joanne made Morrison a wold again.

This book deals with one side of Joanne's powers and to be honest it was a bit too much for me. I mean, thinking about the spiritual imagery of it was fine, fun, surprising, but there were some aspects that seemed too much for me. It's a bit linked to what I said before about Joanne's control of her abilities. Still, I don't think it was enough to put me off. It's in the same level of surprise as were the adventures of the other books at the time, so...

I think it's a strong solid book, not as god as others, but still good.

It end with a bomb sentence and I can't wait to see what happens in the final book. I hope it's a proper last book, with a matching HEA too.