Flashback: The Morrigan by James Hunter

Welcome to Saturday Shorts where we features short stories and novellas.  Today’s novella is from the world of Yancy Lazarus, our favorite mage, bluesman, and supernatural snarkmaster.

Title:  Flashback: The Morrigan
Author:  James Hunter
Series: Yancy Lazarus Book 03.5
Publish Date:  May 6, 2016
Genre:  Urban Fantasy
Source: Provided by the author

Publisher’s Description: The year is 1998.

Yancy Lazarus—bluesman, gambler, mage, and professional fix-it man—has been working for the Guild of the Staff for over twenty-five years. Handling ugly problems no one else wants to touch. Mostly by breaking things, blowing ’em up, or otherwise meting out Guild-sanctioned justice, Rambo-style.

His next assignment will be his last.

A Guild operative, with a headful of dangerous secrets, has gone missing inside the court of the High Tuatha De Danann: ye olde Irish gods of badassery. Yancy—along with fellow wet-works man James Sullivan and Judge Ailia Levchenko—is dispatched to retrieve the missing operative or, barring that, make the perpetrators behind the operative’s disappearance pay a steep, bloody price for crossing the Guild.

But with pissed-off godlings gunning for him on every side, a little kidnapping might be the least of Yancy’s worries.

The Guild investigators are gonna have to navigate the murky waters of court politics, ferret out a traitor, and devise a way to put the kibosh on an inter-dimensional invasion if they want to avoid being murdered horribly. And even if they do get to the bottom of the diabolical mystery, nothing will ever be the same, because one of their number isn’t coming home …

Possible spoilers beyond this point.

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Nervous Nellie says…

Ah, yes. Yancy, the man is explained. Often it’s betrayal that creates in us the stoic and hardened attitude of “rode hard and put away wet.”

This was a tough read for me and the author knew it. He warned me, but I had to see for myself. I love Yancy and it was hard to see the man he was being betrayed. Kind of like watching a TV show and yelling “Watch out!!”

He wasn’t innocent by any stretch of the imagination as he was “The Fixer”. It’s a cool name but the job was not all it was cracked up to be. I guess it rang bells in my life because it seems like everyone is blindsided at some point. Like I said, it was a tough read for someone who really hates pain.

Invested Ivana says…

Heroes, even reluctant ones, aren’t typically people who have led a charmed life.  Heroes are usually born out of heartache and misery and major hardship. The Morrigan shows the reader a pivotal point in the live of Yancy Lazarus; one that shapes him into the person he is in the novels.

Chronologically, The Morrigan is the second installment of the Yancy Lazarus series, after Siren Song.  The Morrigan takes place while Yancy is still working for the Guild as “The Fixer,” their badass assassin. It answers some questions about why Yancy no longer works for the guild and his strained friendship with James Sullivan, and explains some references Yancy makes to a former lover, Ailia, to The Morrigan, and to his relationship with the Tuatha De Danann.

While Yancy is already a master of snarky insults in The Morrigan — “dickbasket” is one of my new favorites — he’s not quite as cynical or jaded as he is in the novels.  He still trusts the Guild and is content being the thug that doesn’t think too much about his assignments.  This is the story of how that trust was violated, and how Yancy came to be the ultimate paranoid drifter that we know and love.

Our reviews in this series…

• Flashback: Siren Song
• Strange Magic
• Cold Hearted
• Wendigo Rising
• Mudman (not really in the series, but in the universe)

If you like this book…

…you might try any of Hunter’s other works, Havoc Rising by Brian S. Leon, or the David Hooper series by John Birmingham.