Just like the last few years preceding it, 2009 featured a bumper crop of absolutely phenomenal paranormal fantasy debuts—namely Tempest Rising by Nicole Peeler, Red-Headed Stepchild by Jaye Wells, Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire, and Kelly Meding’s Three Days to Dead.
Meding’s novel was the first installment in her Dreg City saga, a decidedly mystery-nuanced series that revolves around Evangeline “Evy” Stone, an accomplished bounty hunter turned fugitive and, well, avenging ghost. After Evy and the other members of her Triad—organized units of hunters who seek out and eradicate a diversity of murderous supernatural beings (Dregs) like goblins, vampires, trolls, etc.—are killed, Evy wakes up on a slab in a morgue in someone else’s body! Inside this stranger’s body, which belonged to a severely depressed woman named Chalice Frost who recently committed suicide, Evy must not only unravel the mystery surrounding her own death but somehow find a way to remain alive in a body that will soon die once again (the reincarnation spell that saved her lasts only three days) so that she can unleash some unadulterated vengeance onto those responsible for her death….
The first few sentences of Three Days to Dead created one of the strongest—and coolest—openings I've ever read in a paranormal fantasy novel: “I don't recall the first time I died, but I do remember the second time I was born. Vividly. Waking up on a cold morgue table surrounded by surgical instruments and autopsy paraphernalia, to the tune of the medical examiner's high-pitched shrieks of fright, is an unforgettable experience...”
The reasons why I—and many of BarnesandNoble.com’s Paranormal and Urban Fantasy forum regulars—loved Meding’s debut novel were simple. First and foremost, in a genre that is quickly amassing some serious cliché problems and bothersome conventions, Three Days to Dead was distinctly unique. Additionally, Meding did a wonderfully subtle job at realm building, creating a richly historied world that was complex but easy for readers to immerse themselves in. Readers and reviewers don’t often point out the tone of a novel or series but the atmospherics that Meding created were definitely noteworthy—a feeling of underlying dread saturated every sequence, comparable in many ways to gritty crime fiction classics by Westlake, Block, McBain, etc.
In the recently released second Dreg City novel, As Lie the Dead, Meding expands upon her debut novel by exploring more of the realm she has created via the introduction of some fascinating new characters, specifically Phineas el Chimal, one of the last members of the Owlkins clan, a pacifistic clan of “werebirds” that were brutally wiped out by the Triads. With only three Owlkins left alive—one who is very much pregnant—Phin gets Evy to agree to protect them until the baby is born. But then when Phin approaches the Fey Council demanding justice for his clan’s annihilation—he wants Evy’s friend Rufus (a Triad Handler) sacrificed—Evy is forced into an impossible promise: to “upgrade” the sacrifice by replacing Rufus with three high-ranking members of the police department who were really responsible for the slaughter. But as Evy digs deeper into the multiple-layered mystery, she begins to realize that her perception of the world around her may not be exactly accurate—and that the body she is now inhabiting is somehow capable of some amazing things…
Meding also shrewdly uses flashbacks to slowly reveal tantalizing information about Evy’s past—as well as glimpses into her possible future.
Although both novels have very powerful mystery/crime fiction elements, in As Lie the Dead, the romantic thread between Evy and Wyatt Truman (the Handler for her Triad)—understated in Three Days to Dead—is decidedly more significant. But the romance is more aptly described as dysfunctional sexual tension:
“He seemed determined to drive me crazy, and not in the orgasmic, ‘I love you’ way. Rather, in the pull-my-hair-out, argue-until-we-kill-each-other way.”
A myriad of cool supernatural creatures, a surprisingly deep storyline, excellent realm building, memorable and authentic main characters, dark atmospherics, these are all great reasons to seek out and read Kelly Meding’s Dreg City novels, but above all else, it’s the fact that Kelly Meding is one helluva storyteller. Anyone who calls himself a paranormal fantasy aficionado should really book a ticket to Dreg City asap. Simply put, this series is top-notch paranormal fantasy fare and Kelly Meding is a genre fiction superstar in the making.
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for almost the last two decades and has written more than 6,000 reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
