A Missing Ferryman. An Undead Dilemma. An Immortal Detective.

An emissary from the Dark Council has just materialized in the office of the Montague & Strong Detective Agency, and makes Simon Strong an offer he can’t refuse. Charon is missing. The legendary ferryman responsible for transporting sorcerer souls across the river Styx hasn’t been seen in days. And with each passing hour, those unable to cross the river are left to walk among the living, tilting the world further out of balance.

Meet Simon Strong, an immortal, who is also the best private detective in New York City. Together with his surly partner-Tristan Montague, a mage of indeterminate age, they must find the Ferryman and get him back to work before another Supernatural War ravages the earth, destroys humanity, and Simon’s local coffee shop.

Time is running out. His landlord wants the rent and Karma with a capital K is paying him a visit, and she can be a real…

Join the Montague & Strong Detective Agency and help them locate Charon, so he can restore balance to the universe, put the dead sorcerers to rest, and maybe solve the age old conundrum-coffee or tea?

This was fun. I can see this Urban Fantasy series becoming a comfort read for me. ‘Tombyards & Butterflies’ released me from the grip of a mini reading slump that had left me unable to engage with the books I’d planned to read, even though I could see that the books were just as good as I’d expected them to be. I knew I needed something fresh, fast, and entertaining to revive my interest. ’Tombyards & Butterflies’ delivered all of that and more. 

Although ‘Tombyards & Butterflies’ is the first book in an Urban Fantasy series that now stands at twenty-nine books, it felt like I was stepping into a well-established series. The story hit the ground running and challenged me to keep up. The opening scene had Montague and Strong chasing a huge werewolf through the streets of Mahatten. I didn’t know who either of them was, what they were capable of or what their relationship to each other was, but I could see that these were folks who’d worked together a long time and who were confident enough in each other’s abilities that they had time for banter even while a rampaging were was trying to rip them apart. The scene pulled me into the action and stirred my curiosity. 

After the werewolf had been dealt with, I expected the pace to slow so that we could have some introspection and some worldbuilding in the way of so many Urban Fantasy stories, but that didn’t happen. The pace didn’t let up. The action was continuous, and the threat level kept rising. Strong and Montague quickly become entangled in plots and subplots that lead to them being the only ones who might stand a chance of saving the world, as long as they do it in the next 48 hours or so. 

Yet the frantic pace of the plot didn’t mean that world-building and character development were neglected. This is a world with a complex history, with gods from every pantheon and with supernatural creatures of just about every kind you can imagine, but there’s no infodumping or lengthy elaboration of magical theory. Instead, I got to discover this world through the eyes of Simon Strong, a man who is much more interested in doing stuff than thinking about stuff. Stone’s not a supernatural. He has no magical abilities. He knows how to fight, and his big mouth means that he pisses off enough vampires, weres, gods and sorcerers to ensure that he has lots of opportunities to practice his fighting skills. One consequence of his big mouth is that he’s been cursed by the goddess Kali and is unable to die, or at least to stay dead. I loved the idea that this was a curse and not a gift.

Strong’s irreverent stubbornness sets the tone for the book. This is a full-fledged Urban Fantasy which shamelessly twists into new shapes almost all the tropes I’ve ever seen, and yet it manages to feel fresh and energetic. There is a lot of humour, but that’s just because Stone can’t help himself. The underlying story is full of very dangerous people doing very violent things. The body count is huge, but it doesn’t descend into tedious, trapped-in-a-video-game fighfest like a John Wick movie. 

‘Tombyards & Butterflies’ is a complete action/thriller novel in its own right, but the plot also lays the foundation for a series, with Strong and Montague acquiring allies and enemies along the way whom I’m sure I’ll meet regularly in the series. 

I read the whole thing in a day and finished it feeling energised and keen to read more . 

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Here’s the bio from Orlando A Sanchez’s website:

Orlando Sanchez has been writing ever since his teens when he was immersed in creating scenarios for playing Dungeon and Dragons with his friends every weekend. An avid reader, his influences are too numerous to list here. Some of the most prominent are: J.R.R. Tolkien, Jim Butcher, Kat Richardson, Terry Brooks, Piers Anthony, Lee Child, George Lucas, Andrew Vachss, and Barry Eisler to name a few in no particular order. The worlds of his books are urban settings with a twist of the paranormal lurking just behind the scenes and generous doses of magic, martial arts, and mayhem. He currently resides in NYC with his family.